Tag: Russia

Anti-refugee sentiment in Finland and politicians who capitalize on fear and racism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A new survey by PEW Research Center shows that there is wide support in several EU countries for taking in refugees. The report shows that Spain is the most welcoming while Poland and Hungary are the least responsive. 

Another EU country in the survey, Italy, also scored far behind Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, France, United Kingdom, and Greece.

As Finland holds its parliamentary elections in April 2019 and EU elections a month later, parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), Blue Reform,* and politicians of the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) are eager to capitalize on anti-immigration sentiment.

And that is what is happening now after a massive police operation took place over the weekend and which led to the arrest of two suspects, an Estonian and Russian citizen, suspected of laundering money.

The arrest of the two foreigners, especially of the Russian citizen, has caused a Russophobic knee-jerk reaction from politicians of the PS, Blue Reform, Social Democrats and the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) to restrict the purchase of land from outside the EU and EEA.

MP Suna Kymäläinen of the Social Democratic Party, who got re-elected in 2015 thanks to her anti-Russian stance on real-estate purchases, reiterated her calls for tighter controls on non-EEA citizens. PS MP Tom Packalén, who has built a reputation on his anti-immigration views, said that parliament should speed up a law that would force non-EEA and EU citizens to get a special permission to buy land.

Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö said that the new law would grant the government the right to intervene in transactions that it sees jeopardizing national security.

Another result of Finland’s xenophobia is limiting the rights of dual citizens even if discrimination is prohibited in the Finnish constitution.

Read the original PEW study here.

As with Sweden, support for refugees in Finland must be in the same ballpark.

Continue reading “Anti-refugee sentiment in Finland and politicians who capitalize on fear and racism”

Scaremongering by the PS of Finland is always at full swing

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland’s Perussuomalaiset (PS)* defense minister, Jussi Niinistö, believes that up to one million “illegal” immigrants could come to Finland from Russia, according to YLE News. Niinistö, a historian who has played down the role of fascist associations like the Lapua Movement (1929-32), fearmongers to shore up support for his ailing party. 

Moreover, it’s interesting to note that Niinistö calls asylum seekers “illegal” immigrants. He doesn’t call them asylum seekers never mind undocumented migrants but “illegal” immigrants.

The use of such labels is nothing strange coming from Niinistö, who said recently that that integrating all Muslims into Finnish society is a difficult challenge.

“In practice the potential is limitless,” he was quoted as saying in YLE News. “From hundreds of thousands to a million people, who are ready to move out of Russia. In that sense the situation is worrying. Not just for Finland but for other European countries.”

Na?ytto?kuva 2016-2-11 kello 20.27.45

 

Read full story here.

Can we believe Niinistö scaremongering in light of his far-right credentials and populist party’s nosedive in the polls?

Continue reading “Scaremongering by the PS of Finland is always at full swing”

Finland Bridge: What threatens us?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

 

Everything that puts Europe in harm’s way today is in some cases more challenging to Finland: geopolitical uncertainty in Russia ranks high on the list as does populism, anti-immigration sentiment, near-flat economic growth, high unemployment, rising poverty and nationalism.

It’s clear that when you have enough of the latter, people are going to get pretty edgy and angry. But since I’m an optimist that believes in Finland and the Finns, I’m hopeful that things won’t get too much out of hand politically and force us to commit the same mistakes of the past.

Time is still on our side.

Näyttökuva 2015-8-19 kello 23.41.32

Continue reading “Finland Bridge: What threatens us?”

Passage of draft bill to prohibit real estate purchases by non-EU citizens would expose Finland’s xenophobia of Russians

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Politicians that fuel nationalism and intolerance forget to tell you one important fact: They carry a high price tag in the form of lower economic growth and less jobs. If passed, a draft bill spearheaded by Social Democrat (SDP) MP Suna Kymäläinen would not only hit businesses in eastern Finland that depend on Russian tourists, but reveal our ever-growing xenophobia. 

The bill would be like putting up a huge sign for the world to see: Russians stay out!

Other MPs behind the bill are Perussuomalaiset party’s Reijo Tossavainen, Pertti Hemmilä of the National Coalition Party,  Markku Rossi and Aila Paloniemi both of the Center Party.

According to a news story in January, the draft bill had the backing of 101 of 200 MPs.

If the bill becomes law, non-European Economic Area (EEA) citizens would have to be residents of Finland for five years in order to purchase real estate.

The bill was criticized on YLE’s Russia debate show and which Kymäläinen took part.

Some of the participants saw the bill as a big mistake because it would hit businesses, which depend on Russian tourists.

Kymäläinen’s blamed Russians for driving up the price of land.

On her home page she cites money laundering and since Finns cannot buy land in a 100km buffer zone by the Finnish-Russian border as reasons why such a law is important.

Näyttökuva 2014-4-16 kello 19.13.49

Read full story here.

If the bill gets approved, it would continue to fuel our age-old suspicion of Russians, which influences how we see other migrants and visible minorities in this country.

That is something we don’t need.

Why is the Finnish foreign ministry so jumpy about Finnbay’s coverage of the crisis in the Ukraine?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the most surprising stories that has circulated today in Finland is that Finnbay, a publication which has occasionally used Migrant Tales as a source, is a fake site, according to a tweet by Hannu Himanen, Finland’s ambassador to Moscow.  Why is the foreign ministry so jumpy about what Finnbay publishes on the Ukraine crisis and its impact on Finland?

The answer to that question is pretty obvious. If you consider that large US media corporations like NBC are using Finnbay as a source then the matter takes a totally different dimension.

Who is Finnbay? From the few talks I’ve had over the phone in the past with the editor, it appears to be a publication that covers Finland and which is trying to become profitable. Thanks to all the publicity that Finnbay got on Sunday, that may be now possible.

Having reported on Finnish-Soviet affairs for publications like the Financial Times and others during the 1980s and early 1990s, the reaction of the foreign ministry to what Finnbay reported sends deja vu chills up my spine. Back then, the foreign ministry kept a close watch on what foreign journalists wrote about Finnish-Soviet relations.

Näyttökuva 2014-4-6 kello 21.38.29

Read full statement here.

Aleksanteri Institute head Markku Kivinen is quoted as saying on YLE in English that Finnbay maybe two things if one looks at the stories it publishes on Russia.  “Either it is fishing for news and visibility or then it’s pure propaganda,” he was quoted as saying.  “This kind of news is being traded globally because at this point Russian military actions are in the spotlight,”

The Aleksanteri Institute functions as a national centre of research, study and expertise pertaining to Russia and Eastern Europe.

So is Finnbay guilty of publishing propaganda as Kivinen claims? Shouldn’t large media companies like NBC know which sources are reliable and those that aren’t?

Näyttökuva 2014-4-6 kello 21.31.53

Finland was recently awarded by the World Press Freedom Index as the top country for press freedom. Does a country that respects press freedom single out and attack a publication because it disagrees with what it reports?

It would be good for all parties concerned that the foreign ministry gets to the bottom of the matter as soon as possible.

The Ukraine-Russia crisis can spark ethnic hatred across Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The crisis and standoff between the Ukraine and Russia is worrying for many reasons. One of these, which isn’t being covered enough by the European media, is how the crisis is fueling xenophobia and age-old diehard ethnic hatred. 

There has been, however, a lot of coverage of the ethnic crisis between the Ukrainians and Russians.

Kuvankaappaus 2014-3-7 kello 23.30.24

The 2009 EU-MIDIS’r survey on European Union minorities and discrimination shows that intolerance is a big issue in the region.  Why do these problems still exist in Europe? Read full report here.

In Finland, where anti-Russian sentiment has always been strong, two MPs warned this week that the crisis in the Ukraine could fuel anti-Russian sentiment and target individual Russians in the country. While Finland is one case, what could happen in countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where there live large Russian-speaking minorites?

If the crisis in the Ukraine escalates, it’s pretty certain it will not only have a negative knock-on effect on ethnic Russians in other countries, but on migrants and visible minorities as well.

Apart from the rise of neo-Nazi groups and anti-Semitism, there is concern that 150,000 ethnic Hungarians living in the Ukraine could be targeted by far-right nationalistic groups, according to AFP.

Extremist and right-wing populist parties, which can take the far-right path in the snap of a finger, could use the present crisis to boost their anti-immigration and anti-minority message as European MEP elections near on May 25.

In Finland, however, the crisis in the Ukraine has hit the anti-EU and anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party. In a recent poll, support for the populist party fell below 17%, according to YLE in English. The last time support for the party dipped below 17% was in 2012.

Some analysts believe that the crisis in the Ukraine may have scared some of PS’ supporters due to its anti-EU stance. Possibly being a part of the EU is not such a bad idea after all when it comes to Finland’s national security.

Meanwhile, it’s clear that a country that passes anti-gay laws like Russia isn’t very credible when it criticizes human rights violations in the European Union.

In an official annual human rights report on Europe, Russia highlighted the problems that were taking place in Finland. It cited, among other violations, that Finland hadn’t ratified Convention No. 169, which deals specifically with the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples, and discrimination against the Romany minority, Somalis and Russians.

While all the above should concern us, the question is why is Europe such a tinderbox when it comes to ethnicity? Wasn’t anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred and hocuspocus ethnic myths laid to rest after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945?

Apparently not.

Where are you from?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Even if I have lived most of my adult life in Finland and my mother is Finnish, I’m still asked occasionally where I’m from. In a spirit of mutual respect, I ask the person the same question. Some don’t like it. 

The innocent question, where are you from, reveals a lot about our prejudices and ignorance about who we consider Finns.

In order to emphasize their Finnishness at the cost of your Otherness, you’ll even get sometimes a lesson in race-and-blood myths and how their ancestors have lived for centuries in Finland.

When faced with such exclusive views of who is a Finn, I ask them how many ancestors they’d have if they went back 20 generations. The answer is about one million.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-6-10 kello 8.23.30Read full story here.

Then there are those who claim they are as old as Methuselah, a biblical figure who died at the age of 969. Those who play Methuselah claim that their great grandparents fought in this and that war and built this land from scratch even if they had never seen war never mind suffered poverty.

I ask them a simple question: Are you 150 years old?

One matter that gives hope about building a more inclusive society is that we are still a young nation. Our national identity, which is nothing more than a social construct,  was built by and large on wars and our loathing of Russia. This must change in order to make our society more inclusive and acceptant of cultural diversity.

Certainly we should respect our veterans. Even if they had no choice but to fight in trenches and die in battlefields, we don’t have to be there with them since the Winter (1939-40) and Continuation War (1941-44) ended over sixty years ago. We have to forgive and move on. The longer we stay in those trenches the longer we’ll be resentful and suspicious of the outside world.

Despite all the challenges facing us during this century as we become a culturally diverse society, I’m confident that we’ll succeed at the task.

Our Nordic democratic social welfare state values and the spirit of our laws ensure success.

 

 

 

 

The repackaging and marketing of hate by anti-immigration parties and groups in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales has shown on a number of blogs how neo-fascist groups like Golden Dawn of Greece, Hungary’s Jobbik and our own Finnish version of the latter, the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, are examples of the growing intolerance in Europe. Any sensible immigrant, visible minority and European should be worried by the situation. 

In Finland, our collective denial of racism is so deeply rooted that even in our history we deny being allies of Nazi Germany during the Continuation War (1941-44). Officially, we were a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany, but not minor allies like Hungary, Bulgaria or Romania.

Instead of going around in circles with such nuances that aim to hide the real fact, that we were at war with Nazi Germany against the former Soviet Union, we must find the courage to look at the issue closer at hand so we can free ourselves from the chains of the past.

Why were we allies of Nazi Germany? The explanation that you’ll hear boils down to revenge for the Winter War (1939-40) and our deep hatred of our old foe and master, the Russians. We went to bed with Germany in 1941 because Finland believed the Nazis would win the war.

What kind of world would we live in today if Nazi Germany would have triumphed in Europe? For one, this writer would not be here today because part of my family was Jewish.

We can already see how extremist groups like Suomen Sisu and parties like the PS have changed their tactics on how they attack immigrants and our ever-growing cultural diversity. Many don’t have to make inflammatory racist statements as before because they have today much more power than before.

A good example is a Suomen Sisu statement, where the far right anti-immigration association, which holds pretty much the same ideas about cultural diversity as the Ku Klux Klan and the U.S. American Nazi Party, calls for immigrants to integrate by learning Finnish, getting an education and a job.

Should we believe them? Certainly not. It’s only a red herring to hide their hate agenda, which is now being repackaged and marketed for a wider audience.

Two videos below of skinhead, neo-Nazi and anti-immigration groups throws back a disturbing question at our faces: Would this be possible on a much greater scale in Finland?

Certainly there’s such a danger and potential for our intolerance to escalate into further violence. The PS and the silence of other political parties are the best indication of our xenophobia and our opposition to cultural diversity. Certainly there’s also the euro crisis that brought voters to the the PS, but how do you explain its April 2011 election victory, when it received 19.1% of the vote (39 seats in parliament) versus 4.05% (5 seats) in 2007?

Such a major shift in the political paradigm in Finland doesn’t happen by chance. It comes from somewhere and buds at the right time.

Matters will unfortunately get worse in Finland before they improve.

The only way that immigrants, visible minorities and Finns can challenge the menace that Finland faces today is by reacting to it.

Complacency and silence to intolerance is waving a white flag at those who seek to not only defeat you but change our society permanently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUxuq-E9yA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=IuOVgx3Zh6E&NR=1

Do we write too little or too much about a social ill like racism?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

A friend of mine recently said that one of the reasons why some don’t like Migrant Tales (MT) is because we write too much about racism.  Do we treat a social issue like racism fairly on MT? Do we write too much or too little about it?

Certainly I would be happy if there were no reasons to write about such a social ill in this country. I even hope that what I write on this blog isn’t true.

Having written a lot about this topic, given talks and debated with many Finns for a number of years, there’s one matter that must be taken into account:  Some Finns feel offended if a foreigner tells them that there’s racism in their country.

Our aim on MT is certainly not to offend anyone but to debate an issue openly. If we can identify the problem, we can take  steps to challenge  and correct it.

Racism, xenophobia and hatred are greater threats to our values and society than some may believe.  Apart from ruining lives and holding back the  potential of a country, these social vices have been the smoking guns behind almost all the wars that have ever taken place in Europe.

Why do we still write about Nazi Germany if the fall of Berlin took place 67 years ago?  Why would we even want to bring to justice, never mind write about the crimes committed by Bosnian Serb wartime commander, Ratko Mladic, whose trial began Wednesday in The Hague?

Among the many war atrocities that Mladic is believed to have been responsible for are the deaths of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995.

You may correctly ask why crimes like the Final Solution or ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia took place?  Haven’t we learned from our past wars and mistakes?

Even if our collective memory is too short for comfort, those same phantoms of xenophobia, racism and hatred that spooked us into war in the past continue to roam those same streets inhabited by our fear and ignorance.

But let’s return to the original question: Do we write too little or too much about racism on MT?

There’s probably no consensus, but there are two answers:  Those who are most affected by racism believe too little attention is given to the issue, while those who are least affected by it claim the contrary.

Whatever the case, we should never give refuge to a social ill like racism through our silence.

 

 

 

 

 

Ilta-Sanomat billboard (lööppi) from February 5, 1997

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales publishes on and off Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through some of the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how some of them reflected our xenophobic, prejudiced, racist or anti-Russian views.

This particular tabloid ad reads in bold letters: A Finnish man’s leg broken by Russians at a brothel in Kotka.

Anti-Russian views were common expressed on tabloid billboards. If it wasn’t the Russian mafia that kidnapped you or robbed you in Russia, Finnish men were in danger of getting their legs broken at houses of ill repute operated by Russians in their country.

*Migration Institute archive.