Tag: Racism

Greece and its bad case of ethnic profiling and scapegoating

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Greek Police announced that 16,836 foreign nationals were brought for questioning  during the first month that Xenios Zeus was instigated, according to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE). A staggering 80% of those brought in for questioning were legal residents. Only 2,144 held by the police didn’t have their residence permits in order. 

Xenios Zeus, which was the ancient Greek god of hospitality, is a good example of how ineffective immigration policies and economic problems can force xenophobia to poison a society.

Sensible people understand that scapegoating immigrants for the country’s economic problems is a red herring. Greek politicians and civil servants, with the blessings of the public, are more interested in blaming defenseless immigrants and refugees  for Greece’s problems than themselves.

Whenever a person or a group scapegoats immigrants and minorities, it is a clear sign of cowardice and opportunism.

The Greek public should critically look at the country’s politicians, civil servants and financial sector and launch a “Xenios Zeus” to uproot corruption that festers in that country.

ECRE writes in a statement: ”Greek authorities claim that as a result of Xenios Zeus, the influx of illegal immigration in the area of Evros has been reduced by 84%. However, according to the newspaper ‘To Vima’, the “Xenios Zeus” operation has resulted in a dramatic increase in the smuggling tariffs for entering Greece from Turkey and leaving Greece for Italy. A few months ago, smugglers would request 2,500 to 3,000 Euro for a safe passage, while would-be migrants are now asked to pay up to 5,000 Euros.”

Groups like ECRE, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Greek Council of Refugees have criticized the massive police roundup of immigrants.

 

 

 

 

What kind of a threat do Finland’s Counterjihadists pose?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It’s pretty clear that what goes up politically must eventually come down. Some groups, which have recently surged in popularity like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), could see their bubble burst quickly. While I wouldn’t count on anything like that happening anytime soon, it could be a totally different story for the hardline Counterjihadists of the party.  

The question that should concern us all is what will these radical members of the PS do if they see their popularity wean.

Do they have  a plan B? Will they take to the streets and incite more people to parrot their message of hate?

One of the most naive ideas that Counterjihadists hold is that they can keep their hate rhetoric on a short leash. Anders Breivik’s murderous rampage in Norway proved once again that racism and Islamophobia can bite back at its ideological master.

While we are already seeing greater violence to visible minorities and immigrants after last year’s PS election victory, the question is how do we challenge such a threat effectively?

Everyone knows that the hardcore Counterjihadist MPs of the PS are Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and Olli Immonen.

If PS chairman Timo Soini wished, he could land a fatal political blow to the Counterjihadists by banishing them from the party. As a so-called taxi party (all of its members could fit in a taxi), they would no longer be a political force like they are today in the PS.

In many respects, Soini’s relationship with these extremists could be described as that of a junkie hooked on heroin. One hates being a junkie but it sure feels good to inject oneself with such a drug.

If Soini ever kicked out the Counterjihadists from the party, would these politicians go down without a fight?

It would be naive to think so.

Their message of hate would certainly get louder and their rhetoric more violent.

Teach me that we are more alike than different…

Posted on by Migrant Tales

 …teach me not to hate. Teach me the lie and shame of racism [because] it hurts all people. Teach me to learn from you and to learn about me… 

Inspirational words from the Center for the Healing of Racism that should be the guiding light enshrined in our national curriculum for schools (opetussuunnitelma) concerning cultural diversity.

What is our aim when we speak of integration of elementary school students?

Is the goal of the teacher to convert these students into ”white Finns” or to socially exclude them by pointing out how different they are? Is the aim between these two extremes?

Identity is a personal matter. Who you are depends on who you think you are. If some have a problem with this, it should be viewed as their problem, not yours.

Social exclusion is like a toxic poison. If  you take away a child’s identity at an early age by seeing no worth in his ethnicity and background, you’ll end up undermining his or her self-esteem. People with low self-esteem do poorly at school.

Low self-esteem is a factor behind prejudice as well, according to a study published by Psychological Science.

In the same way as racism is costly to society, it can impair children’s learning abilities, according to a study by Essex University.

Even if Finland has become more culturally diverse from the 1990s, the biggest mistake we can make – in my opinion – is forgetting the importance of diversity and values such as mutual acceptance and respect.

Thus Finnish schools should teach their students that we are more alike than different..the lie and shame of racism because it hurts all people.

It should teach student the value of their culture and the culture of others.

 

“After the immigrants, you’re next”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

This chilling phrase that was written on flyers in a gay clubbing district of Athens, Greece, is only the tip of the iceberg concerning the ever-growing violence and intolerance spreading throughout Europe.

Writes the Trumpet.com: “Masked men on motorbikes patrol the streets of Greece’s streets, attacking immigrants and driving off. Mobs armed with improvised weapons beat them in public squares. Neo-Nazis have been elected to Greece’s parliament, with slogans like “Foreigners out!” and “The garbage should leave the country!”

Would you call it far-right ideology? Fascism? Populist radical right thinking? Counterjihadist-spirited? Intolerance? Ignorance?

Since some politicians have no problems about lying to your face, use the following test to peel off their masks of deceit. Do a simple test: Take their denials and turn them into affirmations.

A racist will usually state, ”I’m not a racist,” and a populist radical right politician will claim that he’s not a radical.  Sensible people know that the opposite is the truth.

A good column on the Independent of the U.K. by Laurie Penny states that there isn’t anything wrong to draw parallels with what is going on in Europe today and Nazism of the 1930s.

Writes Penny: “Actual fascists in actual black shirts are actually marching around Athens waving swastikas and burning torches, and maiming and murdering ethnic minorities, and world governments appear frighteningly relaxed about it as long as the Greek people continue to pay off the debts of the European elite.”

In the Nordic region we have a few parties that would be more than happy to put in cold storage our civil liberties. Some of these are the Progress Party of Norway, Danish People’s Party, Sweden Democrats and the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland.

One of the most surreal matters about the Nuremberg trials of Germany were the denials of the Nazi regime’s leaders. If they were to be believed, they had nothing to do with the estimated 60 million who perished in World War 2.

Let’s nip intolerance in the bud and save ourselves a lot of hardship in the future.

Is this bus going to Africa?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Roble Bashir

Immigrant bus drivers sometimes feel unsafe during their work in Finland. They face many challenges especially when they work at night.

Some white Finnish passengers try to take advantage of bus drivers with immigrant backgrounds. They may, for example, show an expired ticket and argue with the driver that it is valid. Others may show a ticket bought with their cell phone that is not valid on most buses. They may get into an argument with the driver and claim that he doesn’t know the rules or his job properly even if he has over fifteen years experience on the job.

On other occasions, a passenger may start to drink on the bus. Some passengers may even disobey the driver’s request for them to stop drinking alcohol inside the bus. If the driver insists, some passengers may start to hurl  abusive insults at him like the n-word. Sometimes bus drivers can even be assaulted while at work.

One such driver that was assaulted was from Somalia. He asked a group of passengers to stop smoking and drinking inside the bus. Instead of cooperating, they grabbed a fire extinguisher and used it to spray the driver.

Some white Finns often ask the driver if the bus is going to Africa. Not only are these passengers disrespectful, but they show their arrogance and racism.

It’s easy to understand why some bus drivers feel apprehensive about their jobs.

Racism Review: Racism in the Digital Era

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: A new term I learned from the video below was cloaked site. 

The video says at the end that “we have to get smarter about how racism works in the digital age.”

————-

By Jessie

This is a short video (5:27) I created, explaining how racism operates in the digital era.  The danger may not be what you think it is.

To see video click here.

Read original blog entry here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

Du Bois and Finland: “Your country”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

I read an interesting blog entry on Racism Review about what W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), sociologist, historian and civil rights activist, wrote* about blacks in the United States. His words still ring out today in light of the hostility we see today towards immigrants and visible minorities in many parts of Europe and the United States.

Even if the number of immigrants and visible minorities has been small in countries like Finland, these people form today an integral part of our society and history.

That history is being made right now and at this moment. Every day that passes we shed more roots in this country. Our home in Finland begins to sound like Woody Guthrie’s famous song, This land is your land.

Take a look at what Du Bois wrote over a century ago and try to picture Finland and our every-growing cultural diversity. Board a time machine and travel 30 years in the future and imagine Du Bois’ words in a Finnish context today:

Your country? How came its yours? Before the Pilgrims landed we were here. Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song—soft, stirring melody in an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier than your weak hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit.

Around us the history of the land has centered for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this people, and they have found peace only in the altars of the God of Right.

Nor has our gift of the Spirit been merely passive. Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation,—we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy, and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving?

Would America have been America without her Negro people? Even so is the hope that sang in the songs of my fathers well sung. If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, than anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free. Free, free as the sunshine trickling down the morning into these high windows of mine, free as yonder fresh young voices welling up to me from the caverns of brick and mortar below—swelling with song, instinct with life, tremulous treble and darkening bass. My children, my little children, are singing to the sunshine, and thus they sing: Let us cheer the weary traveller, Cheer the weary traveller, Let us cheer the weary traveller Along the heavenly way. And the traveler girds himself, and sets his face toward the Morning, and goes his way.

*Reference: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (pp. 125-126). Public Domain Books. Kindle. (Free version here)

When will parties like the PS start banning Islam in Finland?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Pär Norling, a leader of  the populist radical right Sweden Democrats of Bolnäs, located about 250km north of Stockholm,  demanded the following on Sveriges Teleivision (SVT): ”Ban Islam in Sweden and deport those who persist in believing in the religion.” When will we start to hear similar demands from politicians in Finland?

One matter that populist radical right and Counterjihadist-spirited parties in Europe and Finland don’t tell you is that the fuel they use to fire their arguments comes from abroad. It’s hardly ever homegrown.

MPs of parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) claim as well how incompatible a religion like Islam is with our Finnish way of life. One of their best-kept secrets they will never tell you publicly, however, is that they too wouldn’t have any problems banning Islam from Finland.

Migrant Tales believes it is only a question of time before anti-immigration and Counterjihadist politicians will begin making the same demands about Islam in Finland as Norling, who claims that neo-Nazism is a by-product of immigration.

Writes the Local of Sweden, quoting the Sweden Democrat politician: “’That [Islam] can exist elsewhere but in Sweden it doesn’t fit in.’ When asked what ought to be done with those who still want to believe in the religion, despite it being banned, Norling responded: ’Then the solution is deportation.’”

We don’t need to ask the politician what he thinks about religious freedom. It’s obvious that Norling’s solution suggests embarking on a slippery slope that would not only compromise our civil rights but undermine our Nordic democratic institutions.

Even if politicians like PS MP Jussi Halla-aho and his band of Counterjihadists, populist radical right and anti-immigration followers would never dare make such a statement about Muslims in Finland, it is exactly what they aim to do if it were possible politically.

It’s clear that parties like the PS want to drastically limit immigration especially from Africa and the Muslim world. Didn’t Halla-aho suggest recently that the refugee status of Somali refugees in Finland should be lifted due to the improved situation in Somalia?

One of the big differences between the Sweden Democrats and PS is size. The former is a small party in Sweden, while the latter is the country’s third largest.

Counterjihad Trojan Horse in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik cited five Finnish groups in his manifesto, 2083 – A European Declaration of Independence. These were the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, Suomen Sisu, Suomalaisuuden liitto, Suomen kansan sinivalkoiset and Vapaan Suomen liitto, according to a report by the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (SUPO).

Writes YLE in English: “Texts similar to the manifest of Anders Behring Breivik have been published in Finland which [Maria] Paaso says shows an ideological preparedness to commit violent acts.”

While these latter groups haven’t carried out the same type of terrorist acts like Breivik did in July 2011, both are strongly bonded by Counterjihadist and/or populist radical right (PRR) ideology.

Some well-known Counterjihadists in Finland are PS MP Jussi Halla-aho, MP James Hirvisaari, MP Olli Immonen and others.

Counterjihadism is a radical ideology that speaks out against immigration and the Islamization of Europe. Counterjihadists like Breivik blame “multiculturalism” for the spread of Islam in Europe.

As most sensible people know, multiculturalism is a Canadian integration policy that was implemented in the 1970s. Counterjihadist ideology, however, sees multiculturalism as an immigration policy that permits Muslims and non-Europeans to emigrate and live in Europe.

Some well-known European Counterjihadist websites are: gatesofvienna.blogspot.com, jihadwatch.org as well as brusselsjournal.com. To these you could add Halla-aho’s Scripta blog in Finland.

Contrarily, PRR groups base their ideology on populism, radicalism and right-wing position on the left-right scale.

Populism means hostility to representative-pluralist politics. The PRR sees democracy as nativist, authoritarian and populist, according to a study by the University of Leicester.

Breivik is an excellent example of what Counterjihadism and PRR ideology are and can breed in countries like Finland.  In Norway we tragically saw how it came to fruit.

The Internet is the breeding ground for Counterjihadist ideology in Europe and Finland. Some of these forums in Finland are Hommaforum and Scripta. Two PS members, Matias Turkkila and MP Halla-aho, are their editors respectively.

Turkkila was named in May by the PS as the new editor-in-chief of the party’s newspaper and web page.

The aim of Counterjihad and PRR groups is simple: keep Europe and Finland white (culturally and ethnically) and place as many obstacles on cultural diversity as possible.

One should never underestimate an ideology like Counterjihadism or any other one that is exclusive and bases its ideology on “race and blood.”

If there are threats to our Nordic and European way of life today, we will find them right under our noses. Two of these are definitely Counterjihadism and PRR.

 

Finland’s demographic landscape is changing (again)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland is presently in the midst of one of its biggest demographic changes in its history due to the rapid growth of its immigrant community. Our ever-growing cultural diversity as a nation has brought out the best in many of us but has encouraged some of us to throw in the towel on sanity. 

Is Finland in danger of becoming a Hungary or Greece?

Those promoting Hungary’s far-right Jobbik or Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party model on immigration and cultural diversity are none other than the usual band of extremists of parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), who see nothing wrong with these xenophobic and anti-Semitic groups.

They don’t see these parties as a danger because Jobbik and Golden Dawn promote the same matter as the PS: ethnic purity at any cost, even losing our Nordic liberal democracy to far-right extremism.

Migrant Tales wrote in a recent blog entry: “In many respects it [open discrimination of immigrants and visible minorities] will look like Russification all over again in the 2010s but with different players – the PS are the Russians and immigrants/visible minorities are personified through Eugen Schauman.”

When I moved to Finland a second time in the late-1970s, our foreign population totalled about 10,000 people, or around 0.2% of the population. Most of these so-called “foreigners” were Finnish expats who had moved back to the country.

The biggest national group living in Finland at the time were Finns who were naturalized Swedes.

Back then, Finland was in its own league when it came to cultural diversity. Albania was the other European country that resembled Finland. People joked back then that our country was the Albania of Europe since it had so few immigrants.

Our foreign population started to grow rapidly and steadily after it hit rock bottom in the 1970s, when it totaled about 7,000 souls. By 2002-03, Finland’s immigrant population passed the 100,000 barrier for the first time, reaching 103,687, or 2% of the population.

Our immigrant population totals today 183,133 (3.4%).

With the rise of far-right, populist and anti-immigration parties growing throughout Europe, we in Finland should be especially concerned about how such a trend could impact our country socially, politically and above all economically.

Finland needs right-wing populist and anti-immigration parties like a hole in the head.

We need more than ever today leadership and proactive solutions to make cultural diversity work.