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Max Jakobson dies but his legacy and the cold war linger on

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Migrant Tales

This blog entry is dedicated to the late Donald Fields, Helsinki correspondent of the BBC, The Guardian and Politiken to 1988.

I read with mixed thoughts about the death of Max Jakobson (1923-2013), a diplomat who shaped Finland’s policy of neutrality during the cold war. While I am certain that he was an able diplomat, he was no friend of dissension or anyone who dared to question Helsinki’s sacrosanct foreign policy with Moscow.

He didn’t hide his disdain for foreign correspondents as can be seen in the summer 1980 issue of Foreign Affairs: “…Finland is forever at the mercy of the itinerant columnist who after lunch and cocktails in Helsinki is ready to pronounce himself upon the fate of the Finnish people. A person visiting, say, London for the first time, who does not know English and has only a vague notion of the significance of Dunkirk or the role of Winston Churchill, would hardly be regarded as qualified to comment on the British scene today.”

Did cold war Finland have to treat the media with such contempt and overbearing censorship?

Future historians will shed light on that question.

Helsingin Sanomat writes about the death of Max Jakobson on Monday’s edition.

In the 1980s, people like Pekka Karhuvaara, Lasse Lehtinen, Matti Kohva, Ralf Friberg and others made sure that what you wrote about Helsinki-Moscow relations was to their liking and toed the official foreign policy line.

If you didn’t you were black listed, period.

The foreign ministry together with Finnfacts did everything possible to brighten Finland’s name by inviting foreign journalists to the country. They would pay their trips, stay, wine and dine them to win them over. Many, I’m certain, became good friends of this country after such freebies.

My first attempt to interview Jakobson was in 1989 shortly after I started to work for the Financial Times in Helsinki. First he accepted the interview but later canceled it.

I suspect the reason why Jakobson canceled the interview was because he had learned about my stand against the Soviet Union, Finnish foreign policy and especially those Soviet asylum seekers who were deported back to the former U.S.S.R.

I got my second chance when Christian Tyler of the Financial Times came to Finland to do a special report on the eventual demise of the Soviet Union and its impact on Finland. Tyler had an appointment with Jakobson and I tagged along.

This is what we wrote in The last wall in Europe, published in January 1991:

“Even Max Jakobson, the distinguished former diplomat and most eloquent apologist for Finland’s extreme post-war neutrality, agrees that the government has been traditionally inhospitable to immigrants and slow to respond to the turmoil around its borders. “The period of stagnation was not bad for Finland,” he said but he added: “There is nothing wrong with stagnation if you can do it on a high income level as we did.” Finland had no obligation to Soviet citizens, but rather an opportunity. “Our obligation is to look after our own interests.”

The foreign ministry wasn’t naturally happy with what we wrote. Tyler told me that he published in a separate story an interview with Jakobson, which was more favarable.

While the cold war is still too close to us to study objectively, I suspect that future researchers and historians will look at this period with mixed feelings. Even if we were able to build a successful Nordic welfare state after the armistice with Moscow in 1944, we were near-isolated form the world. Even if we lost hundreds of thousands of able workers who migrated to Sweden after World War 2, we kept our borders effectively closed to immigrants and the outside world.

No matter how much you tried to accept the foreign ministry’s and Jakobson’s view of Finland’s neutrality, it always boiled down to censorship and even greater doses of self-censorship. Thanks to Finland’s near-isolation, foreign investment was almost negligible thanks to the Restricting Act of 1939 (law 219/1939) and it was not until 1983, 65 years after independence, that Finland got its first Aliens Act.

What is the legacy that Jakobson and Finland’s cold war foreign policy left on Finland?

While both kept Finland from becoming a Warsaw Pact member, it came with a high price. The cost can be seen today in our attitudes and suspicion of foreigners, especially of Russians.

If we still believe that we are at war with Russia, how can we be an open society that aims to integrate newcomers?

If there is anything holding us back, it is the cold war legacy.

Is the far right a threat to Finland?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Pia Growchoski asks an important question on her recent blog entry on Migrant Tales: Why is the national media so interested in far right groups and their resentful rhetoric? Why do we give space to Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini’s blatant incompetence on our Facebook pages? Are we in denial about what these groups represent or just being entertained by them?

In many respects, far right politicians are like show wrestlers. We know about their antics but we don’t mind being fooled.

Soini is one politician who plays the show political game very well. He plays it so well that it took a year and ten months after the PS’ historic election victory of 2011 to be grilled on HARDtalk about racism in his party.

How many in Finland have done the same?

After some major adjustments and training, lots of far right politicians could make it as show wrestlers and even become as popular as Ric Flair. Source: Best of Ric Flair going nuts.

A good example of the public’s fascination with the far right in Finland is the media coverage that PS MP Olli Immonen got as the new president of the extremist Suomen Sisu association.

Some of the most outrageous matters that Immonen, who is a security guard by profession, has claimed is an inevitable so-called clash of cultures between “Christian” and “Muslim” Europe.

Sensible people understand that this is a lot of hogwash like 99.99% of what show wrestlers rant theatrically in front of television cameras.

Immonen writes on the Suomen Sisu website that it is a good matter that anti-immigration groups are not taking the law in their hands but organizing legally.

Then the show wrestler appears like from a jack-in-the-box bouncing from side to side: “I personally condemn racism and I don’t accept that any person is marginalized or favored in working life based of his ethnic background,” he continues. “Similarly, I condemn all forms of political violence be it from persons belonging to the left, center or right.”

Why would Immonen state such things?

If you want to see what people really think and represent, see what they deny.

Irrespective of the political theatrics, it would be a mistake to underestimate the influence and potential harm these types of groups can inflict on our society. That is why we must be vigilant and ready to confront and defeat them wherever they me be.

Today these far right groups are active in countries like Greece and Hungary.

In Finland they already have a beachhead.

Pia Grochowski: Shifting our focus

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Migrant Tales

By Pia Grochowski

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

These were the final words written by the late Canadian leader of the opposition, Jack Layton, just hours before his untimely death of cancer. I reflect upon these words with a desire in my heart to challenge the current status quo in Finland. While the words were part of a message towards all Canadians to carry us through period of darkness with the untimely passing of one of our leaders; these words have enormous relevance.

I wish to question what appears to be, to me at least, too much coverage of the far right, racism, the perussuomalaiset. I question the tactics from many liberally minded people that discussions I have had always tend to fall down the path of concern for what the äärioikeus, or far right, said; many are rightfully shocked, disgusted, and concerned at the long-term implications of their dogma, their horrific ideas. Rather than despair in such statements, I feel we must look with optimism towards alternatives. To allow us to be channels wherein people with the capacity to change, with a vision for inclusion can get a voice. The more I read of äärioikeus, the more I realize how silly it all is. These individuals promote sensational ideas, which I believe will never be manifested, but can be framed in such a way that will shock and awe the public and sell newspapers. The more they are covered and discuss in the media, the more we are at risk of having them get the promotion we want. While criticizing their views, we must take care to provide a reasoned answer that defines out values and ideals with the means of seeing them through.

My plea in writing this is that we need to hear more visionary voices; we need to see more alternatives. Now is the time to act, now is the time to hope, and be optimistic. There are so many wonderful people in this country with great messages of diversity, great potential for change; why do we let a character like Soini win the walls of our facebook pages with his blatant incompetence, and subtle racism in a BBC interview. In the last presidential election an openly homosexual man, with a foreign partner came to the final round. This wouldn’t be possible without some desire of the people in this country accepting and supporting the very things the äärioikeus hopes to remove. I am becoming more inclined not let the äärioikeus use me as a channel for their voices, as I believe such spaces are better used by alternatives, reasoned voices that can offer real solutions rather than fear. I believe they have fed us with enough proof that they are no longer worth our time, our anger. I believe that we can deal with this problem; I believe that we can lead by example, we can provide ideas, we can solve problems, and we can do better.

Don’t get me wrong, covering racism is important, and some may, still, be unaware of the extent of it all; but we also need to reflect on giving more space to voices that have a vision for an inclusive, dynamic, progressive Finland. At times I worry that all these ideological extremes victimize immigrants. While focusing on all that frustrates us, all the problems, we also need to take time and focus on all that we can and will change. Love is better than anger.

Police apprehend suspected attacker of black VR worker of Kajaani, Finland

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The police have apprehended the suspect who violently attacked on Tuesday a black train cleaner working for state railways, VR, reports Kainuun Sanomat. The suspect, who is a foreigner, admitted to the police of attacking the VR worker, who has returned home after being operated twice in hospital.

Just because a person is a foreigner doesn’t mean he cannot commit a hate crime. See what is happening in countries like Hungary, Slovakia and Greece, where racism and xenophobia have scapegoated visible immigrants, the Roma and Jews.

Moreover, the mere thought that people act like “cultural zombies” reveals your ignorance and prejudices, which are kept alive thanks to generalizations made of other groups.

Is the police treating what happened in Kajani as a hate crime? We still don’t know but they should if the victim was attacked because of his ethnic background.

Some Finns, who clump all foreigners in one group, believe that immigrants cannot house racist thoughts about other groups. This assertion could not be further from the truth. The same type of intolerance we find in some sectors of white Finnish society can be uncovered among some foreigners, who see themselves as white but may loathe blacks.

Our message to these people should be the same: racism, prejudice and intolerance are unacceptable in our society. Cross the line and you will have to deal with the law.

When we address a social ill like intolerance, the message must go to everyone in our society. Our aim must be zero tolerance.

Hate crimes in Finland are shameful but reveal our meek response to intolerance

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Just like over a year ago, during Black February, when three Muslims died under violent circumstances in a span of about three weeks, Migrant Tales learned of a new tragedy in the city of Kaajani. A black man, who is a train cleaner for the state railways company VR, was violently attacked by two men on Tuesday, according to Iltalehti and Kainuun Sanomat.

Irrespective of who are the suspects, these types of crimes are simply unacceptable in our country and should not only be condemned by law but by society as well.

It is incredible that such violence can still happen in our country due to a person’s ethnic background.

If we must search for the real culprit of this crime, it is the ever-growing intolerance we find Finland. This adverse climate for immigrants and visible minorities has been forged not only by the present economic situation, but by our lame stance against racism, social exclusion and prejudice.

One must look at the big picture when looking at cultural diversity and tolerance. What does it say about the state of our society when Perussuomalaiset (PS)-spirited associations like Suomalaisuuden liitto, Vapaa kielivalinta associaiton, and the youth wing of the PS and National Coalition Party spearhead a petition to do away with mandatory Swedish?

It sadly reveals that some prominent groups in our society are ready to sacrifice other people’s civil rights to satisfy their hunger for greater intolerance. If these organizations ever got their way concerning the role of the Swedish language in Finland, they would continue to search for new “enemies” because their reason for being hinges on creating and attacking scapegoats.

Moreover, undermining diversity enables populist parties who loathe civil rights for their “enemies,” to drive home their political ideology more effectively. If I were a dictator, the first matter I’d eliminate is the opposition, or diversity. Adolf Hitler did this effectively with the Jews and other enemies of the state. At the end of the day, there was no opposition.

What has happened before can happen again in Europe. The fact that Finland has few minorities and immigrants explains why intolerance is not only accepted but encouraged by some circles. It explains why a party like the PS rose from semi-obscurity to become Finland’s third-biggest party in parliament in 2011.

It is surprising that the National Coalition Party’s youth wing has gone to bed with far right associations like the Suomalaisuuden liitto on the language issue. Even so, it is an excellent example of the traditional party’s mixed view of intolerance in Finland. Thanks to their unclear stand on the issue, they have permitted anti-immigration parties like the PS to grow into major political players in this country.

We at Migrant Tales hope that the perpetrators are brought swiftly to justice and the victim a swift recovery. This may be better said than done because the injuries of the victim are apparently so serious that he can never return to work at VR.

Foreign train cleaner violently attacked in the Kainuu region of Finland

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A black train cleaner working for VR, the state-owned railways company, was violently attacked on Tuesday by two men in the city of Kajaani, located in the region of Kainuu, according to Iltalehti. The wounds the attackers inflicted on the man are so serious that he will be operated.

Iltalehti repors that the wife of the victim told the tabloid that her husband was attacked on Tuesday at 11:30pm. According to her, her thirty-year-old husband took the trash out when two men surrounded him. The black man thought that the two men were asking for directions but that is when they started to insult him in a racist manner.

Two Finnish suspects were detained by the police but released. The police is now looking for two foreigners.

Migrant Tales will report more on what happened when it gets more information from its own sources.

Is Finland in the anti-racism farm leagues?

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Migrant Tales

On a recent Migrant Tales blog entry we wrote about racist harassment and bullying at schools. For some parents, the problem is so serious at some schools that the only solution is to move to another city like Helsinki, where there are more visible minorities and immigrants.

Source: The Speak Out project.

Why are we still in the anti-racism farm league if we have to tools, resources and competence to do much better?

The answer may not please everyone: Our prejudices are one factor holding back our full potential to challenge a social ill like racism. This is understandable considering that racism doesn’t affect us directly since we are white.

In many respects, our attitude towards intolerance is like our view of alcohol in our society. Alcohol is bad but we accept and even tolerate the social problems it brings with it.

Why should we be worried about racism and prejudice?

Because these social ills are contradictions that question the very values that our successful society is based on. Why do we want to return to a period when people in Finland were treated with scorn thirty to fifty years ago due to their social class? Those people who are treated in such a way are immigrants and visible minorities.

We must do better in Finland when it comes to challenging intolerance especially at our schools, which should be places where inclusion, acceptance and respect are promoted, not discouraged.

A high school physical education teacher back in Hollywood, California, told us a long time ago that when we compete we must strive for first place. If we aim for second or third place, we’ll most likely come in fourth or fifth, according to him. “Go for first place because most likely you’ll end up in second or third place,” he said.

Our approach to intolerance and racism should be the same: We should not only strive to neutralize it, but nip it in the bud. Let’s go for gold when challenging intolerance.

If we don’t aim for zero tolerance, we permit intolerance to live another day at our schools and in our society.

Let’s launch a campaign with the following slogans at our schools: Say no to racist harassment and bullying.

Migrant Tales (October 1, 2011): Multicultural Finns – “Accepting yourself is the first step”

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A guest speaker gave on Friday her recipe on how young adolescents from different countries living in Finland could build a space for themselves in society. Two matters struck me from the twenty-one-year-old young woman’s talk: The first and foremost matter is acceptance of oneself and to reach out — if possible — to those who loathe you.

Thank you Nura Farah for the heads-up.

The woman, whose father is a Black USAmerican and mother Finnish, kept the class mesmerized by these two key points.

She said that in Finland and the United States she was always seen as a foreigner. “In Finland people asked me where I was from and in the United States people thought I was from Finland,” she said. “One day it dawned on me that instead of looking for people’s acceptance, I had to first accept myself. It happened on a chat site when I read a comment by a black woman.”

Some may claim that being white in Finland is easier than being a visible minority. Since visible minorities cannot hide from the sometimes hostile stares of society, visible minorities can. Hiding, even denying, one’s identity can, however, have devastating impact on one’s self-esteem.

If one would want to write a shocking book about racism in Finland, all they’d have to do is find Russians who attended elementary and middle school during the 1990s. Apart from being ridiculed at school for having a Russian background by the classmates, this happened with the silent approval of the teachers.

Even if my mother is Finnish, I am happy that I did all my schooling in the United States from grade two. How much ridicule would I have had to take in the Finnish school system in the 1960s and 1970s? At least my otherness was acknowledged, even respected, in the United States.

How do Finnish schools treat cultural diversity?

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Migrant Tales

In theory, the answer is straightforward: Finnish schools should respect cultural diversity but a lot depends on the school and the principle. If we compare how elementary and middle schools treated visible minority students in the 1990s, we hope that matters have improved since then. But have they?

Cultural diversity in Finland up to the 1970s divided Finns in some history books into the “Nordic and Eastern Baltic races.” This picture was taken from an elementary school book published in 1941.

If our expectations are on the right path and we have the right values as a society to make cultural diversity work, what then is the challenge? The answer is the following: If we don’t have yet as a society a big picture of what immigrants and their children are doing here, it means that we are still walking blindly towards the future with a seeing-eye dog called Chance.

Migrant Tales has documented numerous cases of racist harassment and bullying at Finnish schools from people like Ida, Micha and Abdulah.

Abdulah was seven when he moved from Somalia to Finland in the early 1990s and attended elementary school for the first time in Hyvinkää, a city located near Helsinki.

“I’ve been bullied, called names like the n-word, insulted, kicked and hit hard at school,” he said. “The only way to survive was to be quiet and roll with the punches. There was nothing else I could do because the teachers never believed me. They were always on the side of the white students.”

Not only is the hostile behavior they received from their classmates at school shameful, but more worrying has been the silence of some of the teachers.

I know of one student who, like a gay person coming out of the closet, proudly accepted as a young adult her Russian background. According to her, she was bullied so much at school because of her background, that her former classmates still harass her at her hometown of North Karelia. She has a better weapon against this type of hostility: She is today proud of her Russian and Finnish heritage.

If somebody would like to expose the ogre of racism in this country, I am certain you’d find it in the tales of those immigrant children who attended Finnish school in the 1990s and even today.

It saddened me to hear that the mother of a black child from my hometown of Mikkeli, moved to Helsinki because of the racist bullying her child got at elementary school.

What did his classmates say? Every insult in the book to reinforce that he was different from his classmates and to destroy his self-esteem.

Part of the global fame that the Finnish educational system has enjoyed in recent years comes from the high scores achieved on the PISA exam, which focuses on young people’s ability to use their reading, mathematics and science skills. How would Finnish schools fare if they had to resolve and adapt to diversity at school?

Would their scores be as impressive if they had to resolve and adapt to cultural diversity at school?

The Finnish National Board of Education’s core curriculum for primary and pre-primary education is a reflection of our noble values as a Nordic state. The existing curriculum, which was published in 2004, states the following: “The values and aims of the curriculum hinge on human rights, social equality, democracy, biodiversity, maintaining environmental sustainability as well as the acceptance of multiculturalism.“

It is incredible but pupils who aren’t your typical white Finn, even though they were born or have lived most of their lives in this country, are called at schools students with immigrant backgrounds, or maahanmuuttajataustainen. The interesting question to ask is why this label, which in my opinion promotes social inequality, is used in the first place if many of these children are Finns with different ethnic backgrounds.

If Finland has the laws and the resources to build a successful culturally diverse society in this century, what are the challenges we face?

The biggest one are our prejudices and the tools we use to confront them.

How can we integrate people into our society if we are rejecting them with our prejudices?

Thus the laws and what happens on the ground at school reveal our expectations and reality concerning cultural diversity.

The fact that we still hear dear little about the racist bullying and harassment at Finnish schools reveals a wider problem we haven’t yet tackled as a society.

Haglund continues to challenge Soini on his broken campaign promises on racism

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The rift between Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini and Carl Haglund, head of the Swedish People’s Party, reveals an ongoing David and Goliath duel where Soini is showing his true autocratic colors. Haglund challenged Soini last week to an open debate on racism after the PS leader was grilled on HARDtalk about this festering issue.

Soini said in 2009 that he would sack any member from the party, especially an MP, if they were convicted for ethnic agitation.

As a result of Haglund’s challenge, Soini has refused to sit at the same table with him never mind have a debate about racism, according to Helsingin Sanomat. The PS leader even refuses to answer questions from journalists about the matter.

“He made a clear campaign promise, which he hasn’t kept,” Haglund was quoted as saying on Helsingin Sanomat. “After that he hasn’t accepted to comment about the criticism concerning his broken campaign promise but only repeated [in public] that he’s not a racist.”

Haglund, who is defense minister as well, said that the reason why the bigger parties haven’t challenged Soini on his broken campaign promise and racism is because they fear the PS will continue to eat away at their support.

Migrant Tales asked the same question and gave roughly the same answer as Haglund on a March 3 blog entry.

We responded: “The answer [why the big parties are so silent] is pretty obvious. There are two answers to this question: the biggest parties are too afraid to do so and/or silently agree with many of the populist policies of the PS.” The silence of the biggest parties has not undermined the PS’ popularity but helped it grow.

Thanks to the PS and its leader Soini, we have today given a political voice to a record number of racists, Islamophobes, immigrantphobes, isolationists, anti-EU supporters, male chauvinists, homophobes, neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Certainly that’s something to be worried about if you are attempting to build a society based on acceptance and harmony.

Is this is the brand of “Christianity” that Soini wants to promote in Finland? We certainly hope it isn’t but that’s what it looks like.

Migrant Tales raises its hat once again to Haglund for pressing Soini for some answers on his broken election promises.