In short, you do not like the explanation. A few months ago, behind the closed doors of Alppikulma,[1] a wild and drunken Finnish man who had been bullying me for months and giving me ugly obscenities, punched me in the mouth. I was standing right under the camera. He first told me that a Moroccan prostitute ?Marokkolainen HUORA … blood flowed from my mouth and nose, I got out of there, my teeth got into the flesh of my lips, I wiped my mouth and nose, I called the police, then in the school toilet I washed my nose. the security guard said sorry I cannot help you; he was behind the desk…The police came, two policemen. He (one of them, longer and older) asked me? What do you do in Finland? When did you come to Finland? why? Do you have a husband why are you alone? where are you from? His questions made my blood boil, but his last question and my answer made him angry. I said I am Finnish. He repeated: Where are you from? Finland, I am a Finn! Where are you really from? I had to answer, my face hurt, I said Iran.
For some, Finland can be a very lonely place. Photo: Enrique Tessieri
He did not ask important questions but he asked questions that has nothing to do with matter! They took pictures of my lips and nose but did not say anything, NOTHING to the man who punched me and NOTHING to Alppikulma’s RACIST workers who did not open the door for me and did not help me…
They did not ask him (the suspect) a single question. They did not even want to meet him and who was in the building. They did not! Then they gave back my ID card and left. They said you should show the ID card, I said I know my ID number, they said we do not trust you, show the card! They also checked my Finnish passport…
No one knows the Finnish police like me. I also know their boss. Chief of the Finnish Police (Seppo Kolehminen). I spoke to him twice on the phone. He spoke violently to me, and the second time he said: “Wow, you are here, you do not understand, you are stupid, oh I cannot talk to you again voi ei…” and then he hung up. I got angry and called again. Since he knew my number and did not answer. I repeatedly emailed him and described the horrific cases of the police attack on me.
Do not trust him. His name is Kolehmainen
*Since we know Dana and since we have read many of her poems and stories, we publish this story even if we cannot verify its veracity. There are always two sides to a story. However, It would be a good idea to get in touch with the police and ask them if they investigating this case.
[1] Emergency accommodation for the homeless and crisis accommodation. Managed by the Helsinki Deaconess Institute.
Piia Kattelus-Kilpeläinen is the latest example of the bedfellows of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party. The councilperson from Seinäjoki, where she works as a police officer, offers an odd New Year’s greeting, all with a fascist Lapua Movement, Lapua like, (1928-1932) pullover, an ax, and a chain.
A publicity stunt of a media-hungry person craving for attention. Yes, true. Moreover, a person who would care less about the police’s image.
The PS has had several politicians who are from the police force. How could we forget Olli Sademies, convicted of ethnic agitation, Leena Meri, Tom Packalén, Mika Raatikainen, and others?
Former Helsinki substitute councilperson Sademies played dumb in court about his racist comments.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he was quoted as saying in 2017 by Demokraatti . “What is that ethnic group anyway that I have agitated? Charging me is absurd, and it’s a racist opinion.”
So what did Sademies actually say about Africans and Muslims?
Sademies’ post in May 2015 on Facebook suggested that since Africans threaten to destroy Finland’s social welfare system because they have so many babies. Therefore it “would require forced sterilization of African men [after three children], which would stop such a flood [of people coming to Finland] from obtaining a better living standard by shagging.”
Writes Kattelus-Kilpeläinen: “During the following year [2021], the Perussuomalaiset will become trendy and will be able to walk on Bulevardi street [in Helsinki] with a coffee with the colors of the Lapua Movement [a fascist group that was dissolved in 1932 after attempting a coup] [in Helsinki] without creating a commotion.”
All of the above-mentioned police officers who are PS politicians are known for their anti-Islam stances, which are so blatant at times that one wonders if it forms part of their police training.
Is there aconnection between what happened in July with Pekka Kataja and his attempted murder by the far right and the latest case involving at least one police officer and a group of far-right extremists to carry out a serious crime against the life or health of others?
Expo, the Swedish anti-racism NGO, states that such acts of violence may not be isolated events since raids against far-right groups were recently uncovered in Finland and Spain, and Austria.
A 2020 survey showed that 91% trusted the police, down from 95% in 2018, according to the Police University College. Other studies have pointed out that trust in the police is high, even among migrants.
Despite the high amount of trust, the police service has not been immune to scandals.
The latest one involved a senior police constable, who was sentenced by the district court of the Päijät-Häme region for aggravated assault and breach of duty, according to Yle News.
The fact that this case became public is a step in the right direction that should strengthen and not erode confidence in the police.
Even so, many matters do erode confidence. One of these is an alleged case of aggressive and dehumanizing treatment of a black father and his son by the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority (HSL) and the police, according to the Helsinki Times.
Even if the passengers did not have a valid ticket, one could ask if this is how such an incident ends: humiliation, security guards, and the police.
How many white Finns end up in this situation if they don’t have a valid AB-zone ticket, which costs 2.80 euros!
Let’s assume that there is no ethnic profiling involved and that white Finns receive the same treatment as a black person.
Even so, this type of news does more to destroy the credibility of the police and the HSL ticket inspectors than anything else.
Other big trust busters are ethnic profiling and institutional racism.
Migrant Tales insight: This story was written by a member of the Somali community and edited by Migrant Tales the following week after a young Somali Finn was knifed and killed at the Helsinki Kannelmäki train station. The letter will be published as charges against the suspect will be apparently made public by the police this week,
Many questions abound.One of the most important is if the tragic death of the young man was a hate crime and if not, why? What were the bias motivators? Was it witness perception? Intense violence? Difference between the victim and the perpetrators’ ethnic background? Or was there no other obvious motive, which is also a bias indicator. Some in the Somali community believe what happened was motivated by ethnic background. It is an important question that needs answering.
I first heard of what happened at home celebrating and breaking my fast on Sunday [April 26, 2020] night during the holy month of Ramadan. My mother knows the victim’s parents and they are devastated. Shortly before the death, the mother of the young man suffered another death when her child was born without life.
The death made me first angry, but then I told myself that this was going to happen since I live in such a racist country.
The roots of this tragedy go back to when the mayor of Helsinki [Jan Vapaavuori] labeled the Somalis [on April 14] as those spreading coronavirus. What he did was label us as part of the coronavirus problem of Finland. Anybody could see what was going to happen next. People get scared, and the racists get more aggressive and start targeting you.
Since I was a child, I have experienced racism in Finland. In the early 1990s, I was scorned at because of my skin color, but now it is also because I am a Muslim. It’s a double whammy.
Living in a racist society is scary and especially for our elders who may not speak Finnish well enough to understand or talk back to people who harass them in public.
What happened [in Kannelmäki] reinforced what many of us Somalis feel in Finland. What happened on Sunday could happen to us. And it has, before.
I don’t trust the police that they will bring justice to what happened.
Are the police going to sweep the issue of racism under the rug? Are they going to conclude that the suspects had mental issues? Were under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Are hardened criminals? Or grew up in broken homes?
Everyone should ask themselves why these two men were carrying knives.
When I go out, I have a goal: I go to work, go to the market, or some other place. What purpose did these men have by carrying knives?
For me the answer is simple. To hurt, or in this case, to kill a Somali.
There are pictures and names of the two suspects killed by knife stabbing an eighteen-year-old Somali on Sunday. The police are tightlipped and have not given any other information than “the investigation is ongoing.”
If, and there is a big if here, the identity of the suspects is correct and have Finnish last names, the police should mention and investigate if what happened was a hate crime.
I’d ask the police as well if the suspects belonged or hung around some white supremacist group.
It is not the first time that I have covered such a case. One of the great sources of the anxiety of the police is reprisals by members of the victim’s ethnic group.
This was the case during Black February when for over three weeks in 2012 we read about the death of three Muslims , a suicide and a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilman who offered a medal to a white Finn for killing one of these victims in an Oulu pizzeria in cold blood before shooting himself.
He said that apart from not expressing any empathy for the parents’ grief, it was difficult to get any information from the police about the crime.
It is a fact that the victim was an eighteen-year-old Somali Finnand no confirmation that his attackers had Finnish surnames and belonged to a white supremacist group.
“We were treated coldly and felt like we were the criminals,” he said. “The police appeared to be more concerned about keeping the case under wraps because they feared a revenge attack by Somalis.”
A more recent case involves Rashid H., a Pakistani migrant who was stabbed up to thirty times in February 2018. The wife said that after crime took place on Friday, a police officer called her and said that it wasn’t a hate crime.
I interviewed the investigating officer concerning Rasheed’s case who told me that he spoke to the three suspects and “concluded they weren’t racists.”
The police have asked the migrant community not to publish anything about the Kannelmäki case for fear of spreading false rumors.
If one remembers the Oulu sexual assault cases of minors in December 2018-April 2019, the Oulu police was especially active in putting out statements, labeling Muslims, and helping the media to uncover the nationality of the suspects.
The actions of the Oulu police, the media, politicians, the Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government and President Sauli Niinistö were well below par. If anything, it showed that these institutions are no friends of asylum seekers and Muslims.
And who could forget in August when the Islamophobic PS tried to exploit again for its political aims the case oftwo gunmen who shot two police officers in Porvoo? PS politicians were demanding the ethnic identity of the suspects because they believed they were Muslims and/or asylum seekers.
The PS ended up looking like a horse’s ass when it became clear that the two suspects were Finns who lived in Sweden.
The tragedy that took place in Kannelmäki has impacted especially hard the Somali community because they fear what happened to the Somali Finn could happen to them.
While I hope that the perpetrators will be brought to justice and pay for their crimes, the police has a good opportunity as well to raise its credibility in the eyes of the Somali and visible migrant community.
One member of that community asked if the police are going to sweep what happened under the rug by sanitizing the crime’s racism aspect? “Are they going to conclude that the suspects had mental issues, were under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” she said, “or that they grew up in broken homes?”
The following days will provide an answer to that very crucial question.
It is odd how little Yle takes the blame for being the facilitator of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment in regards to the sexual assault cases of Oulu. Migrant Tales documented 77 stories published between November 27 and February 13. On January 14, Yle published in one day 13 stories about the topic!
When compared with a similar sexual abuse case of minors involving white Finns, there was a different reaction. The story about the pedophile ring accused of sexually abusing 6-15-year-old boys lasted only a week in the news with 7 stories published by Yle.
Are attacks against Muslims more common today due to the hostile environment against migrants and minorities? As far as we know, the picture above is of a 10-year-old Muslim girl who was attacked by a classmate. It reads: “What do they teach [children] at Finnish homes? That Muslims are terrorists? The little girl [in the picture above] is spending a normal day at school when four boys [classmates] tried to rip off her hijab from her head and kicked her unconscious. We are not talking now about a migrant but about a victim. @iltalehti [tabloid] I want you to write out loud that racism must stop once for all, this girl is an angel!” Read the full story here.
Typically, the police are tightlipped about giving statements about sexual abuses against minors, but in the case involving people of migrant backgrounds, there is an exception.
Writes Yle: “Police have faced criticism for quickly publicizing the case and other similar ones in Oulu. Their response is that grooming on social media seemed to be a phenomenon at the time, and it was necessary to inform and warn the public. Authorities stress that online grooming cases have included both Finnish and foreign suspects.”
What do the attacks against Blue Reform Foreign Minister Timo Soini in Vantaa Sunday and today against Left Alliance MP candidate Suldaan Said Ahmed tell us about today’s Finland? For one, they tell us of a troubled country that has been asleep to the threat of far-right extremism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism.
While we should denounce formally all forms of violence, it is ironic that Soini, who gave xenophobic extremists a political platform, saw a member allegedly of the far-right vigilante gang, Soldiers of Odin, try to attack him.
It is pretty disheartening to see the monster that Soini help created trying to attack him after he had relinquished the PS’ leadership in June 2017 to his foe Jussi Halla-aho.
Ahmed states that the attack against him was by a man in the Itäkeskus metro station.
Ahmed tweets: “I was just attacked at the metro station and the aggressor scolded me for being, among other things, an infidel and pedophile. Don’t dream that you will go to parliament.”
Apart from the far-right violence that has a strong dose of Islamophobia, graffiti was painted on a mosque in Helsinki with the same words that the New Zealand killer wrote on his weapon that took 50 lives: “Remove kebab.”
The Imam of the Helsinki mosque or prayer room, Abbas Bahmanpour, said that it was the third time the building was recently attacked.
“These types of graffiti show sympathy for terrorists and far-right ideology,” he said.
In Oulu, where another mosque that has been vandalized nine times since September 2017, has now voluntary guards outside the premises after one of the suspects in the sexual assault cases of Oulu was convicted last week.
“Every Friday during prayer time we want to make sure that we are safe,” said Islamic Society of Northern Finland Iman Dr Abul Mannan. “We asked the police to patrol between noon and 1:30 pm when a lot of people at the mosque but they didn’t come. We then decided to take matters in our hands and use our people to guard the mosque.”
Migrant Tales published a story on Saturday about how Muslims in the northern city of Kemi are especially afraid to walk outdoors alone at night after the Oulu sexual assault cases became public in December.
A police offer who insulted and hit a woman in a taxi line in Turku was suspended for three months from work, according to tabloid Iltalehti. Considering the racist statements made by the police officer, who in his words was too drunk to remember what he said, why wasn’t he sacked?
National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen tweeted in February that racism has no place in the Finnish police service. He announced the following steps to tackle racism in the police service. These included a new equality and diversity plan approved in June 2017; an “ethical channel” where police can anonymously report racism; and mandatory social media training for the police to reinforce rules of good conduct, among other measures.
A survey published in 2016, showed that 25.1% of 2,489 policemen surveyed voted for the conservative National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) and 24.4% for the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party. Long Play, an investigative online website, revealed in June 2017, a secret Facebook group consisted of mostly police officers and which made racist statements about Muslims, minorities and migrants.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity never mind Muslims and other visible minorities. One is more open about it while the other says it in a different way.
A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
The Finnish police servicer held a seminar on Wednesday on migrant surveillance. NGOs like Stop Deportations and Refugees Welcome expressed outrage and published some PowerPoint slides shown at the seminar by the Helsinki Police department responsible for immigration matters.
Sanna Valtonen of the Refugees Welcome NGO expressed dismay with the material used by the police to depict migrants and asylum seekers.
“My first reaction was disbelief,” she said. “No NGO present at the seminar reacted to these slides except for us [Stop Deportations and Refugees Welcome].”
Ethnic profiling is illegal in Finland but the seminar shows that the police still don’t get it and persist in having antiquated and racist views of migrants and minorities.
Linda Hyökki wrote in a story published today in Migrant Tales: “Police inspector Heli Aaltonen showed a tasteless series of PowerPointe slides representing the ‘most common’ [ethnic traits of its] customers.”
Even if Aaltonen’s presentation aimed at being funny, it fell flat on its face because of the slides’ racist depiction of people of different backgrounds.
Aaltonen’s attitude shows a common problem when white people like her want to try out their sense of humor at the cost of migrants and ethnic minorities.
Go here to read some of the racist depictions of different migrant groups.
Hyökki writes about Aaltonen’s PowerPoint slide presentation: “The depictions were bluntly racist, enforcing stereotypes of immigrants from different backgrounds such as Russians/Estonians being alcoholics who live in illegal dorms and Africans being drug dealers. Moreover, they were also drawing from anti-Muslim discourses that have become – apparently widely accepted even within institutional contexts –hence offering the perfect proof for what we can call structural Islamophobia:
me in the mouth. I was standing right under the camera. He first told me that a Moroccan prostitute ?Marokkolainen HUORA … blood flowed from my mouth and nose, I got out of there, my teeth got into the flesh of my lips, I wiped my mouth and nose, I called the police, then in the school toilet I washed my nose. the security guard said sorry I cannot help you; he was behind the desk…The police came, two policemen. He (one of them, longer and older) asked me? What do you do in Finland? When did you come to Finland? why? Do you have a husband why are you alone? where are you from? His questions made my blood boil, but his last question and my answer made him angry. I said I am Finnish. He repeated: Where are you from? Finland, I am a Finn! Where are you really from? I had to answer, my face hurt, I said Iran.
Go