Tag: Soviet Union

Selling your political soul to the highest bidder and Putin’s collateral damage to Europe’s far-right parties

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s plans of breathing new life into a second take of the Soviet empire by invading Ukraine have backfired and produced the opposite effect. Far-right parties like the Perussuomnalaiset (PS)* are collateral damage in Putin’s miscalculation. 

It’s been a wretched start for Putin:

– Plans to carry out a rapid invasion and victory of Ukraine have hardened and emboldened Ukrainian resistence;

– Putin’s war of aggression has mobilized the strongest international outrage since 9/11

– Hopes that the Russians would be greeted as “liberators” in Ukraine was nothing more than the wishful thinking of an autocrat; 

– Aims to divide Nato and the EU have produced the opposite effect and strengthened and united these bodies;

– Intimidating Finland and Sweden not to join Nato have encouraged and brought them closer to seek membership;

– Close far-right ties with Putin by parties like Lega Nord and Front National Party of France have put them in an awkward position;

– The PS’ racist broken record against asylum seekers and refugees changed instantly when the EU decided unanimously to permit Ukrainians to move to the EU for up to three years without applying for asylum.

Continue reading “Selling your political soul to the highest bidder and Putin’s collateral damage to Europe’s far-right parties”

Return back to Finland’s “good old days?” No thanks!

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THIS STORY WAS UPDATED

When some Finns and parties talk about returning to the “good old days,” they are saying that they’d like to return to the days when foreigners had practically no rights and where racism was king. It was also a time of appeasement to the former Soviet Union, media self-censorship, impunity, and human rights abuses.

One of the most quaint matters about those who want to take Finland back to the good old days is that they weren’t even born during those troubled times.

The treatment of asylum seekers and watching over their rights brings stark memories of the good old days.
Take back Finland? Source: Twitter

What kinds of laws were in force back then? The list below is by no means exhaustive:

  • Finland did not have any immigration act until 1983, or about 66 years after independence;
  • The Aliens’ Office granted residence permits on a one-by-one basis;
  • The Aliens’ Office under Eila Kännö functioned like a state within a state;
  • Even if Finnish women were the first to get the right to vote in Europe in 1906, they could not pass on Finnish citizenship to their born child until 1984;
  • Foreigners did not have the right to appeal if deported;
  • Police surveillance of foreigners by the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) was standard;
  • Supo had a register of foreigners that showed which demonstrations the person had taken part in and if he or she supported human rights;
  • Human rights abuses of asylum seekers were the rule;
  • Soviet citizens were denied asylum in Finland even if they requested it;
  • Finland returned tens of thousands of Ingrians and Estonians at Moscow’s request;
  • There were so few foreigners in the 1970s (under 12,000) that the biggest national groups were Finns who were naturalized Swedes;
  • Racialization was the rule and carved in stone;
  • Foreigners could not own or publish newspapers;
  • The Finnish media portrayed asylum seekers from countries like Somalia in an overtly racist manner;
  • Journalists, except for editors, were not allowed to write about Finland’s special relationship with the former USSR;
  • Finlandization, or appeasement to Moscow, compromised press freedom and encouraged self-censorship;
  • The foreign ministry and its propaganda arm, Finnfacts, did everything possible to quiet and ostracize Finlandization critics;
  • Foreigners could not organize demonstrations;
  • Finland was ruled by a strongman, Urho Kekkonen, from 1955 to 1982;
  • Under the Restricting Act of 1939 (219/1939), which became redundant in 1992, foreigners were not allowed to acquire a majority stake in a Finnish company;
  • Ownership limits of Finnish firms were 20% normally and 40% under special permission;
  • Foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate, and shipping;
  • Foreigners could not own land;
  • Most Finns never heard of pizza;
  • Food markets had very few if any foreign produce.

Does any democratic-loving person who respects human rights want to return to the good old days of above?

Not me!

Challenging Finland’s racism problem:Raise your voice, trust yourself, and don’t succumb to fear and self-censorship

Posted on by Migrant Tales

When I moved to Finland over forty years ago, there were only about 10,000 foreigners living in the country. The biggest national group were the Swedes, who were mostly Finns who had become naturalized citizens of that country. One of the questions we asked back then was about the level of racism in Finland. 

The consensus back then was that the level of racism depended on the color of your skin.

Back in the good old structural racism days of the 1980s, laws such as the Restricting Act of 1939 (law 219/1939), which became redundant in 1992, prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies—limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission. Other “darlings” of that period were that foreigners weren’t allowed to establish newspapers, never mind organize demonstrations and be politically active.

At the time in Finland, there was no habeas corpus, no right to appeal your deportation, and no laws against racism never mind hate crime. Even Soviet citizens were forcibly returned to the former Soviet Union after requesting asylum.

In a country were immigrants were a rare sight but which had seen over 1.2 million of its countrymen and women emigrate between 1860 and 1999, racism and especially discrimination were like the egg-like objects in Alien that, when touched, were ready to attach a monster on the victim’s face.

Finnish social policy experts like Heikki Waris lived in academic denial in the cold war years of the 1960s. He claimed: “Racial homogeneity particularly characterizes the Finnish people who have practically no racial minorities…Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent.”

Take a look as well at the discrimination of the Saami never mind the hostile exclusion of the Roma from our society.

Like in other countries, Finland suffers from denial. A person who is in denial responds to social ills, like racism and bigotry, with silence, which is a political statement.

Some people in Finland, even educators, believe there is no racism in this country.

But there is tons of evidence that proves the contrary. The media, which reflects who we are and our prejudices as a society, shines a light that should worry us.

Below are a poster and some stories published by the Finnish media below that expose just that.

 

This story was published in September. Why is the woman wearing the niqab in the picture, which was later removed by YLE. Read the original story here.

This was used at Finnish schools up the 1970s to teach them the alphabet. It reads: An n-word washes her face but it does not whiten.

If we remain silent than we have only ourselves to blame.

Raising your voice is a powerful statement. Don’t squander it with your fear and self-censorship.

Finland’s struggle against racism, bigotry and social exclusion is a long one but we must start today on that journey to replace those structures that relegate us to being second-class citizens of this society.

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Päävo Väyrynen is Finland’s cold war foreign minister

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If there is one politician in Finland that gives some heartburn, that politician is without a doubt Paavo Väyrynen. It is unfortunate that the Finnish media doesn’t return to the cold war era and look into Väyrynen’s record when he was the foreign minister most of the time from 1977 to 1993. During that period there were severe censorship issues in the Finnish media and human rights violations when, among other things, Soviet citizens were forcibly returned to the USSR even after asking for asylum. Are we surprised that Väyrynen is anti-EU, anti-immigration and a nationalist?

He was always those things. Finland’s cold war stance was just that: anti-EU, anti-immigration, censorship, human rights violations, and nationalism.

The media should talk about his track record when mentioning Väyrynen.

Read full story here.

 

 

 

 

Ilari Kaila & Tuomas Kaila: Finland, we hardly knew

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Migrant Tales insight: The op-ed piece below gives another view of Finland that appears to always be the best, the happiest, the most successful in everything. All of this is happening, as the authors, Ilari Kaila and Tuomas Kaila correctly point out how the Finnish welfare state is being eroded with the rise of the far right.

The op-ed piece was published in Jacobin Magazine.

The Finnish welfare state is being eroded, and the far right has gained momentum. As the country turns one hundred, what’s happened to Finland?

You’ve got to hand it to Finland: in its centennial year, the country enjoys “strong brand recognition” and “positive brand sentiment” — to use the kind of corporate-speak that’s in vogue with much of Finland’s contemporary political class.

Judging by the international news stories circulating on social media, our native country is a veritable Shangri-La. Its citizens are ecstatically happy — perhaps because we are a mysterious people “of quiet strength and pride,” or because we’ve uncovered the “Secret to Success With Schools, Moms, Kids . . .and Everything.” Finns aren’t just technologically but socially innovative. Everyone is taken care of, from the cradle to the grave, by a friendly Santa Claus state: even as we speak, Finland is pushing the boundaries of its already stellar public education and social welfare systems. The country is welcoming and egalitarian, with free health care for all and high speeding tickets for millionaires. It’s inclusive and progressive; last in corruption, number one in homoerotic postage stamps.

But here’s a more urgent story you aren’t likely to see: much of what once made Finland an exceptional place to live is being systematically dismantled. Finland should not be held up as a beacon of equality and progress. All the media hype and myths notwithstanding, there is no secret Nordic formula for social justice. The famed Finnish welfare state, while still much more generous than the US’s, mirrors the trajectory of other industrialized nations, from its advancement after World War II to its current erosion. And with the curtailment of the welfare state, political space is opening up for the far right.

So how did we get here?

Read the full story here.

The Rise and Fall of a Nordic Welfare State

On New Year’s Eve 1917, a Finnish delegation, seeking an audience with Russia’s new Bolshevik leadership, waited patiently in the ice-cold lobby of the Council of People’s Commissars in St Petersburg. The place was brimming with people: chain-smoking commissars, civil servants, typists, sailors, Red Army officers.

Read the full story here.

Finlandization was very bad for refugees, especially Soviet asylum seekers

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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 eerie light on a disgraceful era we should never repeat. 

For those who aren’t that familiar with how Finland returned Soviet citizens to the USSR even if they asked for asylum, the journalist doesn’t tell us why the Soviet hijacker wanted the pilot to fly to Stockholm but ended up instead landing the plane in Finland.

The hijackers wanted to fly to Sweden because they knew they’d get political asylum in that country. Even the pilots knew, which explains why they tricked the hijackers into thinking that they were going to land in Stockholm but ended up at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.

After almost twenty years of searching, I finally made contact with a former Soviet citizen who crossed the border but was sent back to the USSR in 1976. While there are stories written in the Estonian media about such refugees, the story I published in Apu magazine was one of the few ever published in Finland about the whole ordeal.

Näyttökuva 2014-7-31 kello 8.22.22

 

Read full story here.

It’s unfortunate that Finland isn’t still ready to debate and open up that murky period to investigation.

Writes American Interest about Finland and the cold war:

Usually intended as a pejorative, “Finlandization” describes the phenomenon that occurs when a small country living alongside a large and aggressive neighbor accepts a reduction of its sovereignty, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, in order to maintain independence. The term derives from the posture of neutrality that Finland adopted during the Cold War.

I would go as far as to suggest that one of the roots of Finland’s present-day xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment, like with the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party in 2011, stem from the cold war era. It would be naive to believe that decades of geopolitical isolation and living next door to a country like the Soviet Union didn’t impact it.

Finland was during the cold war effectively a closed country to foreigners never mind foreign investment. Apart from wiping out the little cultural and ethnic diversity that this country enjoyed, the cold war era discouraged as well any serious debate about fascism in this country during the 1930s and especially in the Continuation War (1941-44), when we were an ally of Nazi Germany.

You may ask why Finland and it’s largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat, aren’t enthusiastic about opening up the stuffy dungeons of the past and our complex relations with Moscow.

A partial answer to that question lies in the picture on the Helsingin Sanomat story with Paavo Väyrynen, then foreign minister and today MEP.

 

Edward Snowden would help to put to rest Finland’s Cold War legacy

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Wikileaks said in a statement that whistleblower Edward Snowden had asked for political asylum in twenty-one countries, one of which included Finland. Understanding Finland’s history and its historic suspicion of foreigners, granting a high-profile asylum seeker like Snowden asylum in Finland would not only help to put to rest for good our poor record but have an overall positive impact.  

Ever wonder why there are so few foreigners living in Finland? The answer is simple: Finland did everything possible to discourage immigrants and foreign investment to the country.

Finland had in force its first Aliens’ Act in 1983, or 65 years after independence. Before that, the Aliens’ Office was a police state where you didn’t have the right to appeal a decision.

Without any law that regulated immigration affairs in Finland, the Restricting Act of 1939 (law 219/1939) made sure that foreign companies and foreigners as well would be discouraged from coming to the country.

The Restricting Act of 1939 prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies – limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission. The Act stipulated that foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate and shipping.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-7-2 kello 10.00.25

 

Even if Finland was the first European country to give women the right to vote in 1906, it was not until 1984 when their children were granted automatic citizenship rights. Only the children of Finnish fathers were granted Finnish citizenship.

While it sounds strange, Finland adapted well and profited from its geopolitical isolation during the Cold War because it helped reinforce racist myths about Finnish ethnicity despite the fact that over 1.2 million people had emigrated from this country between 1860 and 1999.

The authorities like Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) kept a close watch on immigrants.  Some of the matters that were written on my Supo-Interpol file that was accessed illegally by a person was that I was interested in human rights and organized a demonstration in 1981.

This sad legacy, which has improved from the dark days of the cold war, when Finland returned asylum seekers to the former Soviet Union with total disregard for their safety and human rights, is what still casts a shadow over our anti-immigration sentiment. The senior officials in the ministry of interior and in the Finnish Immigration Service grew up during the Cold War.

If Finns were brought up to see people who are different from them as enemies and reinforced with the help of its laws, it shouldn’t surprise us that an anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) became the third larges in parliament in April 2011.

Snowden would do wonders to bolster Finland’s standing as a country that firmly stands for human rights and respects asylum seekers. It would help show how our negative attitudes and fears about immigrants and refugees are outdated.

Max Jakobson dies but his legacy and the cold war linger on

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This blog entry is dedicated to the late Donald Fields, Helsinki correspondent of the BBC, The Guardian and Politiken to 1988.  

I read with mixed thoughts about the death of Max Jakobson (1923-2013),  a diplomat who shaped Finland’s policy of neutrality during the cold war. While I am certain that he was an able diplomat, he was no friend of dissension or anyone who dared to question Helsinki’s sacrosanct foreign policy with Moscow. 

He didn’t hide his disdain for foreign correspondents as can be seen in the summer 1980 issue of Foreign Affairs: “…Finland is forever at the mercy of the itinerant columnist who after lunch and cocktails in Helsinki is ready to pronounce himself upon the fate of the Finnish people. A person visiting, say, London for the first time, who does not know English and has only a vague notion of the significance of Dunkirk or the role of Winston Churchill, would hardly be regarded as qualified to comment on the British scene today.”

Did cold war Finland have to treat the media with such contempt and overbearing censorship?

Future historians will shed light on that question.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-3-12 kello 0.31.46

Helsingin Sanomat writes about the death of Max Jakobson on Monday’s edition.

In the 1980s, people like Pekka Karhuvaara, Lasse Lehtinen, Matti Kohva, Ralf Friberg and others made sure that what you wrote about Helsinki-Moscow relations was to their liking and toed the official foreign policy line.

If you didn’t you were black listed, period.

The foreign ministry together with Finnfacts did everything possible to brighten Finland’s name by inviting foreign journalists to the country. They would pay their trips, stay, wine and dine them to win them over. Many, I’m certain, became good friends of this country after such freebies.

My first attempt to interview Jakobson was  in 1989 shortly after I started to work  for the Financial Times in Helsinki. First he accepted the interview but later canceled it.

I suspect the reason why Jakobson canceled the interview was because he had learned about my stand against the Soviet Union, Finnish foreign policy and especially those Soviet asylum seekers who were deported back to the former U.S.S.R.

I got my second chance when Christian Tyler of the Financial Times came to Finland to do a special  report on the eventual demise of the Soviet Union and its impact on Finland.  Tyler had an appointment with Jakobson and I tagged along.

This is what we wrote in The last wall in Europe, published in January 1991:

“Even Max Jakobson, the distinguished former diplomat and most eloquent apologist for Finland’s extreme post-war neutrality, agrees that the government has been traditionally inhospitable to immigrants and slow to respond to the turmoil around its borders. “The period of stagnation was not bad for Finland,” he said but he added: “There is nothing wrong with stagnation if you can do it on a high income level as we did.” Finland had no obligation to Soviet citizens, but rather an opportunity. “Our obligation is to look after our own interests.”

The foreign ministry wasn’t naturally happy with what we wrote. Tyler told me that he published in a separate story an interview with Jakobson, which was more favarable.

While the cold war is still too close to us to study objectively, I suspect that future researchers and historians will look at this period with mixed feelings. Even if we were able to build a successful Nordic welfare state after the armistice with Moscow in 1944, we were near-isolated form the world. Even if we lost hundreds of thousands of able workers who migrated to Sweden after World War 2, we kept our borders effectively closed to immigrants and the outside world.

No matter how much you tried to accept the foreign ministry’s and Jakobson’s view of Finland’s neutrality, it always boiled down to censorship and even greater doses of self-censorship. Thanks to Finland’s near-isolation, foreign investment was almost negligible thanks to the Restricting Act of 1939 (law 219/1939) and it was not until 1983, 65 years after independence, that Finland got its first Aliens Act.

What is the legacy that Jakobson and Finland’s cold war foreign policy left on Finland?

While both kept Finland from becoming a Warsaw Pact member, it came with a high price. The cost can be seen today in our attitudes and suspicion of foreigners, especially of Russians.

If we still believe that we are at war with Russia, how can we be an open society that aims to integrate newcomers?

If there is anything holding us back, it is the cold war legacy.

 

Finland’s cold war era: media censorship and suspicion of the outside world

Posted on by Migrant Tales

 Enrique Tessieri

How much did censorship and self-censorship affect Finland during the cold war? The answer to that question lies in the dusty archives of Finland’s media. What kinds of editorial did Helsingin Sanomat write about the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and what did our major dailies say about what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968?  What kind of press freedom was there in a country where discussing, never mind questioning, the official foreign policy line was forbidden?

Little was written about Finland in the English language media prior to European Union membership in 1995. Apart from Reuters and Associated Press, only the Financial Times (FT) wrote regularly about Finland. As FT Helsinki correspondent in 1989-91, I averaged about two stories a week.

Some of the stories that I filed to London and other European capitals weren’t liked by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and associations like Finnfacts, whose job was to win over foreign correspondents with free all-expenses-paid visits to Finland.

It’s unbelievable, but I actually wrote the following in the 1991-92 edition of The Europe Review: “Democratic reforms that swept Eastern Europe during the end of 1989 [fall of the Berlin Wall]…brought new challenges to Finland’s foreign policy…Furthermore, hitherto-unknown debate on sensitive issues like EC [EU] membership and the Finnish-Soviet treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance [FCMA] were being openly debated by academicians and politicians as well as by the local press.”

Max Jakobson, a diplomat who helped shape Finland’s policy of neutrality during the cold war, didn’t hide his anger at those foreign correspondents who disagreed with the official foreign policy line.

In the summer 1980 issue of Foreign Affairs he wrote: “…Finland is forever at the mercy of the itinerant columnist who after lunch and cocktails in Helsinki is ready to pronounce himself upon the fate of the Finnish people. A person visiting, say, London for the first time, who does not know English and has only a vague notion of the significance of Dunkirk or the role of Winston Churchill, would hardly be regarded as qualified to comment on the British scene today.”

Contrary to Jakobson’s claims, there were correspondents who lived in Finland for many years and were well-informed about the situation. These included the late Donald Fields, whom I had the opportunity to meet and speak to before he passed away, and myself.

If there was one matter on which Fields and I disagreed with concerning Finland policy of neutrality, it was how it encouraged censorship of the media and human rights violations when it came to asylum-seekers from the former Soviet Union.

No matter how much you tried to accept the foreign ministry’s and Jakobson’s thinking on Finland’s neutrality, it always boiled down to a bigger issue: geopolitical isolation and suspicion of the surrounding world. Foreign investment was almost negligible thanks to the Restricting Act of 1939 and it was not until 1983, 65 years after independence, that Finland got its first Aliens’ Act.

The Restricting Act of 1939 prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies – limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission. The Act stipulated that foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate and shipping.

The Restricting Act of 1939, which was passed during the Great Depression, became redundant in 1992.

I once wrote a short story for Spain’s leading news magazine Cambio 16 in 1986 about the contraband trade in Bibles from Finland to the USSR.

A Finnish diplomat whom I knew in Madrid told me how furious they had been about what I had written. She said outright that if I continued to write about such topics, then I would be blacklisted by the foreign ministry.

The press section of the foreign ministry and Finnfacts were a pretty ruthless bunch ready to destroy your career if they could, and to complain directly to your employer, the foreign editor. Employees of the foreign ministry when I was FT correspondent included Ralf Friberg, Lasse Lehtinen and Pekka Karhuvaara. Matti Kohva was head of Finnfacts.

I once got into a public argument with Friberg when he suggested during a lunch at the Savoy Restaurant that I should consult him before writing about Helsinki-Moscow relations.

Cold war winds still chill Finland's ongoing debate on racism and social exclusion

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The anger and surprise that Gerry Brownlee has stirred up in this country sheds light why debating an issue like discriminaiton is so diffeicult to accept by some Finns. The  New Zealand minister sharply criticised Finland last week in an address in parliament. Is our anger due to our low self-esteem or to the cold war, when censorship and self-censorship were pretty much the rule?

The first story that I published about Finnish-Soviet relations was for Spain’s leading newsmagazine, Cambio16, in the mid-1980s. The story was about how Bibles were smuggled to the former Soviet Uinon from Finland.

It didn’t take long for a Finnish foreign ministry official to express her dislike for what I wrote. Another embassy official in Madrid, whom I knew, was very straightforward: “If you continue writing those kind of stories you will be blacklisted by the foreign ministry,” she said.

During the end of the 1980s, the foreign ministry spent hundreds of thousands of Finnishmarks inviting foreign journalists to Finland. This was done through Finnfacts. I never knew what Finnfacts’ real role was back then except that its employees toured, wined and dined many of the foreign journalists that came to  Finland.

How much objectivity can you expect from a newspaper if the foreign ministry pays the reporters his plane ticket, lodging and stay in Finland? When I worked for BridgeNews in 1998-2001, we weren’t allowed to accept any gift that was worth over $25.

Some names that come to mind from that period are Matti Kohva, head of Finnfacts, Ralf Friberg, Lasse Lehtinen and Pekka Karhuvaara of the foreign ministry. It sounds incredible but back in those days these officials watched over what foreign journalists wrote like white on rice. They made sure that they followed the official foreign policy line, which did not recognize cold war terms such as Finlandization.

One lunch date I had at the Savoy Restaurant in Helsinki, Friberg asked me to my surprsie that I should get in touch with him if I wrote about Finnish-Soviet relations. At the time I worked for the London Financial Times. Considering that Friberg could make such a suggestion, showed how far the foreign ministry would go to get its point across.

Not only did the foreign ministry watch closely what was written in the foreign media, but they exerted the same influence over the local media. If you do not agree, read the editorials when Soviet forces overran Czechoslovakia in 1968. All the evidence is sitting under our noses.

It goes without saying that the foreign ministry and Finnfacts decalred war on me for exposing what Friberg suggested. They did every thing possible to blackwash me.

Fortunately, I found work abroad in Argentina, Colombia, Spain and Italy as a foreign correspondent and burueau chief. My journalistic career reached new heights thanks to the opportunity I got to work for the big newspaper leagues outside of Finland.

My point is the following: The same mistrust that existed in official circles of foreign correspondents and their utter rejection of anyone who dared question Finnish-Soviet relations at the time is happening today when debating racism and social exclusion. In other words, who are you to tell us we’re wrong?

If you agree it explains a lot of things. For one it reveals why there are so few immigrants and Finns with international backgrounds taking part in the ongoing debate.

Certainly, like during the cold war, you can write and debate these issues today as long as you don’t stray too far from the official or general view of things.