Tag: Finland

Somali-Finn Abdulah: Living in no-man’s land (Part 2)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

When Abdulah*, 30, talks to you about his twenty-two years in Finland, one of the first questions that arises is how has so much suffering escaped our attention. For Abdulah, acceptance isn’t only virtually impossible from white Finns, but can be  just as hard to get from the Somali community.  

“I have decided to live outside this society,” he says. “I have learned that there is no place here. Even my people have turned their backs on me.”

Abdulah says that there are two matters you must never lose if you don’t want to be abandoned by the Somali community.

“Language and religion are crucial,” he explains. “I don’t speak Somali that well anymore since I grew up in this country. I  became an atheist two years ago and left the Muslim faith.” 

 How long will it take for minorities like the Somalis to be treated as equals in Finland?

Abdulah admits that he no longer believes in god.

“How can there be a god if people are constantly killing each other in Somalia?” he continues. “How can there be a god if there’s so much hatred and racism towards you in this country? How can god exist in such hells?”

There are many young men like Abdulah in Finland, who grew up the greater part of their lives in this country. He says that some have problems with the law.

“I don’t identify with such people anymore because I used to be one of them,” he says. “If you start drinking and taking drugs, your situation will only get worse. That’s the reason why I changed my life.” 

Abdulah hasn’t forsaken hope despite the difficulties he’s faced. Two factors give him strength: his family and plans to be a gardener.  

 Billboards like these in the early 1990s spread prejudice about Somalis in Finland. The tabloid ad claims that Somalis had made phone calls to the tune of hundreds of thousands of marks and supposedly passed the bill to the social authorities. 

“But living in Finland still feels like being in a trap,” he adds. “I want to free myself but I don’t know how.”

Abdulah discovered Migrant Tales by chance when he was searching for an alternative forum that spoke up for immigrants and visible minorities like him. 

“I used to visit Suomi24, Hommaforum and even took part in Iltalehti chat forums,” he says.  “They always said the same negative things about immigrants and Somalis. I felt relieved when I found Migrant Tales. It was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel that gave me hope.”

Abdulah is a very sensitive and respectful person. Despite the difficulties he’s encountered, he believes that one must be outspoken if he’s going to challenge a social ill like racism.   

“We have to fight back,” he concludes. “Silence hasn’t changed my life for the better. That’s why I’m active in forums like Migrant Tales.” 

*Abdulah’s name has been changed to protect his identity. 

 

 

 

Somali-Finn Abdulah: Living in no-man’s land (Part I)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Even if I have never met Abdulah* in person but only by phone and through his comments on Migrant Tales, it’s as if we’ve known each other for a long time. Abdulah moved to Finland from Somalia in 1990 with his parents and six sisters. He was eight at the time. 

When Abdulah came to Finland, there were only 21,174 immigrants living in the country, accounting for a mere 0.4% of total population, versus 183,133 (3.4%) today, according to the Population Registration Center. 

“For a child from Somalia, moving to Finland was at first exciting,” he says. “We were starting a new life in a new country. I was fascinated by the snow.”

Abdulah says that his brief honeymoon with Finland ended abruptly when he started elementary school. He was the school’s first and only black student. 

“That’s when the bullying started; I was even attacked physically by my classmates,” he continues. “Something bad happened to me almost every day at school.”

 Being black in an all-white crowd can be sometimes dangerous in Finland. 

Abdulah says that once all of his classmates, which numbered about 20, waited to attack him after school. Even a school “friend” assaulted him once with a knife. 

“I’ve been bullied, called names like the n-word, insulted, kicked and hit hard at school,” he says. “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.”

“I’ve been bullied, called names like the n-word, insulted, kicked and hit hard at school,” he says. “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.”

Abdulah says that he’s tried to make friends with Finns but it has been virtually impossible. He did make some friends at school but their friendship never lasted long.  

 This type of tabloid ads were common in the early 1990s. It reads: “Armed refugee hater chased after blacks.” 

“First they’re your friend and then they abandon you,” he says. “I was nine when I met a very nice boy at school. On the way to his home a friend of his meets us and asks him why he’s with me. He then told me right their on the spot that he could no longer be my friend.”

Even if the bullying has left deep scars on Abdulah, one of the worst memories he recalls was when he was nine and walking with his mother to the market.

“A drunk man attacked me on the street and started insulting me,” he says. “My mother called out for help but nobody came. That incident really traumatized me. I was only a child.” 

Abdulah admits that growing up and living in Finland has made him paranoid. The election of an anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset didn’t help dispel his fears about racism against Somalis in Finland.    

The matter that concerns Abdulah the most about the Perussuomalaiet is their belief that Finns should not have children with blacks. 

“With the election victory of the Perussuomalaiset that brought to parliament some fascist [anti-immigration] politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others, things started to turn ugly in this country from an already very bad situation for Somalis and blacks.” 

Part 2 will be published Saturday.  

*Abdulah’s name has been changed to protect his identity.

Pepper spay attack against gay-pride event in Oulu, Finland

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What kind of worlds live inside the heads of people who make political statements by attacking an event like North Pride, a sexual-diversity festival organized through Sunday in the northern Finnish city of Oulu?  

Writes YLE in English: “A discussion event in Oulu on the situation of gay asylum seekers was the target of a pepper spray attack that led one speaker to be hospitalized on Thursday evening.”

The hospitalized speaker was Left Alliance blogger and city councillor hopeful Dan Koviulaakso, who was rushed to hospital after an attacker pepper sprayed his face.

“It was no doubt a strategic attack against us as we oppose the persecution of gay, bi and transgender people. We’re against far-right extremists and racists,” said Left Alliance Oulu city councillor Juha Tapio,  adding that security would need to be stepped up in the coming days.

Apart from condemning such an attack, it is a sad example of how intolerance roams freely our streets and mocks at our civil liberties and democratic institutions. The consequences of the attack become more ominous if we consider that on Sunday it’ll be a year after Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway.

Two tragic deaths of Muslims took place in Oulu this year as well.

Far-right anti-immigration/anti-minority groups should know that intolerance has no master. Nobody can control it if you let it out of the cage. It can bite back hard as we saw happen in Norway on July 22.

Finnish MPs, Jani Toivola (Green Party) and Silvia Modig (Left Alliance), are the official patrons of the event.

 

What happens when you dilute a term like racism?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Ignorance is a crucial factor that still holds Finland back from tackling effectively a social ill like racism. If it’s not seen as an issue, very little will be done to challenge it. 

Add to the latter the fact that even some of our elected representatives in parliament don’t know the difference between racism and discrimination, and the issue becomes clear.

Reijo Tossavainan, a Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP, wrote the following comment on Pekka Siikala’s blog entry: “I don’t accept racism. Not even age racism (ikärasismia).”

The comment by Tossavainen not only offers us a glimpse of the elected official’s knowledge of racism, but how his ignorance plays down the problem.

Diluting a term like racism to mean something else is like using water in liquor bottles “so no one knows you drank some.” Soure: Allenate’s photostream.

It’s clear that a lot is lost when you water down a term like racism and redefine it as “age racism.” It’s like taking the term Holocaust and applying to something minor than the systematic murder of six million Jews in World War 2. Diluting the meaning of the term to mean something else is synonymous to denying or playing down what Nazi Germany did to the Jews.

The same applies to the term racism. If we use it differently, like in “age racism,” we deny the history and suffering of other ethnic groups like blacks in the U.S., Somalis and other minorities in Finland.

If an MP doesn’t get what racism is, how can you expect him to fight such a social ill?

Tossavainen is not alone in Finland. There are other politicians from other parties who believe that there is such a thing as “age racism.”

Sad but true.

Let’s play fill in the blanks with with far-right Finnish MP James Hirvisaari

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When reading the thoughts of far-right politicians like Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP James Hirvisaari, one of the most vocal white-Finnish-power advocates in this country, one should look for the visible or invisible but in his writing. Migrant Tales fished one today from Facebook.

The PS MP writes: ”Some ‘humanitarians’ are driven by naive utopian ideology: [they claim] ‘let’s do away with borders and mix national groups so we can end all wars…‘ [Here it is: But] I believe that a strong and healthy society can withstand weaknesses and diversity but let’s not make these two matters the norm. Fashionable liberalism can make art from shit in all areas of life.”

That’s not all. A person on the Facebook thread claims that “multiculturalism is a death knell  to all [white] Europeans” and “we are now at war.”

At war against whom? Against their stupidity or is it a desperate attempt to lure voters to a sinking political ship called the PS?

Finland will host municipal elections on October 28.

If you have problems grasping how far below the belt Hirvisaaari hits with his far-right thoughts, one way of understanding them is by removing key words from his writings such as “Muslim” or “Islam” and replacing them with “Finn” or “Christian.”

Here is a small example of how I’ve refilled the blanks in one of his recent blog entries:

Hirvisaari writes: When I criticize Islam, I criticize those who hate Jews, humiliate women in many ways…

Refilling the blanks: When I criticize Christians, I criticize those who hate Muslims, Finnish men who humiliate women by killing their wives and children before taking their own lives…

While Hirvisaari lacks the grey matter to be in the same ideological hate league as David Duke, his views on ethnicity are very similar to those of the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. The big difference between the two is geography: Duke lives in Louisiana and Hirvisaari is from Asikkala, Finland.

What does PS MP James Hirvisaari think about white power and the Ku Klux Klan?

Like Hirvisaari, Duke denies that he is a racist. Instead he likes to think of himself as a “racial realist.”

Contrarily, Hirvisaari sees himself as a ”white Finnish ethnic realist,” who is saving white Finns and Europeans from multiculturalism,  a political ideology or immigration policy according to him that permits too many blacks and Muslims to live in Europe.

A question begs an answer: Who are the Perussuomalaiset?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The million-dollar question after the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s historic election victory was what kind of party had entered the Finnish political stage. After over a year in parliament and numerous scandals that have rocked the PS, a question still begs an answer: Who are they?

If you seek an answer directly from the party, the response you’ll likely get is as convoluted as the PS itself. Great lengths will be taken to point out what they’re not.

This shouldn’t surprise us considering that the PS’ political fuel comes from near-constant whining and scapegoating.

The historic election success of the PS was by and large based on hit-and-run tactics like scapegoating and denial.

Irrespective of its hodgepodge nature, how is it possible for a far-right politician like PS MP Jussi Halla-aho and party chairman Timo Soini to sit at the same table? What unites both men ideologically?

Would it be fair to call the PS an opportunistic right-wing populist party with a heavy dash of far-right nationalism? Would the best description of the party be: anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-gay, and anti-minority rights?

If we look at close political relatives of the PS in the Nordic region, we’d find  the Islamophobic Danish People’s Party, Sweden Democrats, and Progress Party of Norway.

All of them are anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam.

The PS’ only MEP, Sampo Terho, is a member of the eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) parliamentary group.  The biggest number of EFD MEPs come from the UK Independence Party (10), which wants the UK to exit the EU, and the xenophobic Lega Nord (9), which considers southern Italy a part of North Africa.

Even if the PS wants to tone down its right-wing conservative radicalism because it doesn’t sit well with moderate Finnish voters, it’s fair to claim that they are an anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti gay, and anti-minority rights party.

  • The PS are an anti-EU party because 100% of PS MPs don’t want Finland to bailout any EU country. Some even believe that the Finland should exit the EU.
  • They are an anti-immigration party because 97% of the MPs don’t want anymore immigrants to move to Finland. If Finland must accept immigrants, they should be white Christians.
  • The PS is an anti-Islam party because MPs like Olli Immonen and James Hirvisaari, among others, believe that it’s only a matter of time when Europe will be taken over by Islam (Eurabia).
  • They are an anti-gay party because 82% are against same-sex marriages.

Conclusion: The PS are an anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-Islam, anti-gay and anti-minority rights party with ties to the far right.

 

Finnish men assault elderly Somali woman (Part 2)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Roble Bashir and Enrique Tessieri

Migrant Tales met on Thursday the elderly Somali woman who was assaulted in April by Finnish men at Helsinki’s Myllypuro metro station. This is part two of the interview with Abdulle Korad Musse, 63.

For the elderly Somali woman, who speaks to us with the help of an interpreter, racism is a terrible issue like the suffering that the long civil war has brought on her people and country.

The fact that most Somalis have endured and seen unimaginable suffering in their former home country as well as endured the dark side of racism in Finland, has made some of them exceptionally strong and resilient.

Abdulle Korad Musse admits that Finland isn’t a safe country for Somalis.

Apart from her son being attacked by Finns when she lived in Joensuu, her son was assaulted in Helsinki as well. She says that a complete stranger once kicked her in the shin when she was going up the escalator.

Musse admits that some Finns can be exceptionally mean. Once they tipped off the security guards that she was shoplifting at an Itäkeskus S-Market.

”I was stopped by security guards after I paid for my goods,” she says. ”The security guards took back the items to the cashier to see if they were stolen. They apologized after they found out that everything was in order.”

Musse says she felt so humiliated and angry that she threw all the goods in the plastic bags at the security guards.

”You can imagine what a scene I created: a Somali woman suspected of shoplifting in public,” she says. ”I have never stolen anything but I have seen Finns shoplifting. I still feel very bad about what happened to me.”

Musse says that Somalis in Finland don’t trust the police.

”I don’t think the police do their job well in this country,” she says. ”I know Somalis who have been physically attacked and the police has not resolved their cases even after five or six years.”

She claims that the police drag their feet when a Somali is a victim of a crime. Musse does not believe that anything will happen to those that attacked her in April.

”They simply don’t care,” she adds. ”They don’t care because you’re a Somali and because there are racist police in this country.”

Musse believes that since the authorities cannot directly kick the Somalis out of Finland, they use other methods to tell you that you’re not welcome. Everything you do takes a lot of time for a Somali in this country: finding work, getting citizenship, family reunification, and asylum, according to her.

The Somali woman applied in 2010 for a new flat from the city. She has to walk up three flights of stairs to get to her home. The doctor has told her that she should not walk up the stairs and carry heavy objects.

”Everything is far away from my flat,” she continues. ”I have to walk to the other side of the apartment complex to dry clothes. Walking to the bus stop takes fifteen minutes. I am afraid to walk through the forest alone to get to the bus stop.”

Musse says that she gets her strength from Allah.

”Only he knows where I will live and when I will die,” she concludes.

Finnish men assault elderly Somali woman (Part I)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Roble Bashir and Enrique Tessieri

Migrant Tales met on Thursday the elderly Somali woman who was attacked by a group of Finns in April at Helsinki’s Myllypuro metro station. The woman, Abdulle Korad Musse, 63, was taken to hospital by ambulance after she was physically assaulted.  

Musse, who speaks to us with the help of an interpreter, is originally from Mogadishu and has lived in Finland since 1999. She first lived in the eastern Finnish city of Joensuu until 2002, when she moved with her family to Helsinki. Musse is a mother of six.

Her face lights up with obvious sarcasm when asked which city, Joensuu or Helsinki, were better places to live.

“Joensuu was far worse,” she admits. “One of my sons was attacked by a group of Finns [in Joensuu] and hit so hard on the knee with a club that he had to be operated on in hospital.   Another time a motorbike went after my son and ran over him. He was only seven at the time.”

Abdulle Korad Musse claims that most Finns are racist. 

Musse claims that she expects something bad to happen every time she steps out of her Helsinki flat.

“I can either get harassed or laughed at,” she says. “I try to avoid trouble by walking on the other side of the street. Young people aren’t [usually] the problem. Older-aged Finns are.”

Musse claims that Finland isn’t a safe country to live for people like her. “They [some white Finns] see you as an insect and insects must be exterminated,” she says.

The Somali woman, who was physically attacked in Myllypuro with her thirty-four-year-old daughter in April, said that the whole incident started in the lift.

“Out of nowhere, the young Finnish couple in the lift started calling us names like dirty bastards and that we should go back to the country we came from,” she continues. ”When the lift door opened, the woman threw the bike at my daughter. That’s when the fight began.”

“My daughter got the Finnish woman on the floor and was on top of her,” she continues. “I tried to stop her but soon the man who was with her was joined by three men and four women. My daughter hit the woman but she was soon attacked.”

”That’s when I got hit,” she explains. “A tall man punched me in the head. I got dizzy and fell down. On the ground he started kicking me in the kidneys, hips and shoulders. I tried to cover my stomach because I was operated in hospital a month ago.”

Musse was taken to  hospital by ambulance. She says she’s become very ill after the incident and suffers from near-constant pains.

“I cannot hold anything [heavy] and its impossible to sleep on either side my shoulders,” she says. “If I sit for too long and stand up, my knees, shoulder and hips are in pain.”

Musse says that her daughter’s face and body were bruised and swollen “everywhere.”

”The Finns that attacked her yanked by force a silver ring from her finger,” Musse says. “All the goods that we had bought in the Itäkeskus Shopping Center were scattered all over the metro station floor.”

Part II will be published Saturday. 

 

Racist “coupons” found at the Leppävaara death trial

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By Migrant Tales

The trial of the death of Adisalam Mohamed Abdulahi, who was killed in February in  Leppävaara, began Thursday in Espoo. Migrant Tales has learned that in the afternoon, when the court adjourned for a short break, there were coupons scattered next to the courtroom with racist text.   

A coupon that was pictured at Abdisalam Mohamed Abdulahi’s trial. The “customer” is Tumma Mustamies (Dark Blackman) who lives on Apinalaaksokatu (Monkey Valley Street). We apologize for the poor quality of the picture. 

Taking into account the tragedy that Abdulah’s death has caused on both families, someone thought it was a good idea to spread racist insults on the victims by adding more pain to their wounds.

Reporting by Roble Bashir. 

Business Insider: Timo Soini’s “threat” to the world economy

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Not only must have Perussuomalaiset (PS) party chairman Timo Soini been swept off his feet with delight for being named by Business Insider  as the seventh-most dangerous person to the global economy, but Finland as well for such a dubious recognition. Who ever heard of Business Insider anyway?

For starters, somebody could inform the online publication that the official English name of the PS isn’t any longer the True Finns, but the Finns Party.

After weighing the old and new English-language official translations of the PS, Migrant Tales (MT) decided last year that we didn’t want any part of this populist nonsense and decided to call Soini’s party by its Finnish name, the Perussuomalaiset.

Timo Soini is a dangerous persons to the global economy, according to Business Insider. 

While we understand  at MT that the PS has been a blow to the credibility of Finland’s international image and to institutions like parliament, the political clout that Soini has hinges by and large on the lack of leadership of  Finland’s major parties, which rolled out the red carpet for him before last year’s election.

Soini’s anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam message appeals to a wide range of politicians in this country.

Why did Business Insider choose Soini as the seventh-most dangerous public figure to the global economy?

The online publication writes: “As the leader of the largest opposition party in Finland’s parliament and one of the biggest eurosceptics in Europe, Timo Soini is in a position of incredible importance with regard to continued euro bailouts.”

I doubt that the PS chairman is any longer in a position of “incredible importance” in Finland. The numerous scandals that have rocked the party and Soini’s disappointing showing in the presidential election have dimmed much of his shine.

Other influential personalities on the Business Insider are: German Chancellor Angela Merkel (1); French President Francois Hollande; German economist Hans-Werner Sinn; Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke; Nkolaus Blome, Bild newspaper deputy editor; and US President Barak Obama.