Tag: Finnish Immigration Service

The Finnish police tells three Afghan asylum seekers “we’ll deport you anyway!”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Three Afghan asylum seekers had an appointment with the police who detain them. Two of them got the second negative decision earlier.

At the police station, a police official told them that they were detaining them because they were going to flee the country. Before locking them up, the police asked them to sign their deportation agreement. They refused.

”We will not sign it,” said one of the Afghan asylum seekers.

”We will deport you anyway [even if you sign it or not],” the police officer said.

Not all Finnish police treat Afghan asylum seekers in this way. Some treat them with respect and fairly.

Deporting people back to Afghanistan, and despite the Finnish Immigration Service’s (Migri) assurances, the country hasn’t been safe for over thirty years.

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Welcome back to “safe” Iraq, let me slash you with a knife

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) continues to insist that countries like Iraq, where Finnish nationals are discouraged from visiting, is a safe country to deport people. Migri deports everyone they don’t give residence permits. You leave either “voluntarily” or by “force.”  

Iraq isn’t a safe country, and sensible people understand that Migri’s tough asylum policy hinges on the Blue Reform, formerly the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*.

Even if the PS split into two parties, both loathe asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Migrant Tales documented two cases last year of two Iraqi asylum seekers who faced violent deaths upon returning from Finland.

The latest story to reach us is of an Iraqi who was “deported voluntarily” to his home country two months ago and attacked by militias on Saturday.

The history of the Iraqi victim is very similar to the many thousands that fled to Finland in 2015.

A fellow asylum seeker from Iraq writes:

The asylum seeker, who alerted us, said that a car had followed him near his home with three people. They cut him with a knife and spared his life. “The next time we see you, we will kill you!” they warned.

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The Finnish police’s lame excuse for disbanding the #RightToLive demonstration in Helsinki

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Let’s go back a day and recall one of the most incredible excuses to shut down the #RighToLive demonstration in downtown Helsinki. Deputy police chief Heikki Kopperaoinen told YLE News Friday that the demonstration could no longer be held in the Helsinki Railway Square after 140 days because of security issues. 

UPDATED at 10:08 pm:

In plain English, “security issues” mean provocations and threats by far-right groups like Finland First.

Instead of giving space to far right groups, racism, and bigotry, we should stand up to such social ills.

Racism, like any other type of violence, must be challenged. Caving into its provocations and violence is not the way fight it. We must send a clear message that we won’t be provoked by such hostility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHV9Wlt2QFE&feature=youtu.be

Thank you Zimema Mhone of Touch Engage Media for sending this video. Demonstrators marched Friday to the offices of the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) on Friday.

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Nour Jamal’s art exhibition at the Asbestos Art Space: A journey to a safer life?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Nour Jamal is one of the thousands of Iraqi asylum seekers who came to Finland in 2015. He came to Finland with his parents and sister in the hope of finding a better life free from war and where human rights are respected.

Jamal is holding an art exhibition from June 8-11 at the Asbestos Art Space located on Mäkelänkatu 45, 00550 Helsinki. 

Even if his parents were granted asylum, his sister’s and his application for asylum were rejected. They are appealing the decision by the Finnish Immigration Service.

“This art exhibition is all about struggle,” he said. “And about the uncertainty we face [as asylum seekers in Finland] because we still don’t know what is going to happen to us tomorrow.”

Jamal, who uses acrylic and ink in his paintings, said that he did these works of art “in less than a month.”

“It was really fast,” he said. “I painted in Iraq as well but I lacked the time and motivation.”

Jamal said that the painting above, “Faceless people,” is about asylum seekers crossing from Turkey to Greece. “They are faceless people because they can drown and nobody cares or wants to know who they are,” he said. On the upper left corner is Alayn Al-Kurdi, the three-year-old boy that became one of the most famous faceless people when his corpse was found washed ashore.

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Finland’s immigration policy is inhumane, ineffective, it shows our hostility towards asylum seekers from countries like Iraq

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It will soon be two years when large numbers of asylum seekers mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Finland in hopes of moving to a country that would not only give them security but one that respects human rights and social equality. What they found, however, was totally different. 

Migrant Tales as well as others have written about the spiritual squalor of the asylum reception centers that aim to humiliate and destroy asylum seeker.

Disagree? How is it possible that an asylum seeker that faced peril on his or her journey to Finland ended up in an asylum reception center for a period that feels daily as indefinitely? On top of this insult to the asylum seekers’ integrity and a total slap in the face of our laws and values, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) and Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government wash their hands of the problem.

One asylum seeker explained his ordeal in Finland as an eternal nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.

Another one described his stay at the asylum reception center in the following words:

“Being at the asylum reception center has turned into a game of Russian roulette. You pull the trigger expecting the bullet to fire. But after a while, you notice that you’ve been fooled. There are no bullets in the revolver to put an end to [y]our suffering…”

One question that Migrant Tales’ Supermen, an investigative team, have been asking is if the long waiting periods for asylum seekers is part of a plan by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) and Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government to make life as miserable as possible for them. Are these people a part of Migri campaign to warn others not to come to Finland because “you’ll face hell.”

Although we still don’t know the answer, there is one matter that is certain: When a country like Finland treats asylum seekers in the way it does it reveals something very worrying about ourselves – outright hostility with a clear plan to kick as many as possible out from here.

The present government policy towards asylum seekers, which is seen in the tightening of immigration laws like family reunification, show that Migri and the government have lost touch with common decency and respect for asylum seekers. Allowing our hostility for asylum seekers to roam freely has made us much poorer as a society. 

In 2015, thousands of asylum seekers started to come to Finland. Source: The Finnish Immigration Service.

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“Tolkun ihminen” and Finland’s version of the Okie from Muskogee

Posted on by Migrant Tales

President Sauli Niinistö, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and the deputy head of the Finnish Immigration Service, Raimo Pyysalo, have one thing in common: They believe that the ongoing debate about asylum seekers, immigration and our ever-growing culturally diverse society is dominated by two extremes. 

Moreover, they don’t directly condemn the extremes and rarely, if ever, name which groups form part of those fringe groups.

In the 1970s, when US President Richard Nixon was facing opposition from those who opposed the Vietnam War and civil disobedience, he tried to show that those that were against him were a minority and that the silent majority was behind him.

In the same way, the whole tolkun ihminen debate is pretty much the same thing but in a Finnish context. A minority are apparently debating heatedly while the Finnish silent majority remains passive.

Below is a song about Nixon’s vision of the USAmerican silent majority that supposedly lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

We never knew if that small town in Oklahoma represented the voice of the silent majority since the whole matter was more wishful thinking than anything else by then President Nixon.

Pyysalo writes in the Sleep Easy website about how the ongoing debate about immigration and asylum policy needs more voices from the “silent majority,” or sensible Finns who do not belong at the extreme points of the debate.

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Iraqi asylum seeker: A near-deportation ordeal with the Finnish police

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A twenty-two-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who was detained illegally by the police three days before he had to vacate the asylum reception center in Pori is now a free man again. Thanks to the efforts of the Lex Gaudius law firm, the district court overruled the detention of the asylum seeker at the Metsälä immigrant removal center in Helsinki, where he was held from April 27 to May 9.

“[After this ordeal] I still find it hard to believe that I’m free,” he told Migrant Tales by phone.

The asylum seeker’s detention began at the school in Pori where he was studying Finnish. The police visited the school to detain him but he went and hid from them. On returning, apparently the principal, called the police and the young man was detained.

 

Proof that the asylum seeker was illegally detained by the police three days before he was supposed to vacate the asylum reception center in Pori.

“I was taken by the police to Rauma and then to Turku, where I was locked up for two nights and three days before a judge decided that I could be deported [to Iraq] and send me either to Joutseno or Metsälä [immigration removal center],” he added.

The asylum seeker said that his first impression of Metsälä was “shocking” because there “are criminals and crazy people.”

“It’s the same place [Metsälä] where an Iraqi tried to hang himself when I was there,” he continued. “At Metsälä you cannot go outside and it’s like a prison. I shared a room with another Iraqi who was deported from Denmark back to Finland.”

An Iraqi asylum seeker at the Metsälä immigration removal center being taken away on a stretcher after attempting to take his life. Source: Facebook.

The Iraqi asylum seeker, who has now submitted a new application for asylum to the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), said that he went back to school to learn Finnish upon returning to Pori. “All of my classmates where happy to see me,” he said.

He said that he came to Finland in search of a better life and to escape war.

“I will be killed if I return to Iraq,” he concluded. “I hope people in this country can feel in their heart our suffering and reread their history, when hundreds of thousands of refugees came to Finland [after World War 2].”

 

 

Deportation of Iraqi family of nine from Finland: Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s asylum policy is a shame to all of us

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As the Finnish government spends the Easter holidays in the comfort of their homes and family company, an Iraqi family of nine is awaiting deportation from Finland. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to put oneself in their shoes and wonder what is going through their heads at this moment at the Joutseno immigration removal center. 

The Finnish government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, which shares power with the National Coalition Party and anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, is firmly behind these deportations which will start to pick up this year.

“Now is the season for deportations,” said a person who spoke on condition of anonymity and who works with asylum seekers. “It’s going to be a messy job [as the deportation of the Iraqi family shows].”

Deportations don’t work and they are an ineffective way of solving a problem. If being deported can be traumatic process for an adult, it must be even worse for children.

What is the most outrageous matter about the deportation of the Iraqi family and Finland’s asylum policy is that it is political. The PS, which saw their support plummet to the one-digit political league in the municipal elections, are desperately ratcheting up their anti-immigration and deport-them-all all rhetoric to attract voters.

Just like the PS, the NCP and Center Party aren’t any better but accomplices in the deportations.

One of the children of the family of nine looks outside her barred and barb-wired window. Source: Iltalehti.

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Does Finland’s Migri asylum policy hinge on the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset party?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

This warning posted on Tiia Nohynek’s Facebook wall today is the best example yet of how the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party has influenced immigration policy in Finland. The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) warns asylum seekers not to believe rumors and that nobody gets asylum for economic reasons. 

For those who know why asylum seekers come to Europe will appreciate that most of them come here because of what they have heard our politicians say publicly: human rights, peace and be treated with dignity.

The problem is that when they came to a country like Finland, they didn’t find such ideals, like human rights and being treated with dignity, didn’t apply to them.

Don’t believe rumours: YOU CANNOT GET ASYLUM in Finland on economic grounds. After receiving a negative asylum decision you must return home. If you try to abuse the system, financial assistance is not given. You may also be prohibited from entering the entire Schengen area for two years.

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