Tag: Islamophobia

Xenophobic and pro-Russia online publication MV-lehti founder Ilja Janitskin slapped with 22-month prison sentence

Posted on by Migrant Tales

THIS STORY WAS UPDATED

Migrant Tales applauds the sentencing by the Helsinki District Court on Thursday of Ilja Janitskin, the founder of the xenophobic website MV-lehti and Uber Uutiset, on 16 criminal charges. Janitski was handed a twenty-two-month prison sentence and with two others found guilty, was ordered to pay the biggest share of damages amounting to 136,000 euros. 

In another twist to the story, which YLE News does not report on, the BBC also describes Janitski’s publication as anti-immigration, Europsceptic, and pro-Russian.

Writes YLE News:  “Some 90 criminal complaints related to the site were filed in connection with the expansive case, including aggravated defamation and ethnic agitation.”

While some, like Professor Matti Tolvanen, see the sentence as a blow to the spread of hate speech in Finland, Migrant Tales is not as optimistic but considers it a right step in the right direction.

The far-right and Islamophobic voice in Finland has found a platform through publications like MV-lehti and the Perussuomalaiset party.*

Read the full story here.

The 16 crimes thatJanitskin was convicted of included: three counts of aggravated defamation; two counts of aggravated incitement against an ethnic group; three counts of copyright infringement; two counts of breach of confidentiality; two counts of illicit gambling charges; and four counts of illicit fundraising charges.

Continue reading “Xenophobic and pro-Russia online publication MV-lehti founder Ilja Janitskin slapped with 22-month prison sentence”

Laura Huhtasaari and Ville Tavio: How some sectors of the Finnish Lutheran Church promote racist discourse

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

William Blake (1757-1827)

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* vice-president and MP, Laura Huhtasaari, is keen on building her political career on Islamophobia and polarizing our country into two distinct camps: “us” and “them.” 

Apart from plagairizing 80% of her Master’s thesis, she copy-and-paste jobs of her Islamophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric from the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and US President Donald Trump.

On October 8, Huhtasaari and PS MP Ville Tavio took part in an open talk about asylum policy in Finland at St Michael’s Church (Mikaelinkirkko) of Turku.

I wrote a rebuttal last year to an anti-immigration column written by Tavio published in the Helsinki Times. He never bothered to reply. Like Huhtasaari, Tavio is an admirer of Marine Le Pen’s Islamophobic and openly hostile Front National.

What did the Lutheran Church wanted to gain by inviting two anti-immigration hardliners to debate asylum policy is a mystery to me.

Huhtasaari lets off her usual Islamophobic rants about Muslims at the event:

“I honestly hope that the church defends Christian values, Christians, Christian traditions, otherwise Muslims will wipe out [our Christian way of life].”

See the original Facebook posting here.

While it’s doubtful that two politicians like Huhtasaari and Tavio will help create a better society based on mutual respect and understanding, the real worrisome matter is the reaction of other politicians and society in general.

Mostly silence and turning a blind eye.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.

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.

How the Finnish police fuel mistrust and erode credibility with migrants and ethnic minorities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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:

Continue reading “How the Finnish police fuel mistrust and erode credibility with migrants and ethnic minorities”

Far-right politician Huhtasaari and the PS pull one of the oldest tricks on the media

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* vice president, Laura Huhtasaari, hit the jackpot when she attacked a Finnish school project in Tampere for “encouraging hatred.” The poster made by teenage students pitted herself and the PS’ chairperson, Jussi Halla-aho, against President Sauli Niinistö and Green Alliance MP Pekka Haavisto with the following question: towards Finland, or towards death?   

She claims without offering proof in a tweet below that “a number of students” of the school have contacted her and told her how teachers there spread hate speech and encourage hatred of politicians who were elected democratically. She continues: “This happens at an elementary and high school. The picture [below] is from a [name of school omitted] in #Tampere.”

As a result of Huhtasaari’s tweet, the school has received hate mail and even had to hire security guards to guarantee the students’ safety.

Johanna Loukaskorpi, the mayor of Tampere, said that politicians should not interfere with what is taught at school based on a curriculum.

”I think it’s most unfortunate that an MP would highlight an individual school and students in a tweet to promote her political ideology,” she was quoted as saying in the Independent. “I personally think that the poster was quite effective in that it made an impact and is thought-provoking. The school can now discuss how much of an impact a single poster can have or how an image can spread through social media to an incredible extent.”

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

Continue reading “Far-right politician Huhtasaari and the PS pull one of the oldest tricks on the media”

Blue Reform’s Sampo Terho of Finland and his politically ambidextrous misbeliefs

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Blue Reform* minister for European affairs, culture and sports, Sampo Terho is politically ambidextrous: He can say one thing and state a totally different thing. It is like coming out of the closet and going back in. The opportunism in such ambidextrous behavior is believing that others don’t notice. And we do.  

In the statement below, Terho gets tough on Muslims but takes a more benign view of Foreign Minister Timo Soini’s right to attend anti-abortion gatherings abroad as a member of the government.

In the first quote below on the left, he states the following about Muslims: “A country that accepts refugees and immigrants cannot tolerate that its culture would die. Those who move here must inevitably change and adapt to our basic values.”

But then he makes an about-turn on the foreign minister’s case, who is also a member of the same party: “Soini has personal beliefs, an opinion he has a right to have. Personal opinion and freedom of religion are Western values based on human rights.”

What hypocrisy!

Thank you, Rasismivapaa Suomi, for the heads-up.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.

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.

 

How would we classify Finland’s immigration and asylum policy? Thumbs up, or down?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Just like President Donald Trump has destroyed the US’ standing in the world, what wreckage has Finland’s immigration and asylum policy brought on our society and our country’s name? 

Thanks to years of anti-immigration rhetoric and hardline policies by the former and present government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, Finland has sunk into a dark hole where values like human rights and social equality are forfeited for cheap nationalism and by fortifying structural racism.

Finland’s immigration and asylum policy has a clear message to Muslims and non-EU citizens: Stay out!

Maria Lohela, former speaker of parliament and PS MP, is a good example of how racism has become a part of our institutions. She got elected with her Islamophobic rhetoric. She is today part of the Blue Reform block. Source: YLE.

Just like the media in the United States is fighting tooth and nail to expose the corruption, racism and kakistocracy of Trump’s administration, the media in Finland has an important job as well to make sure that parties like the Perussuomalaiaset* and their allies in parliament and elsewhere, don’t take Finland for a ride as happened before the 2011 parliamentary elections.

Continue reading “How would we classify Finland’s immigration and asylum policy? Thumbs up, or down?”

The bad and good news after Sweden’s 2018 parliamentary elections

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There is good and bad news after Sunday’s parliamentary elections. The bad news is that the far-right Sweden Democrat saw its support rise by 4.7 percentage points to 17.6% compared with the elections in 2014, according to Svenska Dagbladet. The good news – if it can be considered as such – is that the result was well below expectations. 

Writes The Local: “But the pre-election polls had clearly got into their [Sweden Democrats] heads: YouGov had them polling at 25 percent and becoming Sweden’s biggest party – the same YouGov that got the party right last time. Other pollsters said they’d adapted their methods and were better equipped this time to gauge the SD vote, with Ipsos and Demoskop for example putting them around the 18-19 percent mark. But who could really tell?”

Read the full story (in Swedish) here.

Certainly, Sunday’s election result will make Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s job difficult in forming a new government. The present situation may mean the Social Democrats forming a government with a right-wing party that would exclude the Sweden Democrats.

The fact that the Sweden Democrats became the country’s third-largest party – not second-largest, according to some polls – and that migration and crime took the front seat of the political debate, reveals something disturbing about the Nordic countries. Norway, Finland, and Denmark, whose far-right Danish People’s Party does not form government but supports it, all have seen the rise of the populist anti-immigration parties.

How is it possible that Nordic countries, which profess being the most liberal and which base their social policy on equality could be so xenophobic and Islamophobic?

Continue reading “The bad and good news after Sweden’s 2018 parliamentary elections”

Finland’s ministry of the interior will (alas) launch an independent inquiry of Migri

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Conservative National Coalition Party Minister of the Interior Kai Mykkänen announced Friday that an independent inquiry of the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) will be launched, according to YLE. The minister said, however, that the independent inquiry should not be seen as a lack of trust in Migri’s work, which has had to process some 45,000 residence permit applications. 

Calls for an independent inquiry of Migri, which could be carried out by UNHCR, has the support of opposition parties like the Social Democrats, the Greens, and Swedish People’s Party as well as of NGOs like Amnesty International, Finnish Refugee Council, and the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman. 

Frank Johnson, the director of Finland’s Amnesty International chapter, welcomed the announcement by Mykkänen. He said that the independent inquiry, called for by Amnesty International, Finnish Refugee Council, and the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman, was “a good decision.”

Read the original tweet here.

Even if Migri has processed 45,000 residence permits since 2015, when a record 32,477 asylum seekers mostly from Iraq, it does not let them off the hook and permit civil servants to make faulty decisions that impact people’s lives or their deaths in some cases.

Mykkäen said that “there is no evidence that suggests that Migri rejects asylum applications systematically.

Part of the of criticism of Migri is due to their interpretation that countries like Afghanistan, where the security situation has deteriorated, and Iraq are “safe” to deport asylum seekers. 

Some believe that the large amount of rejections of asylum applications by Migri is politically influenced. Since 2015, the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, which split into two factions in June 2017, was invited to form part of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government. This has fuelled a hostile environment for migrants in Finland. 

Prime Minister Sipilä’s government has tightened immigration laws like family reunification as well as other services  entitled previously to asylum seekers. 

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.

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 Trumpization of Finnish politics

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* vice president Laura Huhtasaari, a vocal Islamophobic anti-immigration politician, has been since January under scrutiny due to the plagiarism found in her Master’s thesis. 

If you read the reaction of the Finnish media about the latest ruling by the University of Jyväskylä, one common theme is that the plagiarism scandal will not affect Huhtasaari never mind the PS.

The whole affair is a bit like Donald Trump, who hops from one scandal to the next. Scandals don’t appear to hurt the US president but strengthen his support base.

Is the Huhtasaari plagiarism scandal one good sign of the Trumpization of Finnish politics and how the anti-immigration party has poisoned politics in Finland since its historic election victory of 2011?

Laura Huhtasaari has made a name for herself with her Islamophobic statements and her support for US President Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. She has been called a number of things like the Islamophobe with the kindergarten teacher smile. 

Huhtasaari, who is a teacher, got a damning report from the University of Jyväskylä this week concerning her master’s thesis. According to a statement by the University of Jyväskylä, Huhtasaari’s thesis “had a disregard for good scientific practice and dishonesty in the form of plagiarism, according to Helsinki Times.

The statement states the following about Huhtasaari’s thesis, which was approved in 2003: “For their part, the procedures have misled the scientific community of researchers and the authors of future theses. plagiarism nature and scope, the violations of good scientific practice are serious,” reads a press release from the University of Jyväskylä.

Huhtasaari’s thesis cannot be revoked by the university since there is a five-year statute of limitations. 

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.

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.

Blue Reform MP Simon Elo: Let’s make discrimination official in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Even if the Blue Reform*, which is an offshoot of the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS), wants to change the constitution so that non-Finnish citizens would get paid less social welfare than Finnish citizens, the suggestion by MP Simon Elo exposes to the tee the racism of his party and hatred of migrants. 

Blue Reform, like the PS, are not only a danger to our Nordic welfare state and democracy, but a threat to migrants and minorities living in Finland. 

Why? Because both parties are racist. 

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

The fact that a party in government wants to officialize discrimination reveals the extent of racism in the government and why this social ill has worsened under Prime Minister Juha Sipilä.

Such discrimination that Elo proposes isn’t possible because it is unconstitutional. Section 6 of the Finnish constitution expressly states: 

“Everyone is equal before the law. No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age,
origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.”

Finland will hold parliamentary election in April 2019, which explains why Blue Reform is so eager to take out its racism card in order to attract similar-minded voters.

Blue Reform’s support, according to various polls, is dismal, or under 1%.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 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. One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic.

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.