Perussuomalaiset Archives - Page 110 of 161

PS MP Jussi Halla-aho doesn’t like cultural diversity, never mind Africans and Muslims

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Migrant Tales

I’m not going to expend a lot of energy on analyzing what Perussuomaliset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho wrote in a recent blog entry. All of what he writes about migrants, especially refugees, is demeaning and negative. One sentence in particular, however, caught my attention and which exposes the anti-immigration politician to a tee.

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, makes a special effort to stress in his blog entry that the measures he’d like to propose to control migration flows to Europe aren’t intended to keep Europe “white” but in the best interests of the countries concerned.

The PS MP’s first deception is exposed when he uses the term migration as opposed to refugee flows. He uses the former as opposed to the latter term because he believes that most Africans, Middle Easterners and Muslims aren’t real refugees but “welfare shoppers.”

If you’ve read Halla-aho and his ilk, their whole argument is based on criticizing immigration policy, which, according to them, allows too many refugees to move to Europe. Now who are those refugees? They are the Africans, Middle Easterners and Muslims that politicians like him loathe.

Rule number one of journalism: Denial is usually what a politician really thinks or feels insecure about.

A good example of the latter would be a politician like Halla-aho who goes out of his way to claim that he has nothing against cultural diversity or a homophobe who denies he’s against gays.

We’ve heard these types of statements so many times before, especially from anti-immigration politicians.

How do you explain labor shortage and high unemployment?

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Sometimes Migrant Tales gets it right and many times we do. Our sharp associate editor, JusticeDemon, raised and shed light on a very topical issue that is constantly poisoning the debate about our ever-growing cultural diversity in Finland.

In Mikkeli, which is located about 230km north of Helsinki, a Perussuomalaiset (PS) politician, who equates immigrants with white European colonizers that colonized The Americas, and who believes that the region of South Savo doesn’t need any immigrants, claimed recently on Länsi-Savo that there is no labor shortage in Finland.

While there’s nothing surprising that a councilman of an anti-immigration party like the PS can make such a claim, it is odd that the chairwoman of the Social Democratic Party of Southeastern Finland, Satu Taavitsainen, agreed with the PS politician.

The PS councilman, Jukka Pöyry, is so much against immigration that if he’d live in the nineteenth century, he would be against foreign industrial leaders like Finnlayson, Paulig, Sinebrychoff, Rettig, Fazer and other household names today from moving to Finland because “there’s poverty and unemployment.”

Thus the argument made often by anti-immigration politicians is that we don’t need labor immigrants because there’s no labor shortage.

These politicians forget as well that in the EU there’s freedom of movement.

Read original posting here.

JusticeDemon raises an good point on a comment to ohdake on Migrant Tales. If you want to know if there is a labor shortage in Finland, all you have to do is visit the national job search engine, which reveals 10,639 job vacancies today. Since there’s no obligation to notify job vacancies – writes JusticeDemon – the true number of job openings is probably twice the number of notices.

He continues: “Many of these notices concern more than one vacancy, and many have been open for several weeks if not months. These are also only the vacancies that have been notified to employment authorities. There is no enforceable obligation to notify vacancies, and the true number of jobs available is probably around twice the number of notices.”

At the same time, Finland had in November an official unemployment rate of 7.9%.

JusticeDemon know throws the knockout punch:

Naive perceptions are easily manipulated by forces seeking political power. For example the most natural naive perception from the foregoing fact of 20,000 vacant jobs and 8 per cent unemployment is that the Finnish unemployed are work shy, and that they blame working immigrants for their unemployment in order to distract public attention from their own failings. This particular naive perception appeals to certain types of selfish Conservative mentality, but remains otherwise fairly rare in Finland.

JusticeDemon considers a “naive perception” the assumption that the number of jobs in an economy is constant. This assumes that any newcomer to the job market is somehow taking a job away from incumbent job-seekers.

“This naive perception appeals to authoritarian mentalities with limited cognitive and conceptual flexibility,” continues JusticeDemon. “There are various other naive perceptions that can be and are woven into the public consciousness to serve political ends. For example the view that everything comes down to labour costs, or that everything is the outcome of some massive conspiracy.”

Two anti-immigration politicians “doing their hate thing” in Finland: One former, one present PS MP

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Has anyone asked what the election in 2011 of 39 MPs of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party has done to poison the political atmosphere for immigrants and visible minorities in Finland? To show how much in denial we still are in a country, take a closer look at some former and present PS MPs.

Where’s the denial?

In the fact that the media and public sees individuals – not the PS never mind its good-cop leader Timo Soini – responsible for the party’s racist and Islamophobic remarks.

One former member of the PS, MP James Hirvisaari, who is now a member of the far-right Muutos 2011 party, and one present member, MP Olli Immonen, are making headlines again.

MP Hirvisaari, who has already been sentenced for ethnic agitation, writes on his blog that the state prosecutor is carrying out a preliminary investigation on charging the MP for the same crime.

Hirvisaari, who commented on a blog entry by PS politician Kai Haavisto, wrote that rape was a “national pastime” of countries like South Africa. The Muutos 2011 MP wrote as well that the genetic makeup of certain ethnic groups, like black Africans, encouraged a culture of rape.

Hirvisaari made the comment on a blog written by Haavisto where he suggested that those groups that are prone to commit rape should be chemically castrated before being allowed to live in Finland.

Not only does PS MP Immonen’s blog entry is close to 3,000 words long! The length and the topic show clearly the MP’s hatred for Muslims and cultural diversity.

MP Immonen, who is the chairman of the far-right association Suomen Sisu, which discourages white Finns from marrying foreigners, claims in his latest blog entry that gays, green-left groups, and the Finnish Lutheran Church are helping Islam to spread in Finland.

Immonen sent in December a written question to parliament that Finland should start classifying people according to their ethnic background.

As in previous cases, the PS and Soini haven’t said a word about Immonen’s racist views. The PS leader said that Immonen’s suggestion to classify people according to their ethnic background “doesn’t concern him.”

One matter that baffles me about the PS is that they are usually ready to label whole groups as rapists and criminals, but when some Finns look at the anti-immigration party, they are seen individuals.

This reveals, I believe, that deep state of denial that Finland is in concerning intolerance.

Is Suomalaisuuden liitto a narrow-minded, hate-mongering, one-sided association that spreads hatred of minorities?

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) Euro MP Sampo Terho, who is also the chairman of Association of Finnish Culture and Identity (Suomalaisuuden liitto), claims in a recent blog entry that his association has been the target of vicious attacks by the media, which have accused it of being narrow-minded, hate-mongering, one-sided association that spreads hatred of minorities.

Surisingly, Terho claims that such criticism of his association is synonymous with hate speech.

Read full blog entry here.

If we are serious and critically honest with ourselves, it’s Suomalaisuuden liitto that has spearheaded a vicious campaign against Finland’s second official language, Swedish, and done everything possible to hinder the rightful acceptance and respect of our cultural diversity.

What kind of an association is Suomalaisuuden liitto? How many non-white Finns does it have on its board? Does it ever speak of cultural diversity without seeing it as a threat to this country?

Associations like Suomalaisuuden liitto bear a striking resemblance to Don Quixote. Just like the Spanish literary hero of the early seventeenth century who attacked windmills, associations like Suomalaisuuden liitto can deny our cultural diversity for as long as they wish by not recognizing or demonizing it as something “them” and “foreign.” They can do this but not forever.

A warning to Suomalaisuuden liitto: If you don’t care to grasp that we are, and have always been, a culturally diverse society, it is you that will be relegated to the dustbin of history.

In order to understand the dynamics of intolerance in Finland and elsewhere, speaking just of racism is one matter. Cultural diversity is the real issue, which is the well from which intolerance springs.

Finland & Cultural Diversity 2013 will be published on December 28

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Finland & Cultural Diversity 2013 will be published Saturday. The review of the year will look at cultural diversity and intolerance in Finland.

Read previous reports from 2012 and 2011.

News published by the media this year reveals that 2013 was worse than 2012.

Taking into account that an anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset must win the next Euro MP and parliamentary elections in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and that mainstream parties are vying for the same voters, suggests that matters will get worse for immigrants and visible minorities before they improve.

How does the PS plan to keep Finland “white?”

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Even if an anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is trying its hardest to look as mainstream as possible with the Euro MP and parliamentary elections of 2014 and 2015 approaching, respectively, a crucial question is being left out of the picture: How do they plan keep Finland white and undermine our ever-growing cultural diversity?

Since we’ve known perfectly well for years the answer to that question, the reason why we haven’t taken it onboard is because we haven’t connected the dots.

If you are a visible migrant or minority in Finland, connecting those dots is fairly easy.

PS MP Olli Immonen as seen by Ville Ranta. The anti-immigration and anti-Islam PS MPwishes Muslims, Jews, blacks and other immigrants and visible minorities for Christmas. He promises to behave especially good in 2014 so he can wish for boxcars from Santa Claus.

The connection between the PS’ big picture of what it thinks of multicultural Finland was revealed recently by PS MP Olli Immonen, who sent a written question to parliament requiring that people in Finland should be registered by ethnic origin. Certainly the question that begs an answer is why do we need such a register in the first place.

The answer is obvious: It would be an effective way to maintain alive the perception that white ethnic Finns are superior and privileged in this society while labeling the other as “them.”

Parties like the PS understand perfectly well that they are walking in a minefield when they flirt with racism. Their shameful political opportunism and greed for power enables them to make pacts with the devil.

Even if some may argue correctly that the PS doesn’t have a master ethnic plan to keep Finland white, all the variables are in place to create one instantly whenever the time is ripe.

In order to clean the stains of their racist rhetoric, the PS has substituted different terms and arguments for original ones: Muslims for Jews; our white way of life is under threat; undermine cultural diversity by criticizing immigration policy; globalization-internationalization for International Jewry.

Even if the concepts used to defend white Finland are different from the past, the aim is the same: To hinder and undermine as much possible Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.

Like far-right parties throughout Europe, the PS feel the same urgency to defend white Finland from mutlicultural Finland. The only matter that doesn’t make some of the members of the PS as extreme as Immonen, Halla-aho and others, is that they may accept some ethnic diversity. Those that they accept must be white from the inside even if they are non-white from the outside.

Despite the threatening clouds rumbling over minorities in this country due to an outright hostile party to them like the PS, the question of questions that isn’t being asked by journalists of anti-immigration parties and politicians is if repatriation is their solution to our ever-growing cultural diversity.

Some of the PS have already ansered that question clearly. Some of them want to deport from Finland convicted immigrants, Romany beggars, undocumented migrants and those that haven’t been granted asylum in our country.

Fortunately there are some healthy signs that we are waking up to the menace of intolerance being spread wholesale by parties like the PS.

This is a positive sign but a lot more work must be still done to turn back the beachhead that landed in Finland in April 2011.

The shadow of the former USSR and its spell on Finland and source of xenophobia

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Migrant Tales

In the spring 1989 I was planning to travel to the Western African countries of Mali and Niger. Mali was cut out of my journey thanks to the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), which revealed to the honorary consul of Mali in Helsinki, Karl Jalkanen, what was written on my secret Interpol file.

Here’s an editorial by Helsingin Sanomat about what happened to me published on April 13, 1989.

The file that was revealed to Jalkanen is supposed to be secret since it has sensitive information about your personal life.

In an apparent state of inebriation, the honorary consul of Mali was highly suspicious about my travel plans to that African country. There was nothing suspicious about my motives since my plan was to do a travel story for Apu, Finland’s largest magazine at the time.

After Jalkanen made the phone call to Supo, it took about twenty minutes for his contact to call him back. The honorary consul said that I had taken part in three demonstrations, of which one I had organized. The Interpol files revealed as well that I was interested in human rights.

Human rights didn’t apply to non-Finnish citizens, who couldn’t own land, control over 20% of a company, establish a newspaper as well as scores of other restrictions. This story was published in the 3/1989 issue of Ydin-lehti magazine.

I got in touch with the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman and wrote what happened in Apu. Pessimistic that anything would happen to the Supo agent, I heard from the data protection ombudsman that the security intelligence agent had been reprimanded.

Even if the incident is a drop in the bucket when compared with what Edward Snowden exposed in summer about massive global surveillance by the NSA, it was highly revealing since it showed how Finnish officials, like the secret police, perceived expats and immigrants.

Apart from being watched closely by Supo, another matter that the Interpol file revealed was that it had a network of immigrant informers.

Back in the Cold War days, human rights were considered in Finland as something “unpatriotic.” It was unpatriotic to speak out for human rights since it was in direct conflict with Finland’s sacrosanct foreign policy with the former Soviet Union. Since human rights were seen as a threat at the time, it has fueled the intolerance we see today. The price that Finland paid for its geopolitical isolation during the Cold War is it’s reluctance to interact today with the outside world in Finland.

Human rights was a big issue for me at the time due to the violations committed in Argentina under one of the region’s most ruthless dictatorships during 1976-83. Human rights became an important part of US foreign policy during Jimmy Carter’s presidency (1977-81).

The protection and defense of human rights in Finland is a relatively new matter. It reveals why this country pursued such a draconian policy against immigrants never mind Soviet citizens that fled the country and sought asylum.

One of the culprits of Finland’s xenophobia is the Cold War and the former Soviet Union. It was the breeding ground for the intolerance we find today in Finland.

Finland’s suspicion of human rights is best exemplified by its membership in the Council of Europe. Finland became in 1989, together with the principalities of Europe, the last Western European country to join the Council. Why did it take so long for it to become a member? Because it to be to vocal about human rights violations in the Soviet bloc.

Not only were human rights considered “unpatriotic” back then, but the very officials who ran things are still in office. Their view of the outside world is still that of a hostile place where we should react with suspicion instead of trust. It explains why some Finns still see foreigners as a threat and the rise of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party in the 2011 elections.

Finland’s issues with intolerance and racism are tucked in the deep murky corners of its history. When Finland moves away from its present state of denial about its history and opens its past to critical and open scrutiny, only then we’ll know that we’ve taken a courageous step forward in accepting our ever-growing cultural diversity.

Opening up the past is our best insurance against a populist movement that wants to take us back to the times when writing these types of columns would not only get you blacklisted and part of smear campaign.

How Kirkko & kaupunki sees far-right anti-immigration PS MP playing with fire

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Ville Ranta’s cartoon below published on Helsinki Lutheran Church weekly, Kirkko & kaupunki, of Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, is a good example of how Finland is waking up to racism and to a party that preaches intolerance. Immonen is in the same anti-immigration league as MP Jussi Halla-aho, Juho Eerola and many others who have no other agenda except to spread racism in this country.

Hate forums and racism exist wherever we can find “the silence of our friends,” as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out.

Ranta’s cartoon not only is sobering but offers hope but that more people are speaking out against intolerance with a clear voice.

It’s not surprising that for far-right white anti-immigration MP like Immonen, who wants to register people by ethnic origin and being president of an association like Suomen Sisu that discourages Finns from marrying foreigners, that he sees nothing wrong with his racist views.

The problem with racism is that those that spread it aren’t immediately affected by it in the same manner as their targeted victims.

A cartoon of PS MP Olli Immonen. His Christmas wish is for Muslims, Jews, blacks and other immigrants and visible minorities. He promises to behave especially good in 2014 so he can wish for boxcars so he can transport these people to concentration camps.

Ranta published a similar cartoon in December 2011 like the one below that had a number of prominent PS politicians wishing the country a “white Christmas.

When will we pass to anti-racism phase two in Finland?

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Some will agree that Finland is decades behind other countries when it comes to challenging racism. But there is good news: The rise of an anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party in 2011, the Perussuomalaiset (PS), is a sign that we’re moving forward to phase two.

Phase one is when most of the efforts of a society go into denying or playing down the existence of racism. Phase two is when we begin to challenge in earnest intolerance through important changes in the law that would be seriously enforced and have a lasting effect on our attitudes.

Even if the PS do well in the upcoming elections in 2014 and 2015, there mandate if they ever make it to government will end in disaster. In a worst-case scenario, Finland will lose up to eight years of precious time flirting with an anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party that will give them nothing but problems.

If we compared Finland with England,we’d be somewhere in the 1970s and 1980s now. Back then we saw the rise of the National Front in the United Kingdom and anti-immigration personalities like Enoch Powell.

Like in Finland before the 2011 elections, the media in England ate right out of the hands of people like John Kingsley Read, the founder of the xenophobic National Front, and gave Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech. wide coverage.

The hostility that we saw against immigrants thirty to forty years ago in the United Kingdom is clearly evident today in Finland. True, the media has woken up a little, but it still has a long way to go in reporting fairly about immigrants.

Xenophobes like Read and Powell of the United Kingdom have mutated into the PS and its populist-nationalistic anti-immigration rhetoric, which the media has given inflated respectability and importance.

In the United States it took hundreds of years to finally ignite the spark of the Civil Rights Movement on December 1, 1955, when a Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.

Those of us who aren’t white and are proud of our origins, are waiting as well for that Rosa Parks moment. That spark will come and when it does we’ll feel it’s presence.

How will we know?

Support for the PS will shrink considerably
People are tied of listening to the PS’ whining and rhetoric
When we see xenophobic politicians as a minority and that they are only one or a small minority of votes in a 200-seat parliament (Abdirahman “Husu” Hussein)
The media will know what racism is and challenge it like any other social ills like gender inequality and homophobia
Politicians will promote and defend Finnish Nordic values to all of its inhabitants irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds
Our reaction to intolerance and racism will not be silence but be first and foremost a response
Finns will accept that there are “other” Finns that aren’t white. These people have the same rights and are treated equally by society
Cultural diversity is a good matter, it will be promoted because it makes sense and strengthens us as a society
Racists will be shamed and forced back to their closets.

In order to save our country from being devoured by the fires of hatred and intolerance, it’s important that we all take part in this struggle.

One way or another, we’ll get there.

A letter of thanks to Hommaforum and Hannu of Scripta

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Hommaforum, a Finnish hate forum where people reveal their xenophobia and racism anonymously, tried to pull a fast one on Migrant Tales by making up a story about an Ethiopian victim called Dawit. The aim of the email and the story that was published and taken down was supposedly to discredit and shame one of Finland’s most outspoken blogs against racism.

Did they succeed? Not by a long shot. Migrant Tales has published some 1,800 postings. We have many faithful visitors. We have as well some who dislike us so much that they lose sleep over this blog.

Apart from analysis about cultural diversity in Finland, comments by associate editors like JusticeDemon and Mark add value to our forum. Migrant Tales wouldn’t be anything without them.

After reading over 30,000 comments on our blog, I have learned an important lesson: It’s an utter waste of time to debate with those who are challenged on the tolerance front. We seek proactive answers, while the latter seek to be indifferent.

Apparently, Hommaforum is riling mad about a posting by Fadumo Dayib, Run Nigger, Run, which was published this week.

Why did this Dayib’s account anger them? Because a Somali, a woman, had the guts to tell her experiences about racism in Finland. This was too much for the people of Hommaforum to take. For some men, Finnish machismo is manifested through racism. That’s why they feel especially threatened when a woman from Somalia can outdebate them.

Another matter that the perpetrators wanted to unsuccessfully show, or claim, is that we don’t check the reliability of our stories. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything I write on this blog I take responsibility with my real name. Contrary to many, I am not anonymous and do so because I believe in what I do. I take responsibility for what I write.

The grand majority of our stories are based on reliable sources like newspapers, NGOs and others. We do some investigative reporting with good results and sometimes, hardly ever, we publish directly.

Another factor you have to understand is the motive. The site is Hommaforum, who apart from spreading racism in this country, one of its aims is to deny racism, even if it sounds surreal.

The action taken against our blog is similar to a bogus Finland Democrat Party story in November 2012 published by Turun Sanomat in which former PS MP, James Hirvisaari, was supposed to be a founding member.

Turun Sanomat was chosen as a target because it help spread Helena Eronen’s racist blog entry about sleeve badges last year for different ethnic groups.

Dayib’s opinion piece that was published on Migrant Tales is the reason for Hommaforum’s actions.

In the face of the latest prank, I would like to personally thank them for showing how threatened they feel by our cyber presence.

Migrant Tales is no Turun Sanomat and neither do we have the backing of Finland’s third-largest party in parliament, the Perussuomalaiset (PS), never mind the symbol of ethnic intolerance in this country, Jussi Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation. We’re a small and humble forum that has grown out of nowhere thanks to our arguments and the support of our readers.

The question that interests Hommaforum is if we we’ll stop speaking out against racism in Finland. The answer is a flat no.

Back in 2008, I was about to throw in the Migrant Tales towel but one Scripta member thought he would strike us off the cyber map by calling a social-media lynching mob to our site. I was amazed and emboldened by the attack.

If that attack wouldn’t have happened, it’s doubtful that Migrant Tales would exist today. Thank you Hannu (Onkko for Hommaforumers and Internetsi for others). If there is one person that boosted our blog from the beginning, that person has got to be Hannu.

The moral of this story? The more you hit us and the more you notice us, the stronger we grow and the weaker and more isolated you become.

I’m more than certain that in 20 years or sooner, Migrant Tales will be judged as a forum that had the courage to speak out against racism while your hate site, Hommaforum, will be studied as an example of how racism got a beachhead and spread in Finland.

In many respects reading what you write on your forum is like listening in 2013 to a white racist speaking in the 1950s in Alabama about blacks.

How come you don’t write your comments with real names? Why so much inflated bravado, anonymously? Are you afraid that your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be shamed by what you write?

Yes, that must be the reason.

And hey, thank you Hommaforum and Hannu of Scripta for making us stronger today.