Migrant Tales insight: How much do the Finnish court take seriously racist harassment and hate speech? From the case below, it appears that yelling the n-word to a woman by two young white Finns will get a light tap on the hand.
Incredible to write about these stories about Finland in 2018.
Ever wondered what happened to those rape stories in the Finnish media? Below, you will find one with a provocative headline that strikes fear (and attracts potential advertisers): “A shocking figure from the beginning of the year: Rape crime grew by over 400% in Turku compared previously.”
Terrible, no? Certainly. Even one rape case is utterly unacceptable and should be condemned.
But wait a minute. The “over 400%” claim is based on a figure of 4 cases in 2016 compared with 21 in the first quarter of the year.
What we do not know:
Be wary of rape stories that only use percentage figures to claim how much such cases have risen. Anti-immigration groups use this tactic constantly to drive home their point that migrants are over-represented in certain crime statistics. Look at volumes instead.
I called the editor of this community paper called Turkulainen last year and asked him if the headline and claim were ethical.
“Don’t you understand that we need to attract advertisers!” he said justifying the headline.
Continue reading “Sensationalist stories in Finland about migrants based on exaggeration and lies”
Video clips published by a program managed by the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences (DIAK) a privately owned university whose main shareholders are church foundations and institutions, launched a video with Finnish celebrities who were seeking jobs with Roma surnames.
The videos, in which Tuomas Enbuske and Jari Sarasvuo appear among two other women, tell us something that the Roma have known for hundreds of years: discrimination and social exclusion. Both persons in the video appear surprised, even disappointed when nobody called them back for a job interview.
While these types of campaigns are good, they fall short fall short in providing us with tools and steps on how o challenge and eradicate such a serious social ill.
Why didn’t Enbuske and Sarasvuo ask why our response as a society to discrimination is so weak? Why aren’t there enough resources and, most importantly, the will to tackle such social ills?
Moreover, I do not see Enbuske and Sarasvuo as champions of anti-discrimination who understand the role of cultural diversity in our society.
Enbuske, who has hosted television talk shows, has invited some of the most questionable racists on his show like James Hirvisaari, a former MP convicted for ethnic agitation, and people like Lenita Airisto, who scolded a Somali woman on his show that “you have come to my country, Finland is my country, and has taken you in with open arms…”
In one of his TV talk shows, Enbuske had to take down the headline and was reprimanded in 2015 by the Council for Mass Media (JSN). The questionable headline, which labelled all Somalis as “rapists,” posted by a subcontractor that MTV3 uses to advertise their programs.
Continue reading “Roma anti-discrimination campaign by DIAK but offers nothing concrete”
Finland’s Nobel Prize in economics, Bengt Holmström, said that white Finns must not share power and privileges with migrants and their children. In other words, they should get lower salaries social security benefits – are you ready for this?! – so that it does not irritate Finns.
Isn’t it sad to note how the Finnish media now discovers that migrants get paid less and have lower social security benefits than Finns? Some, even union leaders like Sture Fjäder of Akava, go as far to state that unskilled migrants should get paid less. He later apologized for such a statement but won a confidence vote to keep his job.
Even Finland’s Nobel Prize in economics, Bengt Holmström, said that white Finns must not share power and privileges with migrants and their children. In other words, they should get lower salaries social security benefits – are you ready for this?! – so that it does not irritate Finns.
Unbelievable, no?
But if you want to look deeper, all these comments and denial by the media, politicians and the public shows that Finland lacks the will and resolve to treat migrants and minorities as equal members of society. It exposes as well that racism and discrimination are deeply embedded in Finnish society.
Lower pay and lower social security benefits for migrants and minorities did not happen today or the previous week but has happened for decades.
I wonder how many people and journalists have read Pasi Suakkonen’s study, Maahanmuuttajen kotoutuminen Helsingissä (2016)? The study points out that migrants make annually on average nationally 27.3% less (21,479 euros versus 29,550 euros by Finns), and in Helsinki 38.5% less (22,286 euros versus 36,239 euros) than Finns.
Do they know that unemployment on average is 2-3 times higher among migrants than the national average? Do they know that migrant wages are so low in Helsinki that such people usually have to turn to financial support to get by?
Bengt Holmström is a Finnish economist who received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2016. What he may know about economics does not mirror his knowledge of Nordic values such as social equality and especially how migrants and minorities live in Finland.
In an interview in YLE, and speaking as a white Finn on behalf of migrants and minorities in Finland, he states that foreigners would accept getting paid lower salaries and have less comprehensive social welfare.
“It’s good for them [migrants],” he stated. “By the same token, it would let them to move up the [social] ladder and it would not irritate Finns so much [because foreigners have done little to nothing to build the country’s social welfare system that has taken white Finns decades].”
In other words, let’s make discrimination and inequality the standard. Isn’t that how things are run in this country?
As we accept – and do nothing – to promote and make migrants equal members of society, Holmström ensures that their children and grandchildren will continue to live as second-class citizens.
While such claims by Holmström should raise eyebrows, he does us a favor by reinforcing what we’ve always known about this country: Non-discrimination laws in Finland don’t really work and are hypocritical.
In Finland, there are many ways how white people and their institutions discriminate against people of color, migrants and minorities in general. Since all forms of discrimination are highly adaptive, they can also effectively disguise their racism, bigotry, and prejudices.
Apart from an employer claiming that a person does not speak Finnish well enough to be hired, another form of widespread discrimination is the white savior complex used against groups like the Muslims.
The white savior complex, which is deeply entrenched in the worst forms of ethnocentrism, functions as an effective weapon to oppress and exclude other minorities and migrants as well. This form of racism is especially prevalent – the list is not all-inclusive – among social workers, teachers and represenatives of multicultural associations.
Their racism, if exposed in the raw, would reveal the following:
“I don’t like you because you are a Muslim but I cannot say that too directly. But if you let me fill your head with ideas like taking off your hijab, how backward your culture is, and that women are equal (sic) in Finland blah blah blah, that will let me oppress you with near-impunity. You see, I’m not interested in your equality, but that you remain an unequal member of society.”
A good example of an oppressed person by a white savior and his or her institutions is one who never finds work to make enough money to stand on his or her feet financially. Such people form part of an integration project that excludes them from society indefinitely.
The best form of integration would be to teach such people of color to become active citizens and to challenge the very system that oppresses and excludes them.
But that would be too dangrous for some because it would end up jeopardizing their power and privilege over such groups.
Sanna Ukkola, a YLE journalist married to Matias Turkkila, the editor of the xenophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party publication Suomen Uutiset, not only exposes in a column colorblind racism* and white fragility, but wider issues about Finnish society on racism, ethnicity, and identity.
Writes Julian Abagond about colorblind racism (1970- ): “…also known as aversive racism, is racism that acts as if skin colour does not matter – even when it does.”
Robin Diangelo states that white fragility, which acts as a form of white bullying, functions to take ethnicity off the table and avoid discussing social ills like racism.
Ukkola has gained a reputation in Finland for writing about migrants in a populist and offensive manner. On too many occasions her opinions show her ignorance on the topic.
Even if Ukkola gets away with her views, which are highly contradictory, she sometimes sticks her foot in her mouth big time. One such case was last year, when she put on an Amerindian feather hairpiece that caused outrage from the Saami community and accusations of cultural appropriation.
To add more salt to injury, Ukkola showed a clip of Pekka ja Pätkä blackfaces on the TV program.
Like with the Amerindian feather headgear stunt, Ukkola does the same thing in her latest column headlined, “Migrants aren’t your stuffed animals.”
One of the biggest problems, apart from her column that reveals colorblind racism, is that as a white person Ukkola is telling how migrants should be identified by Finnish society.
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
Migrant Tales applauds the sentencing by the Helsinki District Court on Thursday of Ilja Janitskin, the founder of the xenophobic website MV-lehti and Uber Uutiset, on 16 criminal charges. Janitski was handed a twenty-two-month prison sentence and with two others found guilty, was ordered to pay the biggest share of damages amounting to 136,000 euros.
In another twist to the story, which YLE News does not report on, the BBC also describes Janitski’s publication as anti-immigration, Europsceptic, and pro-Russian.
Writes YLE News: “Some 90 criminal complaints related to the site were filed in connection with the expansive case, including aggravated defamation and ethnic agitation.”
While some, like Professor Matti Tolvanen, see the sentence as a blow to the spread of hate speech in Finland, Migrant Tales is not as optimistic but considers it a right step in the right direction.
The far-right and Islamophobic voice in Finland has found a platform through publications like MV-lehti and the Perussuomalaiset party.*
The 16 crimes thatJanitskin was convicted of included: three counts of aggravated defamation; two counts of aggravated incitement against an ethnic group; three counts of copyright infringement; two counts of breach of confidentiality; two counts of illicit gambling charges; and four counts of illicit fundraising charges.
Believe it or not, I have heard even educators tell me that there is no racism in Finland.
Aminkeng A. Alemanji hit that flawed statement seated in deep denial on the head when he researched Finnish exceptionalism.