This week we learned about how widespread women in the rescue department are victims of sexual harassment and discrimination, according to Yle. We also learned about the ministry of justice’s plans to tackle discrimination and hate-speech awareness with a 52-point program with the help of training increased support for organizations racism and hate crime.
Writes Yle News: “In the future all Finnish police departments will undergo training on non-discriminatory police work while municipal councillors will take courses on hate speech,” reports Helsingin Sanomat.
As parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), Christian Democrats and Movement Now (Liike nyt), and especially the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have encouraged and given a platform to racism and bigotry, in the same way, more have spoken out against discrimination.
Do we need to know the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP’s track record and what he has said about asylum seekers, Muslims, people of color, and other minorities in the past? His tirade against asylum seekers was so racist that the Left Alliance bloc threatened to leave the meeting if Vallin didn’t stop talking.
Vallin, an avid Donald Trump follower who boasts about how little taxes he pays in Finland because his money is in Estonia, likes to also take pictures of day-care children and women in Muslim attire and publish them without permission on social media.
There is an old saying that goes something like this: I was a liberal in youth so I would not be a fascist in old age.
What motivates a politician to twist and exaggerate facts to stigmatize migrants? National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) MP Heikki Vestman’s speech in parliament Wednesday is a prime example of how some politicians spread Islamophobia to attract attention and gain power.
His unsubstantiated talking points motivated me to write an email to him, which he has not yet responded to.
Moreover, the MP uses code to tell us what groups he is targetting. The term “asylum seeker” usually means Muslim.
“When I heard your speech and rationale Wednesday (20 October), I wondered how a young, apparently intelligent person could house such opinionated and unsubstantiated claims about migrants. If you are honest, would you want to [live and] grow up in a country where this type of discourse is ongoing by politicians seeking power and attention? Read some history and check out how the Finns were labeled in Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s.
Does the phrase “en finne igen” ring a bell?
After North America, the greatest number of Finnish immigrants, or about half a million people, moved to Sweden. In the 1960s and 1970s, Finns had a terrible reputation in the neighboring country. Whenever a crime occurred, Swedes usually responded, “it must be a Finn,” en finne igen.
Here is a question to Vestman: Why are you picking and bullying vulnerable groups of people who cannot defend themselves from your attacks?
National Coalition Party anti-immigration MP Heikki Vestman. Source: Kokoomus
Below are some unsubstantiated claims (that I translated and paraphrased) from Vestman’s speech. He was against loosening family reunification guidelines because the minors, whom he sadly referred to as “anchor babies,” could become a national security threat.
Vestman should know that having a family is a human right.
Islamophobia and other forms of racism are for some politicians their gateway to power and infamy.
Watching part of the firey debate Wednesday in parliament that led to a vote of confidence for the government, one wonders what some politicians, especially with the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, have in their heads.
The saddest matter was the bullying and false claims about migrants, nothing more than storms in teacups.
Those politicians and parties who only think beyond their noses are doomed to hitting a wall.
They are heading towards such a fate because they believe that Islamophobic and other racist soundbites will help them to have and retain power and influence.
After launching an aggressive campaign and burning up a lot of money in themunicipal elections of June, the PS came in fourth place despite some polls, which showed it to come out on top.
The result was a huge disappointment and the party gasped for air.
If there is a crack line in the PS, their disappointing result in the municipal election is an indication that the public is growing weary of their broken-record scapegoat-migrant approach.
It has been a bad week for Helsinki University with Helsingin Sanomat uncovering an alleged discrimination case by the faculty of theology. The incident comes after the university’s department of geography students dressed up like colonizers of a popular board game, Afrikan tähti (Star of Africa).
The Helsinki University geography department gave Tuesday a public apology concerning the incident.
Surprisingly, Jasmine Fantaa’s Instagram post, which was responsible for the incident of the geography students to go viral, was taken down and could not be accessed Wednesday.
The second discrimination case alleges that theology students of Islam with Finnish surnames were picked to teach at a school over students that did not have Finnish-sounding names.
James Baldwin (1924-87) is one of the greatest and most insightful writers, essayists, and activists of black USAmerica. With the help of his words, we are capable of seeing the beast that has oppressed and tormented the black.
James Baldwin
His Insights offer as well a glimpse at our monster.
There has been a lot of debate about what is Finnishness and who can claim it.
Writes Eddie S. Glaude Jr. in his biography of Baldwin (Begin Again) that “No matter what (US)America said about him as a black person, Baldwin argued, he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a black man.”
One’s identity is a personal matter. Those that impose identity labels on you are using their power and privilege to exclude you.
“…the white man’s motive (to retain power and superiority) was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity.”
The latter quote speaks volumes about the plight of second-generation Finns.
Sexual assault, especially suspected cases, is heatedly used by anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and public services like the police to demonstrate how some foreigners are. The police admitted today to a mistake in tabulating suspected sexual assault cases during 2020.
The mistake originates from a foreigner suspected of sexually assaulting his wife 141 times. Since the person was reported as 141 individual suspects, the amount for 2020 is therefore too high.
The police and Statistics Finland have confirmed the mistake.
The correct percentage of all suspected sexual assaults last year was 27.2%, not 38.5%.
Another interesting finding of the sexual assault statistics is that Northern Europeans, not Western Asians (Middle Easterners, Persians, and other nationalities), committed most suspected sexual assaults.
Why didn’t the media make a bigger deal about this fact?
Northern Europeans had the most sexual assault cases (58.9%), as many as 80% of alleged sexual assault against children.
Another important legal point that media coverage forgot to mention is that a person is innocent before proven guilty by a court of law. The number of convicted cases for sexual assault is only a fraction of the suspected ones. In 2019, 12.9% of all suspected cases were handed convictions.
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP Sebastian Tynkkynen was convicted for a third time of ethnic agitation, according to Yle News. The two previous convictions were handed down in 2016 and 2017.
The Oulu District Court handed Tynkkynen, who is the PS’ third vice president, 70 day fines amounting to 4,400 euros.
The PS MP naturally denied any wrongdoing, and that conviction ran against his right to free expression.
“Why was it necessary to speak [out against Muslims who are a danger to society], taking into account what was happening behind the scenes with respect to the sexual abuse of children and how it undermined security in general,” he was quoted as saying in Iltalehti and continues: “I saw back then that I had a moral obligation to speak out against this.”
A “moral obligation” to speak out against sexual harassment? How disingenuous of you, MP Tynkkynen.
Let’s look at media coverage and how the police and politicians reacted to sexual harassment cases of minors in Oulu in 2018-2019. Back then, MPs like Tynkkynen were fueling the fires of fear against asylum seekers, which are mostly Muslims.
One of the biggest challenges and shortfalls of Finland’s integration law is that it is one-sided: Here is a list of things you must do to adapt to our society. This aim is very general, and if you start to study it closer, you will find no answers.
While language is essential, and Finland places a lot of emphasis on this, it is not your get-out-of-jail pass to live “integrated” and happily forever. As people of color and other minorities know, integration is a two-way street.
Considering the present political landscape and how much minorities influence the public policy of migrants and minorities, we are still a long way off and on the wrong path to achieve a society that respects difference.
If we look at school children in one of the world’s best education systems, why is it that some dark-skinned people are ashamed because they aren’t white enough? This fact forms part of a backdrop of discrimination and bullying at some Finnish schools.
Radical-right Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP, Sebastian Tynkkynen, who has two ethnic agitation convictions and a third pending, is trying to get the most political mileage from an incident at an #elokapina demonstration.
Some unknown persons at the demonstration allegedly attempted to attack Tynkkynen and shoved him. The police asked if the MP wanted to press charges, and he said it wasn’t necessary apparently because nothing serious happened.
All types and forms of violence should be condemned, but why are the PS making up a big fuss about the incident? The whole affair, in my opinion, appears like a storm in a teacup.
The incident with Tynkkynen overlooks other forms of verbal and physical abuse and violence that the PS have promoted for years and continue to spread.
Why don’t we see more leadership among politicians? What about the media? Why don’t they openly condemn racism, and especially Islamophobia, and appear worried about the growth of these social ills thanks to the likes of Tynkkynen and the PS?
White Finnish privilege #80
The answer to the above question lies in the double-standards of our society made possible thanks to white Finnish privilege.
Violence against white Finns gets a lot more attention than what migrants and minorities see.
