Tag: Racism

Timo Soini to retire from politics

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Foreign Minister Timo Soini, 56, who inspired Islamophobes, racists and conservative nationalists to have a political voice and platform to lash out at migrants and minorities, announced that he will not seek a new term in parliament, according to Helsingin Sanomat. Soini, who calls himself a devout Catholic, will be remembered as a conservative populist politician who led the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to national prominence by capitalizing on populist anti-immigration sentiment. 

Soini, who hails from Rauma, led the PS as chairman for twenty years (1997-2017), served as MP during 2001-09 and 2011-2019, EuroMP 2009-2011, Espoo city councillor 2001-2009, minister for European affairs (2015-2017), and foreign minister (2015-2019).

Despite Soini’s long list of political merits, some see him as an anti-immigration populist and nationalist who objected women’s and gay rights and anti-abortionist. His fondness for far-right politicians like Morten Messerschmidt of the Danish People’s Party, which the PS has close ideological ties, have not gone unnoticed.

Soini has shown support against EU plans to put Poland under greater scrutiny of nationalist conservative Polish Law and Justice party and shown support as foreign minister for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He also took part in anti-abortion marches and has participated in the prayer breakfast sessions organized by the US Congress and hosted by the US President Donald Trump.

Soini’s political history is a rise-and-fall tale when he rose to prominence after the 2011 parliamentary elections but came down in flames after his chief rival, Jussi Halla-aho, took over the helm of the PS in June 2017.

It is sweet irony that Soini, who used Islamophobes and far-right voices to opportunistically rise to power, became his downfall.

One of the most important signals to emerge from the end of Soini’s political era is that “moderate populism” has given way to “extremist populism.” After the 2011 parliamentary election, Soini and the PS’ anti-immigration wing debated the main reason for the party’s good showing in the election. Soini claimed it was anti-EU sentiment while politicians like Halla-aho said it was anti-immigration.

Timo Soini gets a grilling on BBC Hardtalk.

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Finland’s integration program discriminates and offers fairy tale views of our society

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I never have or want to “integrate.” I have, however, learned how to survive in Finland. 

If there is one matter that the sexual assault cases of Oulu have exposed in the raw is a false expectation about migrants. If we listen to the media, police and politicians, migrants cannot commit crimes because Finns rarely do if ever break the law.  White Finns are model humans, asylum seekers are not. 

This erroneous expectation becomes clear when the Oulu police and the media announce a new sexual abuse case by “a person of foreign origin,” which is code for Muslim, asylum seeker, and non-EU citizen.

Unfortunately, more of these types of crimes will come to light because men commit such crimes constantly.

Source: Goodreads. 

Blaming asylum seekers and migrants for not “integrating” enough reveals our false expectations and ignorance of cultural diversity.

Take effective steps to do away with racism and discrimination if you are serious about integrating newcomers.

I have worked in helping new migrants to get an understanding of Finnish society and their rightful places in it.

If a student states that there is no equality in Finland, I agree with him. All this talk about how we respect equality in Finland is a lie. The correct question you must ask is who has the right to demand equality in Finland.

Source: Goodreads. 

But what can you expect with the rise of far-right parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* in this decade and the present government that wants to label and shame Muslims and other groups? What can you expect from a country where mainstream parties like the National Coalition Party and Social Democrats lack the leadership to speak out against racism but instead succumb to it?

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Finnish government and City of Oulu officials: Where is the concern and outrage?

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Almost two days have elapsed since the Oulu mosque was the target of vandalism. Did you read from any government minister expressed concern about what happened? What about the City of Oulu, which has labelled all asylum seekers as potential sex offenders by banning such people from visiting child care centers and schools?

Where is the leadership and outrage after the Oulu mosque was vandalized Tuesday for the ninth time?

The media was especially active about reporting about the sexual assault cases. A Migrant Tales story revealed that from November 27 to February 13, Ylealone had published 77 stories on the topic. On one day (January 14), it had published 13 stories.

The government in its futility and campaigning for the April parliamentary elections announced an immigration crime prevention plan. One of the aims is to give asylum seekers a test about Finnish values.

With the knee-jerk reaction of the government and City of Oulu to the sexual assault cases, which some would interpret as racist, shouldn’t these officials attend a basic course on cultural diversity and anti-racism?

In December, when the mosque was vandalized for a seventh and eight time, the Lutheran Church did express concern and offered its solidarity.

What do the silence and inaction say about the state of Finland?

Read the full story here.

Oulu mosque vandalized for the ninth time

Posted on by Migrant Tales

THIS STORY WAS UPDATED

The Oulu mosque was vandalized Tuesday for the ninth time since September 2017, according to Dr Abdul Mannan, who heads the Islamic Society of Northern Finland. The police said in a statement the attack took place at 5:10 am when a suspect smashed a window with a bike rack and threw a smoke grenade inside the premises.  The fire department was called as well. 

Dr Mannan said that the attacks against the mosque are becoming too common and he is hopeful that the perpetrator is caught.

In December the mosque was attacked a seventh and eighth time.

The suspect used a bike rack to smash the window at 5.10 am and threw a smoke grenade inside the premises. Source: Dr Abdul Amman.
The prayer matt damaged by the smoke grenade (left) with smashed glass lying over the floor and chair. Photo: Dr Abdul Mannan.

“We installed a new very good surveillance system that should [hopefully] help to identify and capture the culprit,” he said.

Dr Mannan makes no effort to hide his frustration.

“I have said many times that the media is not helping the situation but adding fuel to the fire,” he said. “The most recent attack against our mosque is an example of how hate speech encourages some to acts of violence.”

Dr Mannan said that it was unfair to blame Muslims for what happened in Oulu concerning the sexual assault cases.

“None of the suspects in custody are members of our congregation,” he said. “Muslims of Oulu are law-abiding and should not be the target of people’s anger and hate.”

Oulu’s knee-jerk reaction to the sexual assault crimes will do a lot of harm to the city’s image. Blame the media, police, politicians.

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The question Migrant Tales asked a while back if the City of Oulu’s decision to ban visits by asylum seekers to child care centers and schools is legal. Can you ban a single group, in this case, asylum seekers, from visiting such places? As far as how the law works in Finland, the ban should apply to everyone and not to one specific group.

As we all know, the ban is due to the sexual assault cases where some 16 “persons of migrant background” – code for asylum seeker, Muslim, non-EU nationals – are suspects.

We got in touch with the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman about this and have yet to get a call back from them.

The same goes for the City of Oulu’s Director of Education and Culture Mika Penttilä. He has not called back after repeated phone calls.

Section 6 of the Constitution states the following:  “Everyone is equal before the law. No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.”

How should we interpret Section 6 of the Constitution? If there is a ban, like the one in Oulu, it must apply to everyone.

The ban, which is an overreaction and I believe illegal, is making Oulu trip over itself due to a lack of political leadership and the parliamentary elections in April.

An elementary school in Oulu was the target of recent attacks on social media due to a false rumor that asylum seekers had visited the school. Kello School principal, Timo Soini, said that the attacks amounted to threats and insults, according to Yle.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

“Two women and a man visited [the school] last week who were of multicultural origin and Finnish citizens,” said Soini. “They have lived in Finland all their lives and came to give talks to middle school students about discrimination and racism.”

Continue reading “Oulu’s knee-jerk reaction to the sexual assault crimes will do a lot of harm to the city’s image. Blame the media, police, politicians.”

Sampo Terho says clean up the mess his party created thanks to tighter asylum laws

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What is the difference between the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and Blue Reform party? The PS is openly racist while Blue Reform is a racist party with a bow tie. Both are racist parties that aim retarding and undermining migrants, minorities and Others from having a greater voice in Finland. 

Their aim is to keep Finland white by denying Others their rightful place in our society. They are not interested in integration but on how to teach and keep migrants and minorities as second- and third-class citizens.

Both the PS and Blue Reform are an aberration that represent the worst of our society. They are the first modern party that uses Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric to gain political party.

Sampo Terho, the chairperson and minister for European affairs, culture and sport, has the audacity to state below that we need to “manage immigration.” Manage?! After his former party, the PS, spearheaded tougher immigration laws that tightened family reunification and did away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds?! These types of policies not only told asylum seekers that we don’t want you here but created thousands of undocumented migrants from a few hundred before.   

WARNING: RACIST CONTENT – We need to “manage Immigration” is one of Terho’s favorite catchphrases. What he is saying is that we should clean up the mess his party created in government concerning immigration and asylum policy.

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February 2018-2019: How a Pakistani family in Finland encountered and defied hate

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THIS STORY WAS UPDATED

A year has elapsed since Rashid H., a Pakistani migrant, was brutally attacked by three white Finnish youths in Vantaa on a Friday, February 23. The attack not only changed Rashid’s and his family’s life permanently, what happened also spread fear in the Pakistani community of Finland.

Rashid and his wife Sobia have two daughters aged six and one.

On visiting the couple, one of the matters you notice is not only the past but the future and their will to make the best out of a terrible situation. Rashid is recovering slowly and is on sick leave until the end of 2019.

“Rashid takes two types of painkillers and even Panadol if both don’t do the job,” she said. “On top of that, he also takes medicine for blood pressure and he is a diabetic.”

On the left, a statement by the police about what happened to Rashid. On the right is the profile picture of the new NGO, Anti-Hate Crime Organisation Finland, which founded in September thanks to Rashid and his wife. The picture on the right is of a man who was threatened by the Polish police.He did not want his face to appear in the picture. Source: Police and photo by Enrique Tessieri.

An important part of the recovery and healing process is getting support from psychologists, other health officials, family and friends. “Recovery sessions with the psychologist have helped us a lot but there is still a way to go,” she said.

March 2018

I met Rashid, his wife and daughters the first time at the Meilahti Hospital of Helsinki. With stitches and bruises on his body, Rashid demonstrated a strong will to recover and overcome what had happened.

“When I get out of here and get better,” he said almost a year ago. “I want to help others by telling them what is hate crime and what happened to me so that others could learn.”

The promise he had made at the hospital came true. Rashid and his wife helped found Anti-Hate Crime Organisation Finland (Suomen viharikosvasainen yhdistys ry) in September. On March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Rashid and Sobia will give a talk to students and migrants in Otava near Mikkeli.

The new founding board members of Anti-Hate Crime Organisation Finland. The NGO was founded on September 8 in Helsinki and registered on October 3 by the Finnish Patent and Registration Office (PRH). 

It’s difficult to grasp what happened to Rashid and how he survived. His attackers had stabbed him up to thirty times, fractured his skull with an axe and jabbed him several times with another pointed object. His blood stains were left near the apartment building for twenty days after the attack despite repeated calls by his wife to the social office and police to remove them.

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WARNING: RACIST CONTENT – Halla-aho announces that anti-immigration will be the PS’ main campaign theme

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With parliamentary elections a heartbeat away on April 14, the populist far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party announced that anti-immigration will be their main campaign theme. Are we surprised? Not in the bit. 

PS Chairperson Jussi Halla-aho was quoted as saying in Yle that at the present rate, Finland’s immigration policy will destroy present levels of social welfare, undermine good salaries, good schools, gender equality among other problems.

“We want to make it tougher for people to move here,” he said. “We want to raise the requirements to get Finnish citizenship.”

See the short interview here.

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Ku Klux Klan in the US, Perussuomalaiset in Finland

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The editorial below by the Alabama-based Democrat-Reporter, calling on the Ku Klux Klan “to ride again” and lynch Democrats, was not published in the last century but in 2019. This editorial is a good example that the United States is a racist country and has done too little to eradicate this social ill. 

It is the same story in Europe, which explains why populist far-right parties are on the rise and gaining support.

The United States had a Civil Rights Movement (1955-68) and Europe World War 2 (1939-45). In both cases, there was a lack of resolve to do away with racism and its poison. Governments and school boards searched instead for the status quo. We are paying today a high price for our mistake.

This is understandable because those who held power benefited from the privileges that racism bestows on them.

Source: Montgomery Advertiser.

Do we have similar examples in Europe and Finland?

European examples of the latter would be Marine Le Pen of France, Holland’s Gert Wilders, Viktor Orbán and many others. In Finland, two candidates that come to mind are Jussi Halla-aho and Laura Huhtsaari of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.

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PS’ Jussi Halla-aho on TV offerng simplistic views on migration and Finnish identity

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iety Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho was a guest on Yle’s Ykkösaamu. Convicted for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, the PS chairperson gave his usual simplistic views on immigration and Finnish identity.

One of these was when the reporter asked him about the party’s youth wing and their Finnish white supremacist ethnonationalistic views on who is a Finn.

Halla-aho didn’t condemn this view but blamed it instead on linguistics.

“The question who is a Finn is interesting [question],” he explained. “The problem is that in Finnish we don’t have a term that classifies who is an ethnic Finn and a Finnish citizen.”

And then adds: “If I would for some reason go to Somalia and become a Somali citizen would that make me a Somali?”

Possibly, Halla-aho, you could be a “Somali Finn” or whatever you would want to call yourself. I doubt that minorities are aiming to be white like you but seek social justice and recognition. They are tired of being labelled by Finnish white supremacists and society as eternal “people of foreign origin.”

Watch the full interview (in Finnish) here.

Halla-aho and his party have inflicted harm to migrants and minorities. Their racist rhetoric has no interest in making such people equal members of society. Their main aim is to label and exclude certain groups and attack groups like the Somalis.

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