It is a good sign that some Finnish media like Yle are fact-checking what politicians say. However, it is a bit too late because the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have built their popularity on making false claims about migrants.
I’m pretty certain that if we were to do a fact-check on all the claims about migrants since 2010, most of them would be false, grossly exaggerated, and outright lies.
In just a matter of a week, PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho, who was convicted in 2012 for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion, got called out for making false statements about migrants.
One of these false statements made by Halla-aho recently was that low-wage workers come to Finland, work for a few months, and then quit their jobs and live off social welfare. This is totally false.
Halla-aho made another false statement when he stated that one-third of income, housing benefit recipients are immigrants.
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books used against journalists by xenophobic politicians is the following: A politician makes an outrageous claim to a journalist, who doesn’t even bother to question its veracity. Eventually, the journalist may do some investigating and find out that he or she was fed malarkey. By then it’s too late because the story is already out there.
For the PS, migrants and foreigners are a non-stop obsession. Some, like Halla-aho, have built their political career on victimizing, bashing, and spreading racist lies and exaggerations about migrants.
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party is the biggest threat to our Nordic welfare state and democracy. Their xenophobic ideology reveals a noticeable conflict.
Gunnar Myrdal (1898.1987), a Swedish economist who did a groundbreaking study in the early 1940s about its racism, brought this dilemma to light:
“How can they [USAmericans] claim to respect the dignity of all persons, equality, and the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and a fair opportunity, while countenancing pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks and their rights to that freedom, that justice, and that fair opportunity?”
In the same light, we can ask to whom and how social equality, one of our Nordic welfare state pillars, applies to migrants and minorities? Do these noble values apply to Muslims, people of color, and other visible migrants and minorities? Are we also living in a conflict where we preach one thing but do the opposite?
Take, for instance, one of PS’s first vice-president Riikka Purra’s reaction Fardowsa Mahamoud’s decision not to do military service because the hijab, or veil, is still prohibited.
Ever wondered the source of the strong undercurrent of xenophobia in present-day Finland? The answer is in its history. During independence, Finland has been quite an unfriendly country towards foreigners. The Restricting Act of 1939 speaks volumes. Did you know that Finland passed its first immigration act in 1983 or about 66 years after gaining independence?
The prevailing xenophobic attitude and suspicion of foreigners reveal a lot of things like the rise of the far-right Perussuomnalaiset (PS)*.
It also explains why the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) interviewed every candidate who applied before for Finnish citizenship. I was one of them.
My interview with Supo took over two hours, and the first question that asked was, “why are you applying for Finnish citizenship?”
My answer was straightforward: “Because it’s my right.”
A tabloid Ilta-Sanomat billboard from 1992. Much of the hostility that people of color faced in the 1990s was by the media. Here, the tabloid states that Somalis conned the authorities to get asylum in Finland.
Behind that response, because it’s my right, came from my insistence that since my mother was Finnish, I too should be considered a Finn. Even if Finnish women had the right to vote from 1906, they weren’t trusted until 1984 to give Finnish citizenship to their children. Only Finnish men could do that.
Prior to the interview with Supo, I had some issues with the honorary consul of Mali in Helsinki called Jalkanen. When I went to visit him to get a visa to that West African country, he appeared inebriated and was very suspicious about me visiting Mali.
At the time I worked for Apu magazine, and wanted to do a travel piece on Mali and Niger.
At the meeting with Jalkanen, his suspicion grew as we spoke. He then called a friend of his who was a Supo agent. He asked him to pry into my secret Interpol files to make a background check. His Supo friend called back quite rapidly.
Jalkanen started to speak after hanging up the phone with his friend.
Like many children of Finnish parents, I, too, spent summers in the countryside with my grandparents. During all of these years, I thought, incorrectly, that I was a Finnish citizen or had a right to citizenship. I was wrong.
Until 1984, children of Finnish men had the right to pass on citizenship to their children. Even if women got the right to vote in 1906, it took about 66 years after independence for women to win this right.
This meant, in effect, that I was treated as a foreigner in this country. I had to get residence permits and at one point a work permit for each job I had.
One day, at the Aliens’ Office, I asked one of the employees why I had to apply for a residence permit if I was a Finn because of my mother. The response shocked me to the core.
Being a foreigner in Finland in the 1980s meant a lot of red tape. Residence permits were first granted for six months and a work permit for each job. On top of this, your human rights, which were considered suspect since it spoke out against the former Soviet Union, were violated.
“In our opinion, you are not a Finn,” she snapped.
Finland is a country of addiction, alcohol, and drugs, but there are no facts in its newspapers.
Finland is a land of garbage and cigarette butts and spit; the streets are full of cigarette butts and spit and feces and piss of dogs. But no one cares. There is no smoking only in front of the Parliament and the Presidential Palace.
Finland is anti-Muslim, anti-religious, anti-African, anti-Bulgarian, stateless, and anti-Roma within Finland, immigrants, and the poor.
In Finland, Romanians are called thieves, and Muslims are called terrorists and aggressors.
Finland is a holiday country, and Finland has thousands of holiday excuses, useful work is not done except by low-wage foreigners.
Finland is a country of lies, a clear example of the Asylum Office, which is that the Immigration Office deceives all foreigners, even Europeans, and survives by fraud.
Finland is a country of poverty, a country of homeless people, a country of drunken men and women who urinate and inject injections behind its walls and at car parks, parks, streets, and tram stations.
Finland is a country where teenagers and children smoke and use drugs.
Remember the young Muslim who was violently attacked by a gang of white Finns in June in the Western Finnish town of Teuva? According to Fares Al-Obaidi, the police plan to conclude their investigations into the crime in early June.
What happened to Al-Obaidi last year changed his life. He moved away to Espoo to receive professional help to overcome the trauma of what happened. He takes anti-depressants.
“I was a victim of a [violent] crime and it seems that nobody is interested,” he said complaining about the length of the police investigation.
His ordeal began on a Saturday. Fares was first insulted by a group of residents from the town of Teuva and then chased by two cars on the road. Two other cars blocked the road ahead of him and had no choice but to drive the car into a ditch.
Fares tried to run away from his attackers, but it was to no avail. He was beaten so badly by them that he ended up being taken by an ambulance to a hospital in Seinäjoki.
When you are silent, everyone does whatever they want, and you have encouraged them with your silence.
Do not be silent, if someone is oppressed in your presence and you are silent, you have helped the oppressor, you have supported him with your silence.
Do not be silent, speak, you distinguish good from bad, you see, you understand, and you are aware, why are you silent? Your silence gives power to the enemy, your silence gives energy to bad people, your silence confirms them.
Do not be silent when bullies attack the weak.
Do not be silent when a foreign man is made homeless by his Finnish wife. The woman deceived him. They have lived for years, and they have children. But Finnish law calls all men mentally ill and Finnish women worthy mothers. I have talked many times to these men who were foreigners or refugees and even Europeans and Scandinavians. They have all been shocked and very sad, but on the contrary, women have brought another man into their home and taught the children that the real father is bad, and you should forget him ….
Do not be silent when an Iraqi or Afghan refugee is chased by a racist with a gun in the streets or forests and in small cities…
Do not be silent when a racist insult an African because of the color of his or her skin.
Do not be silent when a foreigner or a poor Finnish is under pressure and homeless, hungry, cold and helpless! Do not be silent When you see a Finnish or foreigner homeless person under the roof of an escalator, he is asleep, he/she is in pain, he is tired and he is speechless, they gave up on humanity, and they are hopeless, but YOU do not be silent, you must stand for humanity because yourself is a human too!
Do not be silent when the law votes against your rights.
Do not be silent when the government and ministers, president lie to you, and lie to you again and again!
Do not be silent when racist and savage guards beat a foreigner in front of your eyes
Do not be silent when the racist police on the street ask you for an ID card, when the police lock you in a cell.
Do not be silent when you are attacked in a group
Do not be silent when the law and the newspaper and media lie to you
Do not be silent if you see someone being attacked
Do not be silent, you are human, you must feel for other human beings, you must respect humanity.
Do not be silent, those who oppress, assassinate, kill, beat, humiliate, exploit, violate the rights of others, racist, evil and savage, they have not ruined the world and the planet. Yes, but you have ruined it, you are in it. You have destroyed the world with your silence, yes you are.
O you who are silent and conservative, you and your crime and sin are worse than thousands of times more. you are guilty. Do not be silent when refugees and their children and their parents and young people are trapped in Finnish camps behind iron wires.
Those who remain silent are worse than the oppressors because they feed and nurture them with their silence.
I am never silent, I have never been silent, and I consider those who keep silent as my enemies.
Some Finns will go an exceptionally long way to protect their white nationality and exceptionalism. They even voted in 2011 39 MPs from 5 MPs previously for a party, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, to ensure that Finland remains white.
Everyone knows that such an aim by the PS, to keep Finland white, is a political pipedream.
Apart from the Islamophobia and dangerous ethnic replacement theories pushed by the PS leadership, like Jussi Halla-aho, Riikka Purra, and Simo Grönroos, the country’s biggest daily Helsingin Sanomat broke with the toxicity.
Basketball star Awak Kuier, who the PS labels insultingly people like her as “harmful” immigration, was called in a Helsingin Sanomateditorial “a Finn,” and not, deceptively, a person of foreign origin or foreign background.
Kuier made Finnish basketball history this week when she became the first Finn to be selected to play in the WNBA when she was in the draft to play for the Dallas Wings.
This is a vast improvement from the days when Helsingin Sanomat decided not to use the shortened and racist form of immigrant, or mamu, in its headlines. It was only
When a non-white Finn succeeds internationally, does the person’s label change in the media’s eyes from a person of foreign origin to Finn? Is this what we’d call hypocrisy?
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Mari Rantanen, a nurse, and policewoman, is known for her Islamophobic and white nationalist views. In the tweet below, she states that let’s take Finland back in the municipal elections of June 13.
Apart from the deception that in city councils we are going to exercise power like in parliament (sic), Rantanen, like her party, reveals her hatred for the government, the left, Black Lives Matter, feminism, communism, Antifa, and globalism.
As far as I can tell, this looks more like a pipedream, for now, to install PS leader Jussi Halla-aho as Finland’s Viktor Orbán of Hungary.
Does anyone ever ask Rantanen and the PS who they’d go after getting rid of the government and social movements like Black Lives Matter? Have you ever heard how PS MP Leena Meri pronounces Black Lives Matter? It took me a while to understand that it was English.
The PS is a party that is made up of air. Its main aim is to polarize Finnish society and spread Islamophobia and hatred of minorities. Their lust for power and malarkey is insatiable.
Let’s be honest: If Finland would be run by the PS it would be a catastrophe.
Former Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Ano Turtiainen has become a real thorn in the side of the far-right Islamophobic party. Apart from hisracist postings of George Floyd, encouraging violence against asylum reception centers, assaulting a fourteen-year-old, wishing that asylum seekers would drown at sea,inciting civil war, anti-vaxxer buffoonery, and other issues.
His latest tweet states that he would be ready to kill people if a friend of his was forced to use a mask.
