Tag: xenophobia

Undermining and attacking dual citizenship rights is a hostile provocation against social equality and cultural diversity in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The ongoing debate about the perceived threat of dual nationals in Finland and the proximity of municipal elections should raise some serious questions. One of these is why are we having such a discussion now and who is fueling it?

The answer is more than obvious and highlights a segment of society that refuses to see multicultural Finns, migrants and minorities as equal members of society. These are none other than the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and other parties that are suspicious of cultural diversity in varying degrees, like the Center Party and National Coalition Party.

The proximity of the municipal elections on April 9 is crucial for the PS, which has seen its popularity in the polls plummet, to show to its government partners that it is still has political life in it.

Thursday’s A-studio talked about the threat that dual citizens pose. PS MP Simon Elo revealed with his comments that plans to discriminate against dual nationals and water down their rights is a general political strategy of his anti-immigration populist party to undermine cultural diversity in Finland. See full talk show here.

The debate on dual citizenship in Finland reveals how institutional racism works in this country and how some political parties will stop at nothing to undermine the civil rights of minorities.

YLE News published on January 31 a story where it claimed that the defense forces place restrictions on dual nationals of Finland and Russia.

“Finnish Defense Forces have not been waiting for legislative changes but have adopted their own rules and procedures for dealing with Russian-Finnish dual nationals,” YLE News reported.

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Finns have finally woken up to a lie and bully called the Perussuomalaiset party

Posted on by Migrant Tales

After bullying, labeling and scapegoating migrants and minorities for a number of years, the Perussuomalaiset party (PS)* appears to be returning to the minor one-digit political leagues, if a recent poll by Helsingin Sanomat is true. Those groups that the PS has attacked and spread lies about will have the last laugh. 

While there is still a long way to go before the parliamentary elections of 2019, the municipal elections are just around the corner on April 9.

A poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat shows the Perussuomalaiset in the minor one-digit political leagues with 8.6% Source: Helsingin Sanomat.

Some analysts believe that if the PS does poorly in the municipal elections, which would mean below 10% of the votes, it may prompt the party to exit government. Depending which party replaces the PS or if new elections are called, it could even mean an about-turn in immigration policy.

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(Institute of Race Relations) Morton Hall: another death in immigration detention

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Harmit Athwal

On 11 January an unnamed 27-year-old Polish man was found dead in Morton Hall immigration removal centre in Lincolnshire, the first death this year and the 29th death in immigration detention since 1989.

It was reported by the Unity Centre that the man was found hanged in his room at the centre. He had apparently been refused bail before Christmas as there was no surety and his girlfriend, who was heavily pregnant at the time of the hearing, was unable to travel. Their baby was apparently born on the day of his death. Morton Hall, unlike most other removal centres, is run by the Home Office rather than a private company.

Of the three people who died in immigration detention last year, one died at Morton Hall, just six weeks ago, on 6 December. According to the Unity Centre, the 49-year-old man, possibly from Sierra Leone, who had been in the UK for 27 years, had served a six-month sentence for using false documents and had subsequently been in immigration detention for two years. A few days before his death he had become ill and was taken to hospital and later died.

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Donald Trump and the post-election European horror story

Posted on by Migrant Tales

We don’t mean to scare you with this tweet below. But it’s interesting to note how the Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency is bringing out the absolute worst in Europe. 

While 2016 was a year that ushered in a new era of uncertainty thanks to Brexit and Trump, we must not despair and permit the flagrant opportunism of far-right politicians to dictate what Europe is.

The Guardian published a story Saturday where the region’s far-right leaders saw 2017 as the year when Europe “wakes up.”

One could fairly ask wake up to what? More discrimination? More attacks against our culturally and ethnically diverse roots as Europeans? More white privilege? More police surveillance and abuse?

From left to right some pretty scary far-right European politicians from left to right: Harald Vilimsky of the Austrian FPÖ, Matteo Salvini of the Italian Lega Nord, Gert Wilders of the PVV of Holland, Marine Le Pen of Front Nationale, and Germany’s Frauke Petry of AfD.

Folks, these politicians don’t have a clue about how to make Europe function as a region that respects and makes diversity work. They will fail and fall flat on their faces if they get power.

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Undocumented migrants in Finland: Päivi Nerg lives in denial, politicians live in denial as do the media and most of the country, too

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finnish immigration policy in general and asylum policy, in particular, is a good example of the decades-long suspicion that Finland’s political establishment has of outsiders. If some words could be used to describe the present state of things, it could be “not my problem” and “denial.” 

That statement, not my issue, reveals a lot about ourselves as a society and our capacity to live with difference.

The ongoing debate in the media about undocumented migrants is a case in point. Few if any newspapers blame the ever-growing number of undocumented migrants on the politicians who voted in favor of doing away with in April of residence permits on humanitarian grounds.

By doing away with this option, parliament forced the number of undocumented migrants to rise from a few hundred to the thousands. In other words and in plain English, the politicians and government have created the ever-growing undocumented migrant problem in Finland.

We all know that populism means simple solutions to complex problems. The government, which comprises of the Center Party, National Coalition Party (NCP), and Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, believes in simple solutions to complex problems in areas like migration.

The vote to do away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds is a case in point. Lobbied by the PS, the Center Party and NCP voted – together with the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in the opposition – to do away with such a clause.

Naively, irresponsibly, ignorantly and with a dose of self-deception, the government believed that by doing away with residence permits on humanitarian grounds would solve the problem. It did not solve any problem but worsened it. In the government style, the blame for their incompetence is blamed on the victim, or in this case the asylum seeker.

Thanks to too much complacency in the media that too many continue to have major blind-spot issues with immigration, migrants and asylum seekers, officials like Päivi Nerg can appear and say with a poker face that she “is concerned about the security risk that illegal [sic] immigrants pose,” according to a story by Helsinki Times.

Read the full story here.

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Seven months and no justice yet after a Kenyan woman was racially insulted and splashed by a bucket of water

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Remember when a Kenyan woman was sitting outside her home in the Helsinki neighborhood of Helsinki one Sunday afternoon on May 22 and a white Finnish woman splashed a bucket of water on her, her children and their friends after shouting racist insults? Well, nothing has happened since then even if Ruth Waweru-Folabit pressed charges against the woman and complained to the non-discrimination ombudsman seven months ago.

Migrant Tales wrote back then: What is most upsetting about the story is that the police didn’t bother to ask her if she wanted to press charges against the woman that insulted her in a racist manner in public and threw a bucket of water on her, her two children and friend’s children.

Waweru-Folabit wrote to me on November 7 that she still hasn’t heard from the police service and non-discrimination ombudsman regarding her case. “I have tried my best to put this behind me for my kids’ sake,” she wrote, “but some kind of justice would be good.”

How long will it take for justice to take its course?

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Will Halla-aho be the PS’ savior or the party’s political grave?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A while back I asked a friend what would happen if the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* implode as we’ve seen in the polls. What will emerge from the ruin of that xenophobic party? Will we see another party that is more sinister and more dangerous to cultural diversity?

With PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho’s decision to challenge Timo Soini and run for chairman of the party could well mean the birth of an ever-radical anti-immigration party in the same league as the Islamophobic Danish People’s Party.

Will Halla-aho be the lifesaver of the PS’ problems and succeed at bolstering the embattled party’s poll standings? If we read PS politicians like MP Laura Huhtasaari, the Islamophobe with the white kindergarten teacher smile, the answer is a confident yes.

According to her, “Finland needs Perussuomalaiset values, Jussi is a pioneer, a nationalist who defends our rights. He doesn’t vacillate. He’s not afraid of being labeled because he believes in what he says.”

When watching the news about Halla-aho and how the media reports about this MEP, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, it’s amazing to note how much fascination and interest there is in a politician who has built his political career on insulting minorities and spreading racism.

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Why did Finland allocate so much money on asylum reception centers that treated in too many cases refugees like “livestock?”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Who watches over, never mind defends, the rights of asylum seekers?

The Supermen*

In 2015 and 2016 some 38,000 asylum seekers [1] came to Finland and scores of asylum reception centers sprung up rapidly throughout the country to house these people. Even if the government’s answer to the ever-growing number of asylum seekers was “to make Finland unattractive for asylum seekers,” these people did a service to Finland by helping expose our ineffective and costly immigration and integration policy.

Disagree? How is it possible that it takes for some migrants 5-7 years before they can knock on the door of an employer and ask for a job?

Why is migrant unemployment many times higher than the national average?

Why do migrants get paid on average 25% less than white Finns?

It’s clear that there’s a lot of work to be done to lessen the pay gap between migrants and white Finns and lower high unemployment levels.

Fabrication or the truth?

An anti-racist colleague at the recently held Golden Family Awards in Helsinki exposed an interesting problem about our reporting of asylum seekers this year.

“When I started to read [the first] stories [from January] about that abuses that asylum seekers were suffering at reception centers, the first matter that crossed my mind was if they are true because they were so unbelievable,” the person said. “How could people in our country treat others in such a terrible manner?”

For Migrant Tales, 2016 was the year of investigative journalism. We published 128 news stories on asylum reception centers, interviewed scores of asylum seekers, and got in touch with many newspapers. Our efforts helped us to get the deputy manager of the Kolari asylum reception center fired.

Asylum seekers who are minors wrote a letter to Pitäjänuutiset in the fall explaining why they are seeking asylum in Finland.

Our network of sources involves comprises of a journalist and Arab-speakers who know the asylum-seeker situation in Finland as well as the back of their hand.

In the beginning, nobody wanted to write about such abuses never mind read about the terrible stories we started to expose to the public. When Migrant Tales approached Helsingin Sanomat in January,  the reporter at Finland’s largest daily gave little importance to the carefully investigated story we sent showing abuses at Luona, a private company controlled by Barona that managed back then reception centers in Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo, and Hyvinkää.

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A letter of apology for the disgraceful treatment of asylum seekers in Finland by the government

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dear Asylum Seeker, 

The cartoon below by Ville Ranta could apply to Europe as well. Instead of having politicians like Perussuomalaiset* Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä and other government ministers stating that “you can’t come in because there’s no room for you,” it’s our hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy that has been exposed to the tee. 

Even if some may curse your present, I welcome it. Thanks to you, the over million asylum seekers that came to Europe in 2015, you have exposed our hypocrisy and our exceptionalism.

Aminkeng A. Alemanji wrote in his doctoral dissertation a very good description of how our exceptionalism works:

“The imperfection of the other is used to establish and maintain the hierarchies that put the dominant group [white Finns and Europeans] at the top and the Other at the bottom. [T.] Coates [2015, 105] reminds us that “a mountain is not a mountain if there is nothing below”, and in Finland it is the Other as a result of his/her imperfection that is below – the valley necessary for the mountain [the dominant group] to be a mountain.”

This is an old cartoon from last year but still topical. See the original posting here.

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Remember when PM Juha Sipilä offered his home in Finland to asylum seekers?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In September 2015, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä offered his home in Kempele to asylum seekers. Even so, the tone and position of the prime minister and the government changed by December when Sipilä said that he couldn’t offer his home to asylum seekers any longer because his hometown in northern Finland wasn’t safe for refugees.

Yes, you read right: The prime minister admits that his small town in northern Finland isn’t safe for asylum seekers. If Kempele isn’t safe for refugees, it isn’t safe for any visible migrant and minority.

It’s incredible that a prime minister admits that he cannot guarantee the safety of people in this country and, worse, does nothing to address such a problem.

The sequence of events in fall-winter 2015 tell it all: kind words by Sipilä to asylum seekers coming to Finland; a rape takes place in Kempele at the end of November, one suspect, who is an asylum seeker, is detained; Kempele residents come out like a lynching party to protest against the asylum reception center in the town, which moves to an undisclosed location.

Read story and watch video here.

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