Tag: Multiculturalism

How can we challenge racism if it isn’t a problem?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As long as we don’t see racism as a big enough problem in our society, our response to it will be inefficient. Just like any illness, we must first diagnose it and then prescribe a cure.  

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It’s disappointing to read how some people can insult others in a racist manner.

Yesterday’s news story published on Migrant Tales about a single mother and her son, who moved to Helsinki from Mikkeli because they were harassed in a racist manner, sheds light on a social illness inflicting our society today and which we must challenge.

The comments to the story on Iltalehti and Hommaforum could reveal the extent of the problem in Finland.

The Migrant Tales blog entry was mentioned on Länsi-Savo, Itä-Savo and Perusopetus.fi.

How can immigrants and visible minorities clear the minefields of misinformation?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There is an interesting news story on today’s YLE that raises a timely question: Not why there is so much misinformation spead about immigrants, but what does this reveal about us as a society?

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Does it bring to light ignorance or a subtle conspiracy that permits us to have and eat our racist cake simultaneously?

While it is a welcome matter that Finnish officials speak out against prejudice and racism in our society, why has so little been done on this front in the past, especially by those who claim to be anti-racist and work to better the lives of immigrants?

You’ll probably find the answer to that question in the eerie silence and tacit approval of that misinformation being spread against immigrants. It is telling you as well that we must raise our voices and lead ourselves if anything is to change.

What kind of wise tales are being spread in public about immigrants?

According to what Pirjo Puolakka of the city of Kotka’s immigration office, they are the following:

  • Immigrants and refugees are the same thing;
  • Immigrants get more social welfare than Finns.

Another topic that could be added to this  list are rape and crime statistics.

Misinformation could be pictured in the following manner. It could be seen as the deadly mines up ahead of our path towards greater social equality and acceptance. Since clearing that minefield would be suicidal, it’s clear that few white Finns will do the job. This only leaves us.

But beyond those killing fields we’ll eventually confront the greatest foe of all: ourselves.

It’s the cultural diversity, stupid!

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Would it be fair to say that the biggest challenge facing Finland during this century is accepting its cultural diversity and deconstructing our white national identity in order to make our society more inclusive? Will this happen easily? 

The central issue being debated in Finland today about immigrants boils down to one question: How much cultural diversity are we willing to accept?

There aren’t any political parties in this country, except for the Perussuomalaiset (PS) and its extremist Suomen Sisu faction, which are openly against white  Finns marrying people of different ethnicities.  Even so, it’s clear that this attitude is quite widespread in our society.

If we’d like to see an even bigger picture of how this works in practice, we could take Cuba’s Fidel Castro example of how he got rid of  his political dissidents by allowing them to flee en masse to neighboring Miami.

Less dissidents, more perceived unity.

Finland has seen over 1.2 million emigrants move mainly to the Americas and Sweden between 1860 and 1999.  Just like Castro, Finland benefited in the same way. Apart from the socialists and communists that fled Finland after the Civil War of 1918, Finland was able to forge unchallenged a social construct like the “noble” white Finn.

It didn’t matter that hundreds of thousands of Finns had moved to other parts of the world and intermarried with other ethnicities. The way Finnish language evolved in Finnish immigrant communities, and how our view of our changing identity changed as a result, interested only a few.

Paradoxically, we wanted our Finnish expats to retain their Finnish culture and identity at all costs. Today, however, we want our immigrants and newcomers to do totally the opposite: Be like us (white Finnish) we tell them. Learn our culture, speak our language adopt our way of life.

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The Finnish Lutheran Church has started to take a strong stand against racism like this story about multicultural families reveals about the discrimination their children face in our society. If there are people who are on the frontline of our ever-growing cultural diversity, they are these exemplary mothers.

Any person who thinks that immigrants don’t want to adapt and succeed in their new homeland know very little about immigration. An unsettling question arises: How can you integrate into a society that doesn’t accept you?

It’s clear that white Finland will not cede much of the high ground to cultural diversity. Expect then the following: lip service about two-way integration but what is really happening is one-way integration (assimilation) in most cases. Wherever two-way integration occurs, it usually happens on a short leash.

A good example of the latter is the following statement I heard from a politician in private. “There is room for immigrants in this country” but “building mosques is out of the question.”

Since it was easy to assimilate “foreigners” in the last century into Finns, it’s a bit more complicated in this century. It was easier in the previous century. All you needed was language, be white, adopt a Finnish surname and substitute your “foreign” background for ardent nationalism.

You’ll need much more than a surname change and a few nationalistic sound bites to be accepted as a Finn with equal rights in this century.

 

 

Racism Review: Mixed Race, Pretty Face

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It was once thought multiracial children were destined to be confused, inwardly conflicted and maladjusted. “Think of the children”, used to be the warning used to discourage interracial couples from marrying. Mixed-race children often faced discrimination and prejudice. Experts worried that these children would suffer from poor self-esteem and lack of identity (Fields, Julianna. Multiracial Families: The Changing Face of Modern Families. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest, 2010.)

The “tragic mulatto” archetype was featured prominently in American culture (Show Boat, 1951).

Usually female, she embodied dislocation, incompatibility and confusion. Similarly we often saw the heartrending, Native American/White “half-blood” (Dances With Wolves, 1990) and in Yellow Peril fiction, the interracial love affair that ends tragically (Sayonara, 1951). (Nakashima, Cynthia L. “Servants of Culture: The Symbolic Role of Mixed-Race Asians in American Discourse,” Pp.35-57 in The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed Heritage Asian Americans.  Ed. Teresa Williams-León and Cynthia L. Nakashima. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. ).

Things have certainly changed.

In 1993, TIME Magazine published a special issue on multiculturalism in America. The now well-known cover featured an ethnically ambiguous woman over the caption “The New Face of America: How Immigrants Are Shaping the World’s First Multicultural Society”. Their model however was not a real person. Her image was computer generated by merging men and women from various racial and ethnic backgrounds. The editors felt she was a preview of what was likely to emerge in tomorrow’s America (). She was bold, beautiful, and significant enough to capture a prominent magazine cover. I remember being a young multiracial woman in Los Angeles when this issue was released (at a time when there weren’t near as many multiracial people). I was mesmerized. Perhaps I swelled with some pride and dignity knowing I was a part of the “future”.

Well that future seems to have arrived. According to the 2010 Census, those identifying with multiple races grew by 32% over the decade, for a total of 9 million while single-race identifiers grew by just 9.2%. A February 2012 Pew Research report showed the number of intermarriages has more than doubled since 1980. It credited growing public acceptance of mixed-race relationships as one reason for the rise.

Nowadays it’s all about “Multiracial Chic”. Being mixed is the coolest thing you can be. Take for example the 2006 Psychology Today article “Mixed Race, Pretty Face?” detailing a study which suggested part Asians are considered more beautiful than their monoracial counterparts.  Such pieces lauding the beauty of mixed race peoples abound. And this wide admiration is clearly visible in pop culture. Multiracial models are taking over advertising, plastered across billboards and magazines. Mixed race actors and pop stars are on the rise.

 

So what does this racial shift mean for our “global” future? Interestingly, the bodies of multiracial peoples (rather than their experiences) are now often being cited as proof that we have become a “postracial” society where racism is frowned upon and ethnic diversity is celebrated. Multiracial people supposedly breakdown racial boundaries just by their mere existence. Their ambiguous appearance alone is enough to destabilize and ultimately eradicate white privilege and the racial hierarchy. Others are beginning to contest this claim. Some predict that growing numbers of mixed race Americans will lead to a new racial hierarchy based on pigment, like those characterizing most Latin American countries. What may look like the “end of race” as more people of color gain political, social, and cultural visibility actually veils a redistribution of power. And multiracial people themselves are perhaps getting caught in the crosshairs, blurring the boundaries between whiteness and nonwhiteness even as they receive certain privileges that historically have been conferred upon those with white bodies (Park, Jane. “Virtual Race: The Racially Ambiguous ActionHero in The Matrix and Pitch Black”. Mixed Race Hollywood.  Ed. Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas. New York and London: New York University Press, 2008. 182-202. Print.).

It begs the question. How will the children of today feel about their multiraciality as they come of age in this new America? Will they be the enlightened world leaders of a model “postracial” society? Or will they find themselves entrenched in a new, confusing racial hierarchy with redefined standards. One in which some of them are privileged and others are not?

~ Sharon Chang’s blog is MultiAsian Families

Read original blog entry here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

Journalists should question instead of spread racism and prejudice

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Journalists are one group that have helped to spread and reinforce our prejudices and racism of other groups. There’s nothing surprising about this considering that journalists, like the media that employs them, mirror in part what the public feels. 

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Ilta-Sanomat is one tabloid resonsible for spreading racism in Finland during the 1990s. This billboard tells us that Somali refugees will stay put in Finland.

Even if this may be the case, the difference between a sharp and mediocre journalist is how well he or she can question and expose abuses in our society. The job of the media is to be a watchdog and ensure that our system of checks and balances functions properly.

Too many journalists and the media, however,  forget what their primary role is. Instead of questioning social ills, they have helped to spread prejudice, racism and xenophobia in our society.

Closing one’s eyes to racism or going after such a social ill without teeth is unfortunate because we all lose. The spirit of our laws, like our Constitution, should be our moral shield and benchmark.

Check out section seven of Finland’s  Constitution:

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.

Even if the highest law of the land tells us convincingly that discrimination is wrong, why do some journalists and the media have a difficult time figuring out what is intolerance and what should our response to such a social ill be?

One of the most racist papers in Finland is tabloids like Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat, which markets news like a used car salesman, who would even sell his or her mother if the price were right. Another publication is Uusi Suomi, which helped Perussuomalaiset (PS) politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and a long list of others to become household names.

Online publications like Uusi Suomi and tabloids like Iltalehti are responsible for spreading stereotypes like that immigrants are lazy, rape and commit crimes in this country.

A good example of how prejudice and stereotypes of foreigners are maintained and spread by the media is a reent story on Länsi-Savo, teaching Russians how to use the toilet bowl.

Another example that fuels stereotypes and racism in this country is a non-story about banning in Finland the use of the burqa and niqab.

I have never seen a woman wearing such clothing in Finland. I wonder how many of the journalists at Iltalehti have never mind anti-immigration PS MPs, who want to ban the use of such clothes in our country.

Coverage of racism, hate speech and  social exclusion has improved thanks to much better reporting by Helsingin Sanomat, Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, Keskisuomalainen, Savon Sanomat, Kainuun Sanomat, Karjalainen, Turun Sanomat, Kansan Uutiset and others.

These papers have done a good job at doing their job.

 

Abdirahim’s and Ali’s radio show begins today at 1pm on YLE

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Abdirahim Hussein and Ali Jahangiri kick off their weekly hour-long radio program on YLE today at 1pm. I know both persons. I especially like Abdirahim because his sincere no-nonsense about cultural diversity issues. 

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Ali is a talented speaker as well, trying to use humor to address a serious social ill like racism and acceptance.

One thing I haven’t asked the both of them is why they use the term “mamu?”

Constructive debate is one important matter that must be never forgotten in the ongoing debate about Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.

If the aim of an article or debate topic is to strengthen stereotypes and racism of certain groups living in Finland, then that is what I’d call destructive debate.

Let’s Abdirahim and Ali the best of luck.

You can get in touch with both of them by calling 020 690 001.

Promoting tolerance now and tomorrow

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In Migrant Tales’ Finland & Cultural Diversity 2012 review, it’s clear that a lot more work needs to be done to promote tolerance. Thanks to Umayya Abu-Hanna’s column on Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat,* our collective complacency was once again shamefully revealed.

Racism, or the lack of acceptance of other ethnic groups as equals in our society, is a social illness that spreads unabated in Europe and in countries like Finland. It is empowered by our silence, fear, cultural myths, low self-esteem and mocks every day at our apathy.

How do you explain the historic rise of a party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which is hostile to immigrants and cultural diversity, in last year’s parliamentary elections?

What is even more shameful is the acceptance by the media and too many politicians that PS chairman, Timo Soini, is the good guy that is keeping openly hostile and racist party members in line.

Hate crimes rose in Finland by 7% in 2011 compared with the previous year, according to the Police College of Finland. Irrespective of the rise, few if any politicians raised the issue.

Mark wrote about how the police perpetuate hate crimes in Finland in one of the most commented and widely read blog entries of December.

He writes: “One effect of hate crime statistics being published in Finland is that it brings up once again the unwelcome question of whether Finns are more racist than other nations. This isn’t my question, by the way, but it is one that Finns tend to dwell on, as if there were an acceptable level of racism that a country is allowed to have!”

Are the police, like the rest of society, serious about hate crimes and racism?

Considering that the majority of hate crimes go unreported, it’s clear that these types of crimes reported to the police are only the tip of the iceberg.

The fact that one policeman in Mikkeli suggested to immigrant students that they should not report racist harassment cases to them shows that there is no common policy.

The Mikkeli policeman equated racist harassment to when he gets hassled in his hometown by the locals, who remind him that he is a policeman. “Just ignore them [if they harass you in a racist fashion],” he said.

If its evident that the police are part of the problem, part of the blame must go to the victim. It will be very difficult to challenge hate crimes in our society as long as immigrants and visible minorities don’t report such cases.

Ignorance of one’s rights, language barriers, fear of reprisals and lack of trust are some reasons why black and visible minorities don’t report racist harassment to the police, according to a Race Council Cymru study reported by Migrant Tales.

There’s a very good piece on ekathimerini.com on how hate crimes threaten our society.

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Read whole story here.

Morten Kjaerum and Janez Lenarcic write: ”Hate crime offenders send a clear message that some of us are lesser human beings, lesser citizens who can be harmed with impunity. Their actions are, therefore, serious affronts to the fundamental right to human dignity and equal treatment.”

The key argument made by the authors, that our fundamental right to human dignity and equal treatment are breached, is the issue. When we permit such an injustice to happen, we undermine our civil rights. If it can happen to “them” it can happen to “us.”

Barbara Spectre, founding director of Paideia of Sweden, believes that the ongoing transformation of European societies from being “monolithic to multicultural” is at the heart of European anti-Semitism.

“I think there’s a resurgence of anti-Semitism because this point in time Europe has not yet learned to be multicultural…” she said. “It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode. ”

While I disagree with Spectre that the issue is simply moving from being “monolithic to multicultural,” the issue goes much deeper. Anti-Semitism should not be seen as a threat to Jews but to all minorities living in Europe.

The foundations of Europe’s racism, which has brought terrible wars and enabled colonialism to spread globally, is at the heart of the problem.

Europe has always been culturally diverse. The problem is that we have used racism to hide our diversity through social exclusion. We only see ourselves in a racist society.

Finnish racism isn’t any different. Since we want to see only ourselves in this society, it explains why there’s so much opposition to cultural diversity.

Less social exclusion would make us acknowledge that there are other groups living amongst us.

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*Erkki Perälä, a Green Party Helsinki city councilman, wrote a so-called sarcastic piece about Abu-Hanna’s column. I considered the use of the Musta Pekka Golliwog as offensive.

Why is it that I never get “great” ideas like Perälä when writing about a social ill like racism?

If I’m not the victim due to my ethnicity, I don’t try to write about it with sarcasm since I’d only be asking for trouble.

What do you think?

Finland & Cultural Diversity 2012*

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If 2011 was a watershed year for Finland with the historic rise of  a hostile party against immigrants and visible minorities in last year’s parliamentary elections, 2012 will be seen as a bittersweet turning point for the Perussuomalaiset (PS). 

The year will be remembered as a very violent one for immigrants as well. During “Black February,” three Muslims died under violent circumstances in a span of about three weeks in the cities of Oulu and Espoo.

There was no shortage of news about immigrants and minorities in Finland. Some of these were: fines for hate speech to PS politicians like MP Jussi Halla-aho; Helena Eronen’s blog entry suggesting armbands for immigrants;  racial profiling complaints to the Ombudsman of Minorities; Migrant Tales got deactivated for about 13 hours without warning from WordPress.

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Rebecka Holm, 14, who was awarded the Red Cross Award on the UN Day Against Racism. Holm denounced racial harassment against her friends and herself and wrote about it to Swedish -language daily HBL. She is a good example for immigrants and visible minorities living in Finland.

Visits to Migrant Tales during the year rose by 70% versus 2011.

What grade would Finland receive for promoting and defending cultural diversity in 2012? If the grade was a 5 (below average) in 2011, this year it would go up a tad to +5.

Below is a quarter-by-quarter account of what made news on the immigration and visible minority front in Finland during the year:

First quarter (January-March)

Without a doubt, the biggest story in the first quarter of the year was the presidential elections of January. After the historic victory of the PS in 2011, which won 39 seats in parliament compared with 5 previously, all eyes were on its chairman and hopeful, Timo Soini. Would he repeat the party’s 2011 election result?

The presidential election turned out to be a sour disappointment for the PS.  Not only did an openly gay presidential Green Party candidate, Pekka Haavisto, beat Soini but also another anti-EU Center Party’s hopeful Paavo Väyrynen.

The election showed that voters had started to turn their backs on the PS’ anti-EU and anti-immigration rhetoric. Soini’s poor showing (9.4%) and Väyrynen’s better showing (17.5%) confirm the latter. The next hurdle for the PS would be the municipal elections of October 28.

Migrant Tales was cited during the presidential election by Sveriges Radio.

Black February, which involved the death of three Muslims, a suicide and an injured man, started on January 30 in Oulu after eighteen-year-old Abdirashid Jirde fled from three Finns who barged into his home. Fearing for his safety, the young Somali leaped unsuccessfully from his sixth-floor apartment to his neighbor’s balcony.

His brother, Absie Jirde, wrote a letter about his brother’s death that was published on Migrant Tales after the tragedy.

abdirashidThis picture sent by the brother of the victim (baby) was sent to Migrant Tales by the brother of the victim.

On February 17 Migrant Tales was tipped off about the death of a second Somali youth, Abdisalam Mohamed Abdulahi, who died violently at the hands of a white Finn. Both the assailant and the victim knew each other.

Abdisalam-Mohamed-Abdulahi1The second Muslim to lose his life violently in Black February was Abdisalam Mohamed Abdulahi, 18. The eighteen-year-old youth was a Manchester United fan.

An Espoo District Court sentenced  Abdulahi’s killer  in July to a six-year jail term for manslaughter.

Migrant Tales spoke to Abdisalam’s father about the death of his son.

The final chapter of Black February took place the day after on Sunday at an Oulu pizzeria after Abdulahi’s tragic death, when a white Finn shot and killed one worker and wounded another one. The killer took his life after the shooting.

On the night of the tragic events that happened in Oulu, PS councilman Tommi Rautio wrote on his Facebook page the following comment: “If Janne is the one [who shot the foreigners at the pizzeria] then we should give Janne a medal.”

Rautio’s comment caused him to be sacked from the PS in March and convicted and fined 120 euros by a local court for inciting ethnic hatred.

Setting aside the tragic events that marked Black February, few politicians denounced publicly what happened except for Olli Mäntylahti, a National Coalition Party candidate for the city of Helsinki. Migrant Tales was, together with Mäntylahti, the first ones to break the news about Rautio’s comments on Facebook.

Migrant Tales was the target of a number of attacks at the end of the first quarter. The first attack came from a megaboard site called Ylilauta, which was followed by a deactivation by WordPress of  the blog on March 27 for about 13 hours.

Writes Mark: “Migrant Tales is under attack. The blog’s founder is receiving threats of violence, is being defamed and ridiculed in public forums, is being harassed even to the point of having his workplace invaded by defamatory communications. It is not an easy time for Enrique or his family…”

Termination of Service-2While some were dancing prematurely on Migrant Tales’ grave, we received an apology from WordPress for the mistake. Making sure that we never have to suffer such censorship again, Migrant Tales moved to its present site on May 17.

Freddy Van Wonterghem, a PS Kotka city councilman, was convictedby a court on March 30 for inciting ethnic hatred. On another blog, this editor asked Van Wonterghem if he regretted what he wrote.

“I don’t regret what I wrote…” he responded. “Perhaps [at the most] it wasn’t nicely said.”

Second quarter (April-June)

The biggest stories during this quarter were: Helena Eronen’s blog entry suggesting that immigrants should start wearing armbands, and a Supreme Court ruling that slapped Halla-aho with a fine for defaming a religion and inciting ethnic hatred.

As a result of the court ruling, Halla-aho was forced to resign in June as chairman of the administration committee.

The Supreme Court sentence turned out to be a showdown between Soini’s Rural Party and Halla-aho’s Suomen Sisu faction. Halla-aho suggested that MP Juho Eerola should replace him as chairman of the administration committee.

Soini’s candiate, MP Pirkko Mattila, was elected by the parliamentary group. The result was a clear defeat for the PS Counterjihadists.

Eronen knew she was asking for trouble when she published her infamous blog entry on ethnic profiling.

What did she write?

You’ll find the original blog entry number eighteen on MP James Hirivsaari’s website: “If every foreigner were required to use an armband of his/her national background, the police could immediately spot whether that ‘aha, that is a Muslim from Somalia’ or ‘aha. that is a beggar from Romania.’ Muslims could [use sleeve badges] with a half moon…Russians [with] a hammer and sickle, Kampucheans could have field mines, a burger [could be used to distinguish] Americans…”

Eronen’s story, which was widely covered by the Finnish media, spread rapidly to Russia, Sweden and other countries.

Eronen, who openly supported the far-right Muutos 2011 party, resigned in August as Hirvisaari’s aide.  There was speculation that one reason why she resigned was because Hirvisaari’s wife suspected her of having an affair with her boss.

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The Council for Mass Media in Finland (JSN) exonerated Kirkko&Kaupunki in May after a cartoon published on December 2011 mocking a group of Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MPs. It reads: “A Merry Christmas to you all Finnish heterosexuals and white conservatives! We wish the rest a shitty Christmas!”

Setting aside the contempt that the PS has for immigrants and visible minorities, Finland’s media was a constant target of attack by the party, especially newspapers like Turun Sanomat, which reported on Eronen’s sleeve badge blog entry.

Attempts by the PS to tell newspapers what and how they should write about the PS is a good example of the party’s anti-democratic credentials. PS members like Matti Putkonen and MP Halla-aho expressed on a number of occasions their anger with the media.

PS MP Olli Immonen, a hardline Counterjihadist, announced that he would boycot YLE “for a while.” Instead of answering difficult questions posed by reporters, the response of some PS members is to avoid the media altogether.

A clear indication of the growing influence of the extremist Suomen Sisu wing of the PS, was the naming in May of Matias Turkkila as the new editor-in chief of the party’s newspaper and web page.

If there is a person who has helped spread Halla-aho’s hate speech in Finland, that person is Turkkila. He’s the editor of  anti-immigration hate site called Hommaforum which is closely related to Scripta, Halla-aho’s blog.

Other stories that Migrant Tales reported were Finland’s first suspected terrorism case involving Somalis, ethnic profiling complaints by immigrants to the Ombudsman of Minorities, an elderly Somali woman who got assaulted at a Helsinki metro station, the costly saga of family reunification, and www.migranttales.net begins on May 17.

Third quarter (July-September)

As Anders Breivik was convicted by an Oslo court to 21 years for the murder of 77 innocent victims on July 22, 2011, Peter Mangs, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Mälmö court in Sweden on two counts of murder and five attempted murders. He was finally sentenced in November after undergoing psychological tests, which showed him to be sane.

Another story that ignited debate was a movie about “black” Marshal Carl Mannerheim, Finland’s George Washington. One of the aims of Erkko Lyytinen, the movie’s producer, was to challenge challenge Mannerheim’s sacred image.

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 Black and white Marshal Mannerheim spurred a lot of debate in Finland.

The Per-Looks blog, which  outraged some PS party members, was widely debated in the media. While the pictures published on Per-Looks aim to give an image that the PS are a bunch of Finnish hillbillies, the blog gave the hostile party to immigrants a taste of its own medicine.

By September the heat of the municipal elections could be clearly felt. A very good blog, Kunnolisvaalit 2012,** appeared exposing the far-right and anti-immigration stands of candidates running for city council. While the majority of the candidates on the blog belong to the PS, there are others from parties like Muutos 2011, Center Party, and National Coalition Party.

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Risto Helin of the PS, who got elected to the Vaasa city council, is pictured with a “white power blood & honor” on Kunnollisvaalit 2012 blog.  

Another PS municipal candidate that got elected from Kotka, Amon Rautiainen, got in trouble in September for suggesting on his Facebook page that government ministers should be shot and that Muslims should be boiled alive.

Despite constant denials by Soini that the PS wants to weed out racists from running in the municipal election, the party’s policy towards refugees shows that the latter is only lip service.  The party’s municipal election program clearly states that municipalities should not accept refugees.  The best place to help these people is in crowded refugee camps where “they would be culturally” closer to home, according to the party.

In the end of September, a poll published by YLE shows that the PS will be the biggest winners of the municipal elections.  The poll sees the PS getting 17.2% of the votes versus 5.4% in 2008 with the Center Party being the biggest loser.

Fourth quarter (October-December)

The biggest story in this quarter and probably the whole year was the municipal election result. Contrary to what the September poll suggested, the clear winner of the election was the Center Party (18.7%) and the biggest losers were the Greens (8.5%). The PS, which was expected to do well, won 12.3% of the vote. Even if the result was a disappointment to Soini, the party was able to raise the number of city councilpersons by 752 to 1,195.

The National Coalition Party (21.9%) and the Social Democrats (19.6%) came in fist and second place, respectively.

Campaigns like iCount that aim to activate the immigrant vote were active during the election.

The 2012 municipal elections were historic for Finland since a record number were candidates, according to YLE. The highest number of immigrant candidates can be found in the Social Democratic Party (118) followed by the National Coalition Party (81), Left Wing Alliance (56), Green Party (55) and Center Party (around 50).

Unconfirmed reports see the immigrant vote doubling to about 40% in the recent elections. If this is true, it shows that Finland’s anti-immigration climate has empowered immigrants to act.

Contrarily, PS Counterjihadist candidates as well as others that were strongly anti-immigration and against cultural diversity did well in the municipal elections.

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PS councilman Harri Turtianen of Kemi is one examples of many of how intolerance has grown and become more acceptable in Finland.

About two weeks after the election, PS MP Hirvisaari said that his party did poorly in the municipal elections because it wasn’t as outspoken on immigration issues as before the 2011 parliamentary elections, according to YLE.

While the campaign in the municipal election became more vicious and anti-immigration rhetoric picked up as October 28 neared, their hostile campaign against immigrants and cultural diversity continued after the election. A draft law spearheaded by Halla-aho aims to make deportations of convicted immigrants mandatory. Three PS MPs have drafted legislation to make begging illegal in public places, and MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala aims to ban male circumcision in Finland.

Veteran National Coalition Party politician Pertti Salolainen got himself in hot water in early December when he said that on a TV talk show that American Jews have vast control over the wealth and media in the United States. Salolainen, who is vice chairman of the foreign policy committee, felt that pro-Israel lobby groups in the U.S. prevented Washington from taking a neutral stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Suspected hate-crime cases were published on December 19. Last year, 2010 figures were made public on October 27.

A total of 918 suspected hate crimes were reported in Finland in 2011, which is a 7% rise from 860 cases in the previous year, according to the Police College of Finland. Compared with the previous years, suspected hate crime cases have not risen significantly, according to researcher Iina Sahramäki.

Mark published two good blog entries after the Police College of Finland published its hate crime cases for last year. The first one, Approaching hate crimes in Finland: problem solver or angry boss and the one that followed, Police College of Finland: are they perpetuating hate, asks some tough questions of the police concerning hate crimes.

He writes: “What adds to the injury is that people rely on these statistics to create profiles of particular national groups as being much more racist than they actually are, and much more racist than Finns. So, hate crime statistics that are presented in such a way that they actually perpetuate hate crime!”

Finnish law doesn’t recognize hate crimes as crimes per se.

In an exclusive interview with Migrant Tales in December, Rainer Hiltunen, Ombudsman for Minorities head of office, said that talks have taken place with the Finnish police to draft new guidelines and more effective monitoring to ensure that ethnic profiling doesn’t happen.

The new guidelines are expected to be in force in 2013.

*See also Finland & Cultural Diversity 2011

** The blog can be read here.

 

 

 

 

 

Mulitucltural Ireland’s vision should be ours as well

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Why is it that we don’t hear Finnish politicians speaking in the same manner as Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins, who said that a major task of the country’s EU presidency should be to remove ignorance and misunderstanding, which lead to “incipient forms of racism,” writes the Irishtimes.com. 

Speaking at the launch of the Neighborhood Week, an annual event at the Islamic Cultural Center in Clonskeagh, Higgins said that “the Europe we aspire to does not recoil from fears based on ignorance.”

He admitted that there were dangers to society when there is segregated space allocated to individual cultures. “Ghettoizing of [all] ethnic groups and the erection of cultural barriers, built on fear, prejudice or ignorance,” he said, “[should] be avoided at all costs.”

Higgins said that the country’s new citizens, which included Muslims, play an important role in “shaping and crafting our shared future.”

In order to practice equality, the head of state said it was important to understand that “belonging is not based on imitation or the subservience of one culture to another.”

Diverse cultures should instead bring about a new sense of human solidarity and an understanding that integration is a two-way process.

Why haven’t we heard any Finnish politicians speak in the same inclusive fashion about immigrants and visible minorities as Higgins? Is it because Ireland has no anti-immigration parties like Finland? Is it because the Perussuomalaiset are the third-largest political force in Finland?

The silence and even cowardice that seeps through our inaction helps, as Higgins warned, promote “incipient forms of racism” in this country.