Migrant Tales insight:I stumbled upon this posting published over twelve years ago. I reposted it because it shows the fuel that I have used to push the blog ahead. Finland is a very different country than it was in 2012. We are slowly but surely awakening to the fact that racism is a dangerous social ill that robs us of our potential.
I write about racism and social exclusion in Finland because it affects me and those I care about. I should know because I used to live marginalized from this society for decades.
I didn’t live marginalized because I was maladapted. I was marginalized because I was well-adapted.
Too many didn’t consider me a “real” Finn for a number of reasons. Was it because I wasn’t white enough or was it because the name I carried made me stick out ethnically like a sore thumb?
But what could I have done in 1978, when I moved back permanently to this country? There were so few immigrants never mind people of my ethnic background that you were culturally and ethnically unimportant and out of the loop.
It is a paradox, but the very matters that I loved and admired the most about this country back then were the very things that marginalized and excluded me from this society.
The prototype Finn is a case in point. This social construct of the so-called model Finn that was taught and reinforced in the last century is being challenged as our society becomes more culturally diverse.
Finnish society’s lack of inclusiveness was and still is the main obstacle to equal integration and acceptance.
If you want to find where racism grows its roots in this society, you will find it in the arguments that some white Finns use to exclude you from society. If you want to challenge Finnish racism, the best place to begin is to contest the arguments and actions that reinforce white Finnish exclusiveness.
I write a lot about racism and social exclusion on Migrant Tales. I write about this topic because Finland is my home and because I want a better future for visible and invisible minorities. In cultural diversity we will find strength.
I am grateful that I have found such a platform and opportunity to be a part of an ever-growing national debate and social movement that aims to make our society inclusive to all groups.
Come an watch today at 7 pm a wonderful play reflecting these troubled times at Botta, Museokatu 10, Helsinki.
Below is a review that Migrant Taleswrote about Helsinki Noir at the end of December.
“Writer and director Ahti Tolvanen, who is a member of the Migrant Tales board, has written a play that reflects hard and uncertain times for Finland. When Ahti came to Finland in the 1970s, it was a very different country. For one, its foreign policy, which some criticized as Finlandization, attempted to coexist with its giant eastern neighbor.
But matters have chaned from those cold war years. Some Finnish politicians regularly beat their chests at Russia and believe that NATO will save the day if Finland is ever invaded by Russia.
“Before, Finland’s foreign policy was dictated by the Soviet Union and now we are prostrate towards the United States,” said Tolvanen. “Finland seems to be adrift and nobody can see where it is heading.”
The play offers a different narrative and take on things. Geopolitics, politics, immigration policy and other factors come to light and offer the viewer a chance to reflect where the country is heading.”
Helsinki Noir, which has showed in Helsinki and London, has received some rave reviews:
“Satirizing ultra-conservative politicians…raising public awareness, and empowering the disempowered” – Yuko Kurahashi, a vising reviewer and professor of drama, Kent State University.
“A wonderful show” said Laura Killeen, director of Rosemary Branch, London
It is also obvious the non-action of the government on what their plan for the Finnish-Riussian border needs to be addressed.
Just keepiing the Saimaa Canal closed costs the Finnish economy millions, now even billions if road transport is added to it. Not to mention the disrupted family lives from which the largest immigrant community in Finland, its Russian speakers, are suffering due to the government’s, in security terms dubious, and indefinate border closure.
The government refers to secret intelligence that there is a security threat at the border. This has gone on for over a year now and the reasons remain secret. One can only conclude that the continued secrecy is really because there is no real evidence and the embarrassment potential-if that is revealed- keeps mounting. Some day the government will have a lot of explaining to do.
SDP leader Antti Lindtman’s incapacity as a leader is stunning, matched only by his cowardly whipping of his MPs to vote for the ridiculous Pushback Law- ridiculous because it throws into question the whole idea that Finland is a champion of human rights or even the basic tenants of its own constitution. All because of the same undefined fantasy of a border threat.
Lindtman’s past behaviour explains why Kiljunen had to step down because the SDP leader has made it clear his own party would not back him if the SDP leader had anything to say about it.
In fact its unclear if the SDP is nowadays willing to do anything significant to provide the kind of opposition politics the parliament needs and the Finnish people deserve in these troubled times.
Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.
Malcolm X
Few these days deny that Finland has a racism problem against Muslims, people of color and Third Worlders, the Romany and Russian-speaking minority, the third largest after Finnish and Swedish speakers. The serious student of society does not only look at the surface of news but what is behind it.
The denial of racism by some sectors of Finnish society are one salient issue we can look behind the news. If racism and prejudice are ever-present, how does the media, politicians and society play down and deny the social ill?
When speaking of Muslims in Finland, the media rarely speaks up or defends the group since stereotypes about their “primitive culture” and our exceptiionalism permit us to look the other way.
Even if the above examples of racist journalism happened over thirty years ago, it still continues today.
MTV is the biggest private television company in Finland. It’s portrail of brown migrants had the same hateful narrative: migrant youths and non-white migrants are a threat to society because they are violent. The picture on the right was used to give a heads up that MTV was going to interview the Interior Minister Mari Rantanen about the government’s tightened migration policy. Why is there a threatenig picture of a person with a knife?
Finland’s Russian-speaking community, the third largest after Finnish and Swedish speakers. They are a category of their own how they are treated by the media and politicians.
The Finnish media, including Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, have attacked in mob fashion Kimmo Kiljunen, member of the Social Democratic Party and chairperson of the foreign affairs committee, for speaking candidly to representatives of the Alexander Union, a Finnish-Russian association, about the Finnish-Russian border as well as other matters.
Today, an editorial by Helsingin Sanomat highlighted “the unusual problems” of Kiljunen’s comments to Alexander Union. It wrote: “In the video, Kiljunen expressed some unusual opinions on Finland’s policy towards Russia. Among other things, he said that he considers the closure of the eastern border a violation of human rights and the ban on Russian real estate transactions to be racist. Kiljunen claimed that the Finnish tabloids were playing into the hands of Russian trolls with their critical articles.”
Are the above comments “unusual” and did they warrant such outrage? Or are Kiljunen’s views similar to what human rights experts and academicians pointed out about the dangers of the pushback law, which was approved by parliament in July?
Again, we must ask what did Kiljunen say wrong? Was he too candid in his views that the closing of the Finnish-Russian border is a slap in the face of human rights, and that National Coalition Party politicians like Antti Häkkänen can reinforce prejudices that Russians are a threat and that they should be barred from buying land? Did Kiljunen step on the government’s feet?
Even if the above restrictions do not prevent Finnish-Russian residents from buying land, they do send a clear message: Russians are a threat, and they should not be trusted. The war in Ukraine and the terrible invasion by Russia have made a bad situation worse by reinforcing people’s xenophobia toward Russians.
Some politicians, including President Aleksander Stubb, have even questioned the right of Russian speakers to hold dual citizenship.
Making such a suggestion, as did happen during a presidential campaign debate earlier this year, brings memories but in a different context of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped the Jews of their rights in Nazi Germany.
The attacks and Kiljunen’s character assassination even by his party reveal a lot about Finland’s issues with xenophobia and suspicion of its Russian-speaking community, the third largest after Finnish and Swedish speakers.
Not understanding the racism in the debate is comprehending very little about the whole issue of how Finland’s Russian community is treated.
If this question were asked to Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition Party, we would not have to guess his answer. Pointing to theanti-racism plan and a “very good” government program, Orpo would dodge the question in his usual style by sweeping the issue under the rug.
In other words, his response would be the government is not fueling racism.
But Orpo is no magician who can cover the sun with his finger with his denials and weak leadership. Each denial hides his disingenuous double-talk and outright lies but exposes them like foul air.
The policies that the government uses to oppress the most vulnerable members of society, single parents, the unemployed, migrants, and workers, include policies to undermine their power.
Two reports published in October show that matters will continue to worsen. The first one was published by the Police University College, which reported a record rise in suspected hate crime cases to 1,606 cases versus 1,245 cases the previous year.
As in previous years, the biggest victims were Muslims.
Due to the lame actions of the government against racism, I expect the number of suspected hate crimes to rise once again to a new record in 2024.
Last year was problematic for Muslims and minorities in Finland. Shortly after naming the new government in the summer, the government was marred by the resignation 11 days later of Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Minister of Economic Affairs Vilhelm Junnila. That was followed by the surfacing of 185 racist blog posts written in 2008 by Riikka Purra, the finance minister and PS chairperson.
Minister of Economic Affairs Wille Rydman’s 2016 posts came to public light, too. In one of them, he stated, “I’d still rather ban people wearing scarves than those scarves” and these “desert monkeys make me sick.”
The first weeks of the government were so scandalous that Munich-based daily Südddeutche Zeitung, christened Orpo’s government the “Chamber of Horrors,” while Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called its start “a fiasco.”
Last month, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), reported that “one in two Muslims in the EU face racism and discrimination in their daily life – a sharp rise since 2016.”
Said FRA director Sirpa Rautio: “We are witnessing a worrying surge in racism and discrimination against Muslims in Europe. This is fuelled by conflicts in the Middle East and made worse by the dehumanizing anti-Muslim rhetoric we see across the continent.”
In an interview with Helsingin Sanomat, Danish MP and Minister for European Affairs Maria Bjerre only had positive things to say about her country’s migration policy, one of the most restrictive in the EU. The interview by Elina Kervinen was in my opinion a good example of how the media feeds xenophobia by sidestepping some crucial points.
The whole article tells us things we already know, and its purpose is to absolve Denmark’s migration policy of racism, which we have described on Migrant Tales as working on steroids.
Why does this interview wreak of opinionated hogwash?
– It mentions things we already know like doing away with “pull” factors that will discourage asylum seekers (the article brands them as “illegals”) from coming here. – Bjerre is speaking in code. What she is saying are ways to effectively stop Muslims and other Third Worlders from comig to Europe. No mention in the article about the 6.168 million Ukrainian refugees in Europe, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). – In the face of the millions of Ukrainian refugees, it is absurd that Bjerre opportunistically claims that we have the biggest crisis since 2015 when over a million refugees came to Europe from the Middle East and elsehere. – The chart below shows you that we are not in a crisis. In fact, Europe only gets the minority of refugees. – If we make it difficult for migrants to come here – excluding Ukrainians – who is going to replenish our aging population?
One of the matters the reporter does not answer is why other EU countries agree with Denmark’s extreme migration policy. There is no mention in the story about the rise of the rise of the xenophobic far right in many EU countries and their support for Albania-type refugee centers.
A record number of suspected hate crimes* were reported in 2023, rising by 28.99% to 1,606 cases compared with 1,245 cases the previous year, according to the Police University College. The author of the report, Jenita Ranta, blamed “societal factors” like the Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the poor economic situation of people that fuel hate crime.
Ranta talks about these above factors but is silent about an obvious factor: racism in Finland.
Moreover, if last year was a record, we expect 2024 to be another record year when it comes to hate crimes.
The hate crimes reported to the police are only the tip of the iceberg.
As in previous years, hate crimes due to ethnic or national background stood at 68% of all hate crimes, rising last year by 17.42% to 1,092 cases versus 930 cases. That was followed by hate crimes on the grounds of religion or belief (10.3% of all hate crimes), which jumped by 36.36% to 165 cases.
By national group, the Somalis were one of the most affected by hate crimes as were Muslims.
The majority of hate crimes were physical assaults and verbal insults.
“Under this group, the biggest group of victims were Muslims. In the statistics on last year’s hate crime reports, it is noteworthy that for the first time ever, there were more suspected hate crimes against Jews or Jewishness than there were suspected hate crimes against Christians. However, Islamic people were most commonly targeted,” according to the Police University College.
Hate crimes committed against sexual minorities (10.6% of all hate crimes) rose by 53.57% to 215 cases, while disability (8%) saw the biggest rise, soaring 137.04% to 128 cases.
*”In general terms, hate crime is a crime motivated by prejudice or hostility towards the victim’s ethnic or national origin. The crime may also be targeted at members of the majority population.” Police University College
The rise of the far-right and their simplistic scapegoating of migrants and minorities reveals a sad reality hitting Europe. The rise of the far-right does not expose the obvious but the fact that we have failed to educate generations after the horrors of World War 2.
If there is one matter that characterizes an autocratic state like Nazi Germany, it is the fact that the system gave people the right to oppress and murder on an industrial scale. It wasn’t the “rotten apples” at the top who made it possible, but with the support of the masses.
Teaching and institutionalizing racism, us versus them, is a sure way of gaining political and finally, autocratic power, as we saw in Germany after 1933.
Populism is like a drug addict who needs a constant. The drug addict gets the fix but it does not resolve his main problem: addiction and destruction of the person’s physical and mental health.
In Finland, the “drug-addict” political parties that capitalize on scapegoating migrants and minorities are the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, National Coalition Party (NCP), and Christian Democrats, and to an ambivalent extent the Swedish People’s Party and Social Democrats.
Only the Greens and Left Alliance have given a flat no to the present political development that normalizes racism and social exclusion.
The saying sits well with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government. Can you teach a party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to be civil and ditch their racism? For the PS to turn in a new political leaf and abandon their nationalist rants and xenophobia would be tantamount to political harakiri.
One matter that I have never grasped and accepted is how so-called mainstream parties like the National Coalition Party (NCP), the media, allow politicians of the PS to bash and denegrate migrants and minorities.
The latest scandal to hit the government involves minister of foreign trade and development, Ville Tavio, a PS politician who has made a name for himself as a far-right homophobe, Islamophobe and xenophobe.
The unilateral decision by Tavio not to participate in a gender-equality alliance for the rebuiling of Ukraine which also include sexual minorities, has received a lot of criticsm from President Alexander Stubb.
“I hope that in the future we will not see similar mistakes from the ministry for foreign affairs, that the president will not be informed of matters that belong to the minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, but are related to our foreign and security policy,” Stubb was quoted as saying in Yle News.
Just as the dust was settling, Tavio was quoted in Helsingin Sanomat by stating: “I support the rights of sexual minorities. The Perussuomalaiset will secure a better Finland for sexual minorities in general by opposing Islamzation.”
Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio. Source: Kauppalehti.
Even if we can point out the NCP’s political sin of going to bed with the PS, Finland has the government it deserves. If you look at their over first year in government, the question is what type of Finland will we have at the end of their term in 2027?
What will our welfare state look like and how much will social inequality grow and polarize our country? Would you dare to see? It would be naive to believe that Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government will strengthen our welfare state The only matter it will strengthen is social inequality. As mentioned in a previous posting, about one third of Finnish voters are racist. The rise of the PS is a good example of the latter.
Going back to the original question: Can you teach a dog new tricks?
No, but if its racism is stongly grounded on racism, nationalism and social exclusion, then you can. The dog does not learn new tricks per se but is emboldened to carry out its old tricks.
