Tag: Finland

OAJ union: Teachers (and immigrants) should report hate speech and harassment cases to the police

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland’s Trade Union of Education (OAJ) recommends that teachers should file a complaint to the police if they are victims of  hate speech or harassment at school, reports Helsingin Sanomat, citing Finnish News Agency (STT). Should immigrants and visible minorities follow OAJ’s example if they are victims of racist harassment in public?

Migrant Tales reported last year on the case of an African student who was harassed and bullied in public in Jyväskylä. Uncertain if the incident should be reported  or not, the student got in touch with the police and Ombudsman for Minorities. The police said the student should not report the case but the Ombudsman for Minorities advised to the contrary.

The announcement by OAJ reveals concern about the growing number of hate speech and harassment cases reported by  teachers at school. The union recommends teachers to get in touch directly with the police if the perpetrator is 15 years old and with social welfare officials if younger.

Your safety is the most important matter you should keep in mind if somebody harasses you in public. Walk away from the situation but get a good description of the perpetrator so you can report the person to the police.

Kouvolan Sanomat of Finland asks four people if they’d work for a foreign company

Posted on by Migrant Tales

You’d think that most Finns know that their country is part of the globalized world…Well, almost everyone knows but there are just a few who haven’t figured it out. 

Kouvola Sanomat: Do you have anything against being hired by a foreign-owned company?

Ville-Matti Ahola: “At the moment I am employed, but if I needed a job I’d be happy to accept [working for a foreign company]. Jobs are so hard to find these days.”
Timo Pöljö: “Of course I’d accept. Now I have to drive long distances to work. If the workplace were in this town I could bike to work”.
Jenni Ylätalo: “Absolutely not. I moved to Kaipiainen because this is a small village and one does not see foreigners here. I’m patriotic and think Finland belongs to the Finns”.
Outi Vainonen: “Hard to say. I do not have a job at the moment and one needs a job. But it’s a difficult topic since one can’t tell what kind of people foreigners are”.

 Thank you Ossi Mäntylahti for the heads-up.

Finland’s mini Breivik: gunman kills two and wounds seven

Posted on by Migrant Tales

What motivates a young man to take the law in his own hands and kill indiscriminately defenseless people? While we still don’t know the motives behind the killings in Hyvinkää, the suspect’s “likes” on Facebook may offer us some clues. 

Writes YLE in English: ”Police in the town of Hyvinkää, some 50km north of Helsinki, say a young man dressed in military fatigues began shooting with a rifle from the roof of a building in the city centre at 1:53am Saturday…

An 18-year-old woman was killed. Another victim, a 19-year-old man, died later in a hospital. Seven other people have been hospitalised with gunshot wounds, including a 23-year-old woman police trainee, who has critical injuries.”

Human rights activist and writer, Jussi K. Niemelä, states that the suspect’s “likes” on Facebook suggest the usual far-right ideology. Some of the suspect’s “likes” include the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset party, Bundeswher, the German Defense Force, and Simo Häyhä, a Finnish sniper nicknamed “White Death” by the Red Army during the Winter War (1939-40).

Some have called the gunman Finland’s Anders Breivik, who killed 77 victims in Norway.

While we have to wait for the final report by the police to know the killer’s probable motives, one matter is certain: The attack was senseless and reveals the illness that has inflicted our society today.  It is the same ogre that we saw kill innocent victims in Jokela and Kauhajoki.

Migrant Tales offers its heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims.

Finland’s future recipe for success is based on social equality, mutual acceptance, respect and equal opportunities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Why would any political party seriously care about immigrants and their children if these newcomers form part of a fragmented group that has little political and economic power? Should they be concerned about high unemployment and ever-growing social inequality among such groups in Finland? 

Our success story as a society was never based on social inequality but on social equality, or tasa-arvo.  If you disagree, look at our violent history between 1918 and 1945. The crucial fuel that fed the wheels of internal and external strife back then was suspicion of other groups and nations.

Despite our rocky start as an independent nation, we have built today a model society that is the envy of other nations. Another welcome characteristic of our society is its strong sense of community and belonging. Not everyone, however, enjoys being part of such a great family. Some of these are  visible minorities like the Roma, Saami, non-white Finns, homosexuals and other groups.

As we race deeper into the depths of the new century, we need more than ever those tools that turned us into a successful nation and helped mend our differences as a society. We especially need values such as inclusion to rub off on those that form part of our ever-growing culturally diverse nation.

Are we putting Finland in harm’s way again by reviving those same class divisions, inequality and loathing that once impoverished us? Are those very values that fueled strife now entering our society through the back door as anti-immigrant sentiment and intolerance?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that humans are social animals and that our successful Nordic welfare society is based on social equality.  Social vices like greed, apathy and even racism therefore constitute today the greatest threat to our society.

Some politicians in Finland and Europe naively believe that they can revive these above-mentioned social ills and control them with a short leash. Nothing could be further from the truth. The mass killings in Norway that we witnessed last year are tragic proof of the contrary. What attacked Norway wasn’t a mass killer called Anders Breivik but his racist values and fear.

Political parties are playing with fire if they fuel class divisions and hatred of other groups like immigrants and visible minorities.

It is an encouraging sign, however, that more politicians, political parties and common Finns are finding the courage to openly question racism and all forms of discrimination.

A lot more work is still needed on this front. We should hear more than ever those values, together with new ones, that turned us into what we are today:  social equality for all based on mutual acceptance, respect and equal opportunities.

 

University of Helsinki seeks research participants who are of Finnish descent and migrated to Finland as adults

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Do you have Finnish roots and currently live in Finland, but were born and raised abroad? Participants are needed for a research study on people of Finnish descent who migrate to Finland in adulthood. In particular, those who have moved from Canada, the United States, Sweden and Russia are sought.

If this sounds like you, you are warmly invited to participate in this study by attending an interview, joining a group discussion and/or writing about your experiences. Please visit the study’s website (http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kjurva) for more information and to sign up. You can also contact the researcher, Katrina Jurva, directly for more details ([email protected]).

Recruitment for this study is ongoing so please feel free to share this information if you know someone else who may be interested!

 

Amnesty International Annual Report 2012 criticizes Finland for accelerated asylum procedures

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Amnesty International (AI) has criticized Finland in its Annual Report 2012 for accelerated asylum procedures, which include forced returns to Baghdad, according to YLE.  The report noted as well that Finland was unable to provide figures on how many irregular migrants and asylum-seekers it detained during the year.

AI reports: “However, there were concerns that many of those being detained were held in police detention facilities, contrary to international standards. In these cases, many were detained in mixed-sex facilities, together with individuals suspected of crime. Children seeking asylum, including unaccompanied children were also detained.”

The report said Finland provides inadequate protection for asylum-seekers and their right of appeal.

Migrant Tales understands that the Finnish authorities forcibly return asylum-seekers back to their original country if their request has been rejected 2-3 times.

“I know of some asylum-seekers who have been deported [from Finland] to Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Chechnya, Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Cameroon,” said a former asylum-seeker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “If the first country that took your fingerprints is Sweden, they can deport you to that country [as stipulated in the Dublin Agreement].”

The former asylum-seeker said that the Finnish police have three ways of deporting you.

“One is by letter informing you that they will pick you up at a certain day and time, the second is by surprise incarceration after being requested to appear at a police station,” he said. “The third is by detaining you at the refugee center without any warning.”

 

 

MTV3 poll shows support for PS to have plummeted to 5%

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If the municipal election of October were held today, only 5% would vote for the right-wing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, according to a poll published Wednesday by MTV3. The latest poll is further proof that support for the PS continues to plummet compared with the impressive gains it made in last year’s election.

In the April 2011 election, the PS won 19.1% (39 seats) of the vote compared with 4.05% (5 seats) in 2007.

The biggest winner in the MTV3 poll is the National Coalition Party (23%) followed by the Social Democrats (21%) and Center Party (20%), which has made an impressive comeback after its disastrous election result in 2011. The Greens and Left Alliance would get 9% apiece.

The MTV3 poll published today shows the National Coalition Party, Social Democrats and Center Party making the biggest gains if the October 28 municipal elections were held today.  

PS MP Olli Immonen plans to boycott YLE “for a short while”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Far-right anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP, Olli Immonen, said Monday he will boycott YLE “for a short while” since the state-owned radio and television company reports unfairly about the PS.  According to him, there is a systematic propaganda campaign against the PS by YLE

I doubt that many will lose sleep over Immonen’s decision, taking into account that his pet political topics include anti-Immigration, anti-Islam and an odd nostalgia for Finnish fascism of the 1930s.

Immonen has done the right thing, however. In English we say: “If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen.”

It is clear that the PS MP from Oulu cannot take the heat.

Why are so many PS party members so hypersensitive about the media? Is it an indication that the party has lost touch with Finland, never mind its convoluted political program?

Immonen is a sad example of the illness that has inflicted Finland these days. Mention the magic word “Muslim” to a person like him and he changes into a political Mr. Hyde.

Ulla Pyysalo is another sad example.  She is PS MP Juho Eerola’s aide, who got her fingers burned when her name appeared on a neo neo-Nazi membership list.

Pyysalo was recently active on Facebook:

Ulla Pyysalo: …it’s been known for some time that a Muslim man can beat his wife. Maybe they didn’t believe this before… Ulla Pyysalo: and force them to have sex, or rape…

Pyysalo, like Immonen and her boss Eerola, belong to the same far-right faction of the PS. Others that form part of this same group are PS MP Jussi Halla-aho and James Hirvisaari.