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?
Tag: Soviet Union
Soviet refugees in Finland: No escape to freedom
I met Aleksander Shatravka in 2009 thanks to Migrant Tales. Finally after over twenty years searching as a journalist for such a person. He was one of twelve former Soviet citizens documented by Amnesty International who was forcibly returned to the USSR.
Finland’s belated response to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
Finland lags behind Europe in some areas. Good examples are immigration and reaction to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Is the growth of right-wing populism in Finland today only a belated response to the demise of the former Soviet Union in 1991 and Berlin Wall?
What opinion polls tell us about Finland and anti-immigration
A lot of people are scratching their heads at the rise of the rue Finns in the polls. Even though we have to wait for the ballot boxes to speak in April, certainly the polls tall us something about where Finland is at and heading at this moment.
The origins of modern Finnish xenophobia and racism
Modern Finnish racism has two sources: nationalism imbedded deep in our history coupled with low self-esteem.
Foreign journalists and Finnish interpretations of history
If one wants to do an interesting study into the role of the state and the media, one could look at the cold war years of Finland.
Mannerheim and Finnish provincialism
I heard yesterday an interesting talk on Marshall Carl Mannerheim (1867-1951) just a few days before the outbreak of the Winter War (1939-1940) exactly 70 years ago. The talk centered on different aspects of the Civil War of 1918 and how Mannerheim saw the world.