violence Archives - Page 3 of 4

Christian Thibault: Don’t let fear intimidate you but watch your back!

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Christian Thibault, chairman of Rasmus, an anti-racism NGO, asks how safe are our streets for migrants and minorities after Sunday’s parliamentary elections? Thibault is concerned but doesn’t want anyone to live in fear.

“Don’t withdraw into safe ghettos,” he continued, “but be careful especially this coming weekend [when people of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* will be celebrating the party’s election victory].”

Just like after an ice-hockey world championship, or after an election victory, fans and followers can get pretty violent when celebrating.

We’ve already seen some violence after Sunday’s elections reported in Facebook. Two of these are are by JT and “Abdulah” (see below). JT wrote about a group of white Finns that attacked this week a migrant on a commuter train.

“The ice is thawing but can we say the same about intolerance and xenophobia in Finland?” Thibault said. “I don’t think so. The elections have emboldened some Finns to act in a hostile manner against migrants and minorities.”

Continue reading “Christian Thibault: Don’t let fear intimidate you but watch your back!”

Timo Soini and the PS: “What goes around comes around”

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairman Timo Soini has good acting skills and a poor memory. At a press conference Thursday he told us about the death threats he’s received. I know how he feels because I too have received such death threats possibly from people inspired by the PS’ populist and hateful ideology.

Even if I’ve lived in countries like Argentina and Colombia, I never got death threats. That happened to me for the first time in the early 1990s in Finland, when I was doing a big story for Apu magazine on the refugee center of Mikkeli.

There is a perfect quote that sits well with Soini and the PS in light of today’s press conference: “What goes around comes around,” which means that whether you do good or bad things to other people, the same will return to you.

For some white Finns the PS may be a good party but for some migrants and minorities in this country like Muslims it can be an extremely hateful and dangerous party.

Read full Iltalehti (in Finnish) story here.

While all types of threats should be condemned, Soini forgets that he has with the PS created a monster of his own making that has come to haunt him with his death threats.

How many migrants and visible minorities face racism and hostility on a daily basis in this country because of Soini’s cronies like MEP Jussi Halla-aho and the likes are exercising their “free speech” to disenfranchise them?

Soini has with the PS polarized Finland and encouraged many of his followers to be proud bigots.

All the hate, bigotry and racism that parties like the PS are spreading goes and comes around.

* The English name of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is officially the Finns Party. The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

A tragic message from Copenhagen

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Violence shouldn’t have any place in our society but neither should we lose sight of why these violent acts occur in Europe today. In a society that defends civil rights such as freedom of expression, violence has no place and should be condemned.

Violence can, however, come in many forms: bombs and killing people in cold blood. You can also use “a silencer” to hide the bombs and bullets and target whole groups in subtler and more effective ways like social exclusion, racism and bigotry.

Both are unacceptable and put at risk our own values.

Even if we still do not know the motives behind the attacks in Copenhagen, is it appropriate to begin labeling whole groups with a single brush?

Here is the message from my Muslim friend Bashy Quraishy in Copenhagen:

Many of my foreign friends have sent me SMS, emails and even called from far away lands to enquire if I was OK. They have heard about the fatal shootings in Copenhagen and were worried about my safety…

While it is absolutely important for all of us to condemn and denounce any act of violence, it is also necessary to do it with clear heart and conscious and not for any populist gains. It is always sad and unfortunate when violence is committed against civilians, resulting in death and injuries.

In my books, it does not matter who commits violence, from what culture, class, religion or ethnicity, the criminal belongs to. Violence is violence and we must distance ourselves from such inhumane acts.

Unfortunately, like it happened in 9/11 and even in Paris attacks, the experts and journalists have quickly started using the terms such as; Islamic terrorist, Jihadi and ISIS sympathizer to describe the lone gunman. The fact is that police has no clue, authorities have not mentioned the religion and media has not seen the person but on TV2, Breaking News coverage, DR2 Deadline and in newspaper Internet editions, Islam is already being dragged in the picture.

On the national TV2 channel, the gunman is described on the screen – from the first moment – as; Arabic looking and with very fair color. Someone must ask these Islamophobes on TV2; what is an Arabic looking person and how do they know he was an Arab?

Some sound thoughts during this moment of grieving.

Are Bush’s Iraq War and Abu Ghraib torture to blame as well for the Charlie Hebdo attack?

Posted on January 10, 2015 by Migrant Tales

When I reflect on what happened this week in Paris my thoughts drift to George W. Bush and his proclamation that the United States is on a crusade against terrorism. Juan Cole, an expert on Middle East politics, asks an important question on his blog:

Having American troops occupy it [Baghdad] for 8 years, humiliate its citizens, shoot people at checkpoints, and torture people in military prisons was a very bad idea. Some people treated that way become touchy, and feel put down, and won’t take slights to their culture and civilization any longer. Maybe the staff at Charlie Hebdo would be alive if George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney hadn’t modeled for the Kouashi brothers how you take what you want and rub out people who get in your way.

Certainly nobody is condoning the Charlie Hedbo attack but neither should we lose focus on the big picture: hundreds of years of colonialism, exploitation, rise of Islamophobia, Palestine and recent wars in the Middle East.

And just as worse, there are the opportunists that are aiming to profit from what happened. Some that come to mind are Marine Le Pen, Gert Wilders, from Finland Olli Immonen and Jussi Halla-aho, both members of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.

US President George W. Bush declaring “this crusade, this war on terrorism” shortly after 9/11. According to Juan Cole, the Charlie Hebdo attack could possibly been avoided if Bush wouldn’t have embarked on a reckless war in Iraq.

Then Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg took a totally different strategy to Bush’s 9/11 response. Stoltenberg said after the 22/7 attacks by Anders Breivik that his country’s response would be “more openness, more democracy and greater political participation.” The Norwegian prime minister is today secretary general of Nato.

In Argentina during the 1970s, young people had three choices under a dictatorship: take up arms, remain silent and leave the country.

In Finland in 1904, Eugen Schauman became a national hero when he assassinated Governor-General Nikolai Bobrikov. The context was Russification, a powerful-backward empire like Russia that wanted to undermine Finland’s autonomy. From a Russian perspective what Schauman did must have been murder but from our point of view he became a national hero.

I personally am suspicious of violence and war because I’ve seen my fair share of them. I made a promise when I left Argentina in 1977, when it was ruled by a ruthless military dictatorship, to never kill a human being for as long as I live. It wasn’t an easy promise to make at the time.

In a war, the state resolves the moral and ethical issues for you. It gives you the moral answers to justify killing others. When you join a group like al-Qaeda and the likes, however, you have a choice because usually it’s your decision to be a part of such a group.

So what will we learn from what happened in Paris this week? Will we finally learn to sit around a table and negotiate in good faith and with respect to resolve our differences?

Or will the wall that helps our denial get thicker?

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Violent language

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Some Finns don’t grasp how violent anti-immigration groups are and the role of institutional racism, which serves and supports such groups. Every lie, distorted and exaggerated fact concocted against migrants and visible minorities is a bullet.

These anti-immigration groups and their supporters are, however, big cowards. They often threaten, slander and distort facts anonymously. Some may even write to your employer – anonymously of course – and chastise you in the hope that you’ll get fired from your job.

Even though I got my first death threats in Finland in the early 1990s after I wrote about Somali and African asylum seekers in Mikkeli for Finland’s largest magazine, Apu, matters have gotten worse since those days.

That’s why I believe that the Perussuomalaiset, especially their far-right and anti-immigration wing, are a big threat to the security of migrants and visible minorities. The Perussuomalaiset aren’t the only political party in Finland that has racists. You can find them in all parties.

Violence doesn’t always have to be physical and can be found in the form of institutional racism. It lives at elementary schools where children of migrant parents are openly labeled as “them,” or “other.”

Inequality is violence with a capital “V” especially in a noble country like Finland.

It’s high time that we recognize and challenge violent language against migrants and all minorities.

Being “critical of migrants” is only a code word for racism and hostility.

Read posting in Finnish here.

Zuzeeko’s blog: Minorities in Finland face unequal treatment, even in death

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Zuzeeko Tegha Abeng*

Family murders are common in Finland and whenever they happen the media mentions the nationality or origin of the perpetrator and the victim. But the origin of the most recent victim of Finland’s string of disturbing family murders was kept under wraps. Some people, including me wonder why.

On 1 September 2013, a 42-year-old Finnish man killed his wife in their home (see photo) in Nurmijärvi, a town in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The man killed himself thereafter and seriously wounded his slain wife’s 3-year-old daughter.

Finnish media usually reports the nationality of family murder victims, but there seemed to be a cover up in the Nurmijärvi case. In June 2013 the media made no secret of the killing of an Estonian woman by her Finnish partner. The unambiguous report of the June case involving two white Europeans puts into question why a young [African] woman killed in Nurmijärvi under similar circumstances related to domestic violence was merely labelled “maahanmuuttajataustainen” (immigrant background) by news outlets.

According to sources who wish to remain anonymous, the 26-year-old woman of “immigrant background” was from Democratic Republic of Congo.

In my view, it is not by chance that the African victim’s origin was omitted from Finnish news reports. The information blackout was a calculated attempt to avoid speculation by members of the public that the killing was racially motivated. I do not believe that race motivated the killing, since the killer was married to the victim. However, I do believe there was a cover up in a bid to sway public discourse away from the murky waters of immigration and growing racism in Finland. The glaring omission reveals that issues related to people of African descent in Finland are rather swept under the rug.

Otherwise it is incomprehensible why the media identified the Helsinki west harbor victim a few months earlier, for instance, as an Estonian and concealed the origin of the Nurmijärvi victim who happened to be African. Some might consider it an unintentional omission or oversight. But I do not see it that way since all prominent news sites left out the information the last time I checked.

Private individuals are protected by privacy laws and issues like their finances and bank records are usually a no-go area for the media. But Iltalehti took a cheap shot at the Nurmijärvi victim’s reputation by publishing information about her financial difficulties in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

In my assessment, it is inappropriate to make national news out of a private individual’s finances, especially when the information has no bearing on a case. Making news of a murder victim’s financial record, which has no bearing on the case, was out-of-the-ordinary, irresponsible and unnecessary.

I have seen a photograph of the slain 26-year-old Congolese. She was young and seemingly full of life. I am sure she will be missed by her family, friends and loved ones. Thanks to independent research and credible sources I can now put a name and face to a slain member of Finland’s visible minority community who was labelled and treated unlike the majority, even in death.

According to a source, a funeral will take place in Jyväskylä on 14 September 2013.

Read original blog entry here.

*Zuzeeko Tegha Abeng is an associate editor of Migrant Tales.

PS far right: Hirvisaari publicly supports the Finnish Defense League

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Is it a surprise that far right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP James Hirvisaari now publicly supports the Finnish Defence League, which is an offshoot of the far right English Defense League (EDL)? Not really. The EDL is the fastest-growing far right street movement in England since the National Front erupted in the 1970s.

In a span of about two weeks, two of the PS’ MPs, Olli Immonen and Hirvisaari, have pledged their allegiance to far right groups, Suomen Sisu and the FDL.

What are we supposed to make out of this? Nothing, really, except that there are politicians and associations that aim to make extremism and hate speech normal and acceptable to mainstream Finns.

Writes Hirvisaari on Facebook: “Having read a link that gives a general picture [of the FDL], I can based on this give my support to their activities. But if it appears that there is something far right or far left or violence or racism connected [to the FDL], I will take back my support. :)”

Hirvisaari was sentenced for ethnic agitation in December 2011.

Take a look at this video to see who the EDL are and what the FDL supports.

University of Eastern Finland concerned over threats to their racism researchers

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Unions representing racism and multiculturalism researchers at the University of Eastern Finland, expressed concern Wednesday over the threats they are receiving, reports YLE in English.

In a joint statement, the unions said that such threats to its researchers should be a cause for concern, especially in a region where intolerance is on the rise.

“Our researchers into racism and multiculturalism have been subjected to threats,” said Antero Puhakka of the Negotiation Organization for Public Sector Professionals (JUKO). “Anonymous threatening letters have been posted to their homes and researchers have faced abuse on Facebook. Complaints regarding the activities of researchers and teachers have been filed with the vice-chancellor or to a higher authority.”

The JUPO representatives added that their must be zero tolerance for such harassment and intimidation.

We should never give in to racists, who have no regard for our democratic way of life and who believe they can intimidate people they disagree with. If we permit intimidation and fear to overtake our good judgement, the threat to ourselves and our society will become much worse.

Migrant Tales has been a target of death threats in the past and of harassment.

Interior minister: Far right isn’t “a big threat” despite what happened in Jyväskylä

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Christian Democrat Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen condemned the attack by three suspected neo-Nazi thugs in Jyväskylä as an assault against freedom of speech and the right to assembly, reports YLE. She didn’t consider, however, the far right to be a threat to Finland but said that the authorities aim to do more work to address social marginalization.

Whether the far right is a threat or not to Finland depends on your perspective. If you are a white interior minister and a member of the Christian Democratic Party, maybe the threat of the far right isn’t such a pressing issue.

The minister who is making such a statement believes homosexuality to be a sin, begging should be made illegal, and approves indirectly ethnic profiling by the police.

In many respects, it’s the same question if racism and discrimination are widespread or not in Finland. If you are white it’s more difficult to grasp the problem than if you are a visible minority.

While social marginalization may be one of the culprits that is fueling far right ideology in Europe and Finland, there are others like intolerance and prejudice taught at home.

Challenging far right ideology, and the 98 octane fuel (racism, xenophobia, prejudice, marginalization, among others) that feeds it, must be everyone’s priority.

The first important step is that our reaction to far right violence and its ideology should be first and foremost a reaction.

Räsänen’s views on what happened in Jyväskylä and its causes show a very meek rection.

Older woman assaulted at Myllypuro metro station in Helsinki

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

An older woman was attacked on Wednesday at Helsinki’s Myllypuro metro station, according to Metro’s April 26th edition.While the story does not state the ethnic background of the woman, Migrant Tales understands that the victim may be a Somali.

The woman, who suffered injuries to the face, was taken to hospital by ambulance.

The attacker, believed to be a young male, is still at large.

The police are expecting to determine the man’s identity by today.