The recent example of civil disobedience by Aino Pennanen, when on a Finnair flight Tuesday she attempted to stop a deportation of an asylum seeker. In a country like Finland, where civil disobedience is almost unheard of today, Penanen’s example speaks volumes about how some Finns have lost the trust of their government never mind the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri).
Tag: Soviet refugees
Amnesty International cites (again) Finland’s human rights violations against refugee, migrant and transgender rights
Amnesty International criticized Finland in a 2014-15 country report on human rights violations for its treatment of asylum seekers, migrants, transgender people and conscientious objectors, according to YLE in English. It said that police inaction agains women and girls was another cause for concern. Should we be surprised? Not really. Finland has had a poor…
Declassified documents about Somalis shed light on how Soviet asylum seekers were treated in Finland
This story published by MTV3, about a secret agreement to return Somali asylum-seekers back to the then Soviet Union, forgets to bring up a very important question: Was there another secret document with Moscow to return Soviet citizens to the USSR if they sought asylum in Finland? The 1990 agreement, which was never enforced, became public knowledge…
Finlandization was very bad for refugees, especially Soviet asylum seekers
A story in Thursday’s Helsingin Sanomat shows that the shadow of Finlandization continues to hang deep on Finland even if the demise of the former Soviet Union ocurred in 1991. Even if the Helsingin Sanomat story writes about Finland’s first-ever airplane hijacking case in 1977 involving two Soviet citizens on an Aeroflot flight, it sheds an…
A shameful view of Finland’s refugee policy during the cold war
In this week’s Apu magazine (issue 6/2010) there is a feature authored by me on a former Soviet citizen who was caught in 1974 by Finnish border guards and whisked back to the USSR without granting him the right to political asylum. You can read about it in Apu magazine or get some background information in this blog on how Finland’s special relationship with the USSR would not tolerate Soviet refugees.