Tag: Perussuomalaiset

Halla-aho says ghettoization spreading in Finland’s major cities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho said on a popular talk show that he stands by everything he said and doesn’t regret anything. He does, however, admit that sometimes the timing of what he said was wrong. He then tells us that ghettoization is taking place ” full steam ahead” in Finland’s biggest cities.

As Migrant Tales has warned and as scandals continue to rock the PS whiile opinion polls show voters turning their backs on the right-wing populist party, the anti-immigration message of the PS will start to pick up.  Halla-aho didn’t lose such an opportunity on the talk show, claiming that our biggest cities are turning into ghettos.

Some analysts see, however, that his far-right anti-immigration rhetoric are the problem that will cause social exclusion and ghetoization.

With the usual poker face, Halla-aho tells us that all he want to do is avoid the problems that immigration brought to Sweden. He says on the [Tom Enbuske talk] show that Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass killer is a mentally ill lone wolf, despite the fact that he quoted Halla-aho in his anti-Islam manifesto.  Certainly it’s convenient for Halla-aho to single out Breivik as a madman because it permits him to wash his hands of the probable impact his xenophobic rhetoric may have on others.

On a more positive note, the anti-immigration message that spread like wildfire in Finland before the parliamentary election appears to have met greater scrutiny today by the media, some politicians and the general public.  A case in point is the Helena Eronen scandal that suggested   “armbands” for foreigners.

One typical debate and public-relations stunt used by Halla-aho and his far-right group is profiling themselves as white Finland’s saviors and victims of the media.  He claims that in Finland one cannot have a different opinion concerning immigration despite the fact that it was his anti-immigration message got him elected to parliament in the first place.

Below are two classic videoclips that Halla-aho doesn’t regret. On the one immediately below he warns “most Finnish cities will be surrounded by a ring of burning ghettos.”  Finland’s foreign population in 2010-11 totalled 167,954 people, or a mere 3.1% of the total poulation.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=30SSbpq-o_A]

Here is another one that was used in last  year’s parliamentary election. The campaign ad asks if multiculturalism is a “too hot potato” for Finland? Note the turban on the potatoe. Isn’t it from India?

Multiculturalism means for Halla-aho an immigration policy that permits Muslims and Africans from moving to Finland and Europe.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L0zgxL8l_xg]

These videoclips were taken from Jussi K. Nieminen’s Facebook page.

The Eronen “armband” scandal reveals healthy accountability by the media

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The Helena Eronen scandal exposes an important watershed in Finland. It is a similar turning point as we saw on July 22 with the mass killings in Norway by Anders Breivik and in February, when Tommi Rautio suggested decoarating a white Finn for killing a Muslim in in cold blood in Oulu. The latest scandal reveals something equally important: accountability.  

Back in the so-called good old days before last year’s election, politicians could say just about anything they pleased against immigrants and visible minorities without being held accountable. Times have changed since then and the Eronen scandal is a case in point.

What would happen if Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho published today a fraction of the quotes he made last decade? What would happen if Eronen published her infamous column on sleeve emblems in 2006 or 2008? Would she experience anything close to the criticism she is getting today? Probably not.

The magic word is accountability. Politicians, and especially those who gained prominence with their racist and Nazi-spirited language before last year’s election are now being held accountable for what they write by the media, some politicians and the general public. This is good news for Finland.

Accountability can do wonders. An association like Kansainvälinen Mikkeli sent an email to all those candidates before last year’s election who were strongly in favor of cutting back funds to immigrant associations and tightening immigration policy. You’d be surprised by how apologetic some were when they answered back.

It shows that if we ask questions and let politicians know that we are watching, listening and ready to act they will think twice what they say in public.

The media can play an important role. Leadership was shown by Turun Sanomat last week, when it picked up Eronen story on Uusi Suomi. The Turku-based daily merely did its job by asking her a question and, most importantly, held her accountable for what she wrote.

It’s still unclear whether Eronen will be able to keep her job as PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide. In the meanwhile the scandal will continue to grow.

Turun Sanomat reports that apart from Sweden, Russia and former IVY countries, the column that suggested sleeve markings for different national groups has now spread to Holland, Iceland, Italy, Poland and Romania. To add more fuel to the fire, Johan Bäckman asked the police to investigate whether Eronen’s column is guilty of inciting ethnic hatred, according to Turun Sanomat.  

Finland’s interior minister wants to make begging illegal

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Christian Democrat (KD) Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen was quoted as saying on MTV3 that she is in favor of making begging illegal in Finland.  Just like many past suggestions by the conservative Räsänen, like her provocative views on homosexuality that caused last year an exodus from the Lutheran Church, her views on begging and how to deal with a group like the Roma of Eastern Europe doesn’t come as a surprise. 

While Räsänen uses the term “organized” begging, it’s clear that she is targeting Roma beggars from Eastern Europe that come to Finland.

In order to understand the dynamics of the Finnish government’s tough stand on immigration and its views of certain ethnic groups, Kokoomus Prime Minister appointed last year Räsänen to head the interior ministry in charge of immigration policy.

Her appointment was a clear attempt by the government to not only calm the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, which had gained a historic 39 seats in last year’s election, but to rob it of its anti-immigration thunder.

Räsänen’s stand on gay rights and marriage reflect her conservative views on immigration and Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.  Last year she said there are plans to tighten once again family reunification laws, which were tightened by the previous government.

Her views on immigration are pretty well summed up on a blog entry she wrote on Uusi Suomi:  “Our country’s culture, values and morals have been built around Christian ethics and we must not abandon them starting from our homes, day care centers and when bringing up children.”

What Räsänen is saying in the quote is that she doesn’t believe in cultural diversity but that immigrants should assimilate — not integrate — to Finnish society.  Assimilation is one-way integration, or something like sitting on your behind and requiring immigrants to adapt to your culture while you do nothing except watch.

Some have criticized Räsänen’s double standards. On the one hand she claims to uphold Christian values concerning the family but doesn’t appear to be bothered by minors who are refugees in Finland that are forced to live without their parents because of strict reunification laws.

While Räsänen likes to give the public simple answers to complex problems, her latest view on begging will not resolve anything but complicate the problem even more. We will soon see pictures of the Finnish police rounding up, arresting and deporting women and children from Finland. It will reveal and reinforce the image that we are an intolerant country that doesn’t have a clue on how to deal with a social problem like begging in our society.

It prefers instead to brush the problem under the rug by making “poverty illegal” by patronizing to parties like the PS.

Eronen strikes back in order not to strike out

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The Helena Eronen scandal, Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP James Hirvisaari’s aide who suggested with bad satire that foreigners should start wearing armbands, struck back today with a new column in order not to strike out. 

She has come back but with a vengeance especially against Turun Sanomat, the Turku-based daily that broke the story that then spread to Sweden, Russia and who knows where tomorrow.

After being apparently shocked by the reaction that her column caused, her boss Hirvisaari must have given her a long pep talk. Such pep talk, however, spells disaster and convolutes the PS even more, especially after the party’s parliamentary group recommended sacking Eronen.

Eronen claims that she is innocent. Her aim was to use satire to show how armbands for foreigners could help policemen distinguish between foreigners and Finns. The column was as well a pretty clear jab at the Ombudsman for Minorities.

Hirvisaari as well as his ideological comrade in arms, PS MP Olli Immonen, hold the Ombudsman for Minorities office in low regard. Immonen suggested in October that it would be a good idea to make the Ombudsman for Minorities office redundant.

There’s a lot more to what and why Eronen wrote what she did than meets the eye.

Her defiance is evident. When she published her latest blog entry, she included the one that got her in this mess in the first place and was later republished on Hirvisaari’s blog.

Uusi Suomi censored the column again as it did the first time.

Eronen offers an odd apology with her fingers crossed apparently behind her back. She does say sorry per se but only to those who were authentically offended. She does not tell us what “authentically offended” means but it becomes clear pretty soon.

After a long not-so-mea-culpa explanation she finally gets to the punch line of her column and singles out Turun Sanomat: “And so my blog entry was handled by a brilliant Turku journalist…”

There is one important matter missing in Eronen’s latest blog entry: She doesn’t tell us what she did wrong and why it has caused such an uproar.

Eronen asked for trouble when she wrote her column about armbands

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Finland has been inflicted for a number of years by people who think they can say and write anything they please about immigrants and visible minorities in Finland. It’s only natural that when you let out racism and prejudice to roam freely in society unchecked, things will eventually snap as we saw in Norway in July. What did Helena Eronen, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari’s aide, do wrong?

Eronen blames the scandal on her own ignorance, according to an interview she gave to YLE. “The strong reactions to it [blog entry] were to be expected,” she said.

Reactions to what she wrote about sleeve emblems for foreigners to help the police in Finland have been published in Sweden and now throughout Russia and former IVY countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Eronen blew it to put it lightly. If you are white and try to be “sarcastic” about other nationalities, work for a right-wing populist party like the PS and your boss is none other than Hirvisaari, you are going to get in hot water. She forgot as well those whom she was being sarcastic about, the immigrants, and if this may be offensive to some groups.

Who are the losers and winners of the scandal?

The biggest loser shouldn’t be difficult to figure out. That’s Eronen and the negative debating atmosphere in Finland concerning immigrants and visible immigrants.

Do I think that Eronen’s column was in bad taste? Certainly. But there may be a silver lining revealing that matters may have changed in Finland since Jussi Halla-aho and his xenophobic band roamed the net with near-impunity.

Some, like MP Hirvisaari, who was fined for hate speech in December, still don’t get it. They live somewhere deep in the previous decade when defaming and insulting immigrant groups and cultures was a free-for-all social media lynching job.

Hirvisaari added more damage and salt to Eronen’s wound Wednesday by republishing his own blog the column that was taken off Uusi Suomi. He went as far as to claim that the scandal is an example of the rot that inflicts the media in Finland.

The biggest winner could be the PS. Eronen could give them a scapegoat opportunity to wash their hands of all the racism and prejudice they have spread in Finland since last year’s election, according to a column by Jussi Jalonen. Such a sacrificial object looks especially inviting for the PS with the municipal election nearing in October.

Finland, and I am certain Eronen as well, have learned a valuable lesson: When you write about immigrants and visible minorities you should be extra careful and try to see the world from their perspective when dressing a column up in sarcasm.

If you have that ability, probably one of the first things you’d do is drop the whole topic and write about something else.

PS parliamentary group wants Hirvisaari to sack Eronen

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The Perussuomlaiset (PS) party parliamentary group decided today that Helena Eronen, PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide should be sacked immediately for writing about foreigners wearing armbands to help police differentiate the nationality of the person, according to YLE. 

After the meeting, Hirvisaari told reporters that nothing had been decided about Eronen.

PS parliamentary leader Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner, who stepped out of the meeting after Hirvisaari, gave a totally different version.  She said that the majority of the PS MPs decided to recommend to Hirvisaari that he’d “immediately sack his aide [Eronen].”

Ruohonen-Lerner said that this type of writing by Hirvisaari’s aide hurts the party and the parliamentary group.

She said that the parliamentary group cannot give the boot to Eronen. That was Hirvisaari’s job.

What PS MP aide Helena Eronen wrote about armbands for foreigners in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri 

Every month we’ve seen some sort of scandal coming from the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party. In April, which is only eleven days old, we already got another one by an aide who suggested in a blog entry that foreigners should start using armbands to help police distinguish who is an immigrant and who is a Finn. 

Eronen was hired as PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide in January. Hirvisaari, a hard-core  anti-immigration extremist, was fined in December by a court for hate speech.

The PS MP defended in a  new blog entry on Uusi Suomi Eronen’s writing.

Eronen suggested on her blog entry today that foreigners should start using sleeve badges in order to help the police figure out rapidly who is a foreigner and who is a Finn. Her blog entry was directed at the Ombudsman for Minorities, which accused today the police of ethnic profiling.

Her opinion piece was published around midday and was deleted by Uusi Suomi in the afternoon.

She writes: “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] USAmericans…”

Eronen  appears to like her own suggestion so much that she envisions a ceremony taking place.  “…take for example if a refugee from Kurdistan would get permanent residency [in Finland], his red half moon would be changed for a blue-white half moon when he’d become a Finnish citizen… Think about what an important moment in that Kurd’s life [if he would exchange his red half moon for a blue-white half moon at some ceremony at Immigration Service]. It would enforce integration and would make Finnish and Finnishness an important goal [for every immigrant to attain].”

The parliamentary aide suggests that potential terrorist could wear chips under their skins to monitor their movements.

One of the matters that has raised concern in Finland has been the PS’ ties with neo-Nazi groups like the Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta. There has been concern as well of PS MPs like Hirvisaari who belong to extremist associations like Suomen Sisu.

If you visit Eronen’s Facebook page and go to photos, you’ll find one where she is wearing an army-looking cap with a flower emblem. The edelweiss flower was used by a mountain commando division in Hitler’s army.

Finnish police accused of ethnic profiling

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

A day after the police released a Somali who was under police custody for about seven months, the Ombudsman for Minorities expressed concern about ethnic profiling by the police, according to YLE. 

Rainer Hiltunen, the Minority Ombudsman’s head of office, said that he receives calls from foreigners who say they have been repeatedly questioned in the street by police. Some of those stopped are naturalized Finns and visible minorities.

The police deny any wrongdoing.

“If a person is stopped, they’re told why,” said Helsinki police inspector Jari Taponen, who denied hearing of any cases where people were not told why they were questioned by the police.

Helena Eronen, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari’s new aide, suggested in a column today that a good way to help the police to distinguish immigrants from Finns would be to oblige people to wear sleeve badges.

This kind of “satire” coming especially from a Hirvisaari aide is in pretty bad taste.

Hirvisaari was fined for hate speech in December.

I remember being stopped a long time ago by the Finnish police on the freeway from Porvoo to Helsinki. We were three “foreign-looking” men inside a Skoda driving home when Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Pavel visited Finland in 1991.

One of the questions that surprised me by the policeman when we were pulled over was if I was a Finnish citizen. I refused to answer the policeman’s question because I thought it had nothing to do with whatever I was being stopped.

After a semi-long tug-of-war with the policeman, I told him that I was a Finnish citizen. He then told me that I had been pulled over because one of my headlamps was out.

If that was the reason why he stopped me, what did that have to do with me being a Finnish citizen or not?

Far-right groups and anti-immigration extremists in Finland and Europe flirt with fascism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

When far-right groups and anti-immigration extremists flirt with fascism nothing good can ever come out of it. Even if it sounds incredible, we have in Finland our own holocaust deniers and those who claim the Nuremberg Trials were  a farce.    

Has Perussuomalaiset MP Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola and his aide Ulla Pyysalo as well as Kotka councilman Freddy Van Wonterghem ever seen war? I don’t mean playing a Playstation 3 war game or seeing a war movie, but suffering and witnessing the real thing?

When politicians make statements denying or playing down the Holocaust, state that the the Nuremberg Trials [see Natsi-Saksasta] were “a farce,” or openly admit they like Benito Mussolini and fascism, they are breathing life back to a beast that can terrorize Europe again.

Even if the fascism they like is different from the one we saw in the 1930s, it is the same ogre but in twenty-first century garb. The scapegoats and enemies may have changed, for example Muslims today and Jews before, but it is the same beast.

Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commandant during 1940-43,  justified the death of an estimated 2.5 million with the following quote:  “I had my personal orders from [Heinrich] Himmler [to exterminate Jews]…Not justified [to exterminate so many people] – but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

But there is a far bigger question that Auschwitz doesn’t answer right away: Does that type of systematic mass murder that took place there reveal the dark side of the Nazis or something worrying about us?  Do we all have the potential as a group to become mass murderers?

If we look at the former Soviet Union under Stalin, the systematic genocide committed against Amerindians by white Europeans, the terror that reigned under the Pol Pot regime of Kampuchea, China under Mao Tse Tsung, the slave trade and European colonization of Africa  as well as many other cases, they prove beyond any doubt that we are capable of  barbaric deeds.

It makes no sense to spread hatred and attack and victimize other human beings and groups. If you disagree you need to reread your history again, and again, and again.

The author at the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp where it reads Arbei Macht Frei, “Work Makes (One) Free.” 

 Some 400,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated in spring 1944 at Birkenau, or Auschwitz 2.

 The shoes of the victims that ended up in Auschwitz’ gas chambers.  

Let’s stop fooling ourselves about the Romany minority in Finland and Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

I’ve been following with disappointment the stories published in the Finnish media about the East European Romany minority beggars coming to Finland.  If politicians don’t get it, it’s pretty clear that a part of the media never mind the public won’t either.  Social ills like xenophobia, prejudice and racism are not “fixed” in a few days, months or years but take generations for the open wounds to heal.

Moreover, a great part of the Romany minority problem in Europe is not only due to these people, but to our own prejudices and racism that we have seen erupt recently in countries like Slovakia, Hungary and others.

So far we have two apparent political solutions in Finland on how to solve this so-called “problem:” One of them is to deport them out of Finland and another is to seek help from the Romanian authorities by sending a fact-finding mission to that country.

Let’s get serious for a moment folks.  What we should be really doing is ask why an anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) has raised this issue and how the government is responding.

It’s pretty clear that the PS, worried about its poor standings in recent opinion polls, is using anti-Roma sentiment to lure disappointed voters back to its party.  The government in turn has no choice but to be seen doing something as the PS attempt to raise this issue as a matter of national security.

But let’s try to understand the recent red-herring debate in parliament between the opposition PS and government. Why are we so concerned about these people coming to Finland? Is it our racism and loathing that reflects back on us when we see them begging? Is it our failure as a society to deal with our own Romany “problem?” Are we shocked to see that there are actually people in Europe who are poor and exploited?

In Finland we have about 10,000 people belonging to the Romany minority. Political parties have rarely if ever spoken up for them.  If our handling of our own Romany minority problem is anything to go by, we are very far from finding any solutions to these people from Eastern Europe.

Another important question we should ask is how many people are we speaking of? Hundreds, thousands or maybe tens of thousands? Why don’t we have any ball-park figures? Is this the way politicians and the media victimize a group like the Roma and show them to be a bigger threat than they actually are?

One of the matters I’d recommend to all parties concerned in this country is that we should stop treating racism and social exclusion as something that we can fix instantly.  No matter how much we try, the Romany minority problem will not go away tomorrow nor after tomorrow.

It will take a lot of time to solve and heal.

In order for us to do something effective in the meantime, we should take a totally different approach to the problem. We should start to look at our history and our own prejudices as part of the problem.