Tag: xenophobia

Finland: Retreating into a shell and fuelling xenophobia and racism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As Finland retreats deeper into its shell and ethnocentrism, it feeds the beast of xenophobia and racism. Apart from Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Laura Huhtasaari, who openly encourages direct violence and hatred against migrants and minorities, there are others that are just as guilty. 

Who are they?

Interior Minister Paula Risikko and former Interior Ministry official Päivi Nerg have warned us over and over how undocumented migrants threaten our security. If Risikko and Nerg told us with gusto about the threats, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government has done little to nothing to challenge such xenophobic statements.

See the full tweet here.

Volker Türk, UNHCR assistant high commissioner for refugees, said last year that labelling refugees as security threats “risks opening the door to xenophobic and racist rhetoric and can even lead to physical attacks directed against refugees.”

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President Sauli Niinistö office wants to censor the Feminist Party of Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

President Sauli Niinistö’s track record on defending Nordic values and cultural diversity (non-white society) has been a disappointment for many. He is more than ready to protect white Finnish privilege and power but rarely, if ever, the rights of asylum seekers, visible minorities, and migrants. 

The latest action comes from President Sauli Niinistö’s office which requested in the fall the head of the Feminist Party Katju Aro to retract from criticizing the president’s interpretation of the ongoing debate on migrants, minorities, and racism.

The Feminist Party chairperson said in a statement that President Niinistö isn’t serious about defending human and migrant rights in Finland when he referred to people who spoke out against racism as “one extreme.” According to Aro, this view reveals that President Niinistö doesn’t understand the context of the ongoing debate.

We at Migrant Tales couldn’t agree more with Aro’s analysis.

Read the full statement (in Finnish) here.

While Niinistö has, like Prime Minister Theresa May of the UK, referred to threats such as “uncontrolled” migration, that asylum seekers are a danger to European values, and that dual citizens threaten national security, the president’s office request to Aro is a direct glimpse into the stuffy closet Cold War Finland.

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Ahti Tolvanen: Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö’s announces legislative initiative to cleanse the ministry of foreign dual citizens

Posted on by Migrant Tales

This brought me back to the days of my reckless youth when I arrived in Finland in the early 70s to study at university. At that time a foreign citizen was not allowed by law to hold any kind of “virka” i.e. permanent public job.  A foreign citizen was also not even allowed to marry a Finn.  There were also a host of  private sector and community jobs a foreigner could not hold like newspaper editor, city counselor, shop steward and board member in a company or association.

Little did I know at the time that I would eventually take on all of these ” illegal” activites.

Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö is a member of an anti-immigration party (formerly Perussuomalaiset, today Blue Reform*) with ties to far-right groups. Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

This was not the Finland, the fierce defender of freedom, I expected to find. This was a closed society with apparently a huge case of xenophobia with one administrative rule after another to exclude and kick out foreigners. There was actually no appeal process for foreigners who got deportation notices. Just leave or else. It was worse than Trump’s USA in that everyone seemed resigned to it and it had gone on for decades. In some ways it was like North Korea in that everybody seemed happy with the very closed system. The exception was that almost everybody had enough to eat.

I turned into a kind of career rule basher or a kind of a reluctant corporate guerrilla. It probably started when I fell in love with a Finnish woman. I actually had to chase down the Minister of Justice to get special government permission to marry. After that success I decided to stay and make it stick. That was in the vows too.

Continue reading “Ahti Tolvanen: Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö’s announces legislative initiative to cleanse the ministry of foreign dual citizens”

The police should investigate MV for labeling people “terrorists” and publishing their pictures

Posted on by Migrant Tales

MV-lehti is a racist trash publication that doesn’t care to put people in harm’s way by labeling them as “terrorists” as did happen in Murha.info. Migrant Tales believes that one of the many defamation cases and crimes investigated by the police involving MV should involve an Iraqi asylum seeker called Jihad Baghdadi.

Baghdadi’s picture was published in MV-lehti last spring, and this put the asylum seeker in direct danger with far-right vigilante groups like the Soldiers of Odin. On spotting Baghdadi in the Helsinki neighborhood of Kallio in spring, members of the vigilante group started to chase the asylum seeker.

Bahdhadi luckily escaped capture after he boarded a tram.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is NaÌ?yttoÌ?kuva-2019-10-14-kello-18.57.54.png

Read the full story here.

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A letter to the Non-Discrimination Ombudsperson Kirsi Pimiä

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dear Kirsi,

I have written to PM Juha Sipilä twice concerning his ‘reluctance’ to publicly acknowledge racial discrimination in Finland (FRA EU MIDIS-II 2017 12.12.2017 meeting in Helsinki).

Cultural diversity is a highly emotive subject especially when one becomes a victim of racially motivated hatred and intentional discrimination.

Go to original posting here.

You have acknowledged the results of the EU MIDIS-II report – together with Deputy State Prosecutor [Raija Toiviainen]– and I thank you and others for speaking out on this politically sensitive issue. I believe that you deserve the backing and support of an administration that has thus far shown only weakness and ineptitude in challenging racism and discrimination. Denial of racism in Finland – such as the 2015 Nordic Media press conference showed – is no longer acceptable.

In my opinion, leadership should come from the PM, and I have invited PM Juha Sipilä to engage with his critics and take action to eradicate discrimination and other social ills that affect Finnish society.

The FRA EU MIDIS-II 2017 report – together with insight from [FRA Director] Prof M O’Flaherty – confirms that the Finnish government can no longer deny that there ISN’T a problem. It is also evident that this issue – if permitted to persist – will lead to dissent and hatred (possibly radicalization) within Finland.

For perhaps too many new Finnish citizens in Finland are relegated to live as second-class citizens with third-rate representation.

I have personal experience of racist treatment and discrimination against myself and my family, including my daughter, who was bullied by a racist school teacher. The same school teachers also attempted to destroy our family with harmful false allegations. My Finnish wife was in total disbelief that this happened in her country. The resulting fallout ended in one teacher’s suspension from the school and the others getting yelled at (we were told unofficially).

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Finland’s Perussuomalaiset party and its disdain for #metoo and our institutions

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racism and Islamophobia are nothing more than pigheaded ignorance. 

What do you do if an Islamophobic MP called Teuvo Hakkarainen gets so drunk in parliament that he picks a fight with other MPs from the rival Blue Reform party by throwing bottles at their meeting? What about if that same MP, convicted for hate speech, grabs a fellow woman MP and forces her to kiss him? 

All of this happened on Thursday.

What about if an aid for the PS got so drunk the same day at a Christmas party in parliament that he was carried out and taken to a hospital in an ambulance?

 

Teuvo Hakkarainen on his first day in parliament in 2011.

What about if the leader of the PS, Jussi Halla-aho, believes that exposing this type of inappropriate behavior is synonymous with “undermining trust” between politicians and the media?

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Finland’s lost decade flirting with racism, fascism and the Perussuomalaiset party

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Sampo Terho, minister culture, sport and European affairs, was elected on Saturday to chair Blue Reform, a Lilliputian party that split from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* after their plush ministerial jobs were on the line after Jussi Halla-aho was elected PS chairperson in June. 

Even if the PS imploded into two factions, the Blue Reform party continues in government despite its roughly 1% backing in the latest polls.

Terho admitted Saturday that the new party’s aim is a long and challenging one. He said that the final goal is to become the biggest party in Finland.

The new chairman of Blue Reform can fantasize about the future. The PS’ opportunity came in the 2011 and 2015 parliamentary elections but was dashed by power struggles and infighting.

Finland has paid a high price to learn today that parties like the PS and Blue Reform are a deception because the only thing they like to do is offer simplistic solutions to complex issues, scapegoat and never offer effective solutions.

The lies and the fantasies coming out of Blue Reform appear never-ending. Terho said that his party helped salvage Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government and thereby ensured that the country’s anti-EU stance and anti-immigration policy would continue.

“Finland has a more sensible immigration policy [now] where the economic burden of granting residence permits on humanitarian grounds, uncontrolled immigration and security risks are checked,” he said, adding that one of the government’s accomplishments, thanks to Blue Reform, is putting an end to “asylum tourism.”

Fact check: It is questionable whether there was any economic burden of Finland for granting residence permits on humanitarian grounds. The Finnish Immigration Service’s numbers speak for themselves: 2016 (50 cases); 2015 (6); 2014 (4); 2013 (11); 2012 (112); 2011 (143); and 2010 (654). 

Exaggerating and feeding fake news to the public is nothing new by politicians like Terho, who loathes cultural diversity. He also wants through the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity (Suomalaisuuden liitto) for Finland to remain white and ensure our history is thoroughly whitewashed.

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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.

 

 

 

 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Unspeakable politicians and their own gain

Posted on by Migrant Tales

White Finns rarely consult migrants and minorities on anything important. They may ask them their opinion on x and y but the final decision on policy is made by them because you don’t really count. And then there are people like Jussi Halla-aho, Laura Huhtasaari, Timo Soini, Wille Rydman, and many others who pour gasoline and stoke the fires of ethnic hatred in this country. It is unspeakable that they do so for their own gain. 

Timo Soini telling an Old Perussuomalaiset racist to behave. at the end of the day, Soini got his fingers burned and ejected from the party. If there is a person who gave fascism, racism, homophobia, and sexism a platform in this country, that person is Soini.

* After the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity.  One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic. Both could be called the “new” and “old” PS. 

A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Lack of empathy

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The lack of empathy by politicians and the government for the suffering of vulnerable groups like asylum seekers came to light again when two refugees stabbed themselves in protest of Finland’s asylum policy. Lack of empathy is the first step or reminder that our society is dysfunctional and in trouble. War now seems a possibility. 

“Old” Perussuomalaiseet* MP Tom Packalén with his shined shoes and is total lack of empathy, a national illness these days. Cartoon by Sira Moksi.

* After the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity.  One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic. Both could be called the “new” and “old” PS. 

A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.