Center Party municipal politician Abdirahim “Husu” Hussein told the Finnish media that the riots we are seeing in the Stockholm suburb of Husby could well happen in Finland in 10-15 years if we commit the same mistakes. The ugly face of intolerance, which is raising its head in Finland conspicuously, reinforces Hussein’s claim.
By “mistakes” I mean lack of opportunities, little acceptance, intolerance and social exclusion.
A good example that the riots in Husby will happen in Finland is Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala, who suggested that immigrants with “behavior disorders” should be interned for a half a year at a camp to learn how to behave in our society.
PS chairman Timo Soini’s constant denials that intolerance isn’t an issue in our society and especially in his anti-immigration party together with the silent acceptance of such outrageous claims by other politicians, assure us as well that the future will be here sooner than we expect.
In Saarakkala’s black-and-white racist world, he would be more than happy that immigrants would act in the way that he insults them. It would offer proof that his outrageous claims are true and assure him a steady stream of voters who are as well multiculturally challenged.
Instead of speaking about sending immigrants to camps, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for a number of Finnish politicians like Saarakkala to be sent to a camp on how to “behave” in a culturally diverse society. They need guidance on this front.
When reading about the riots in neighboring Sweden we should pay close attention to how the problem is being reported by the media and what politicians are saying.
In Finland, it shouldn’t surprise us that openly anti-immigration politicians are trying to get the most political mileage from what is happening there.
Since a riot and burning cars are considered anti-social behavior, only immigrants, or those “with immigrant backgrounds,” are the troublemakers.
We’re missing the point: The issue in Sweden is inclusion and equal opportunities.
The riots there show us that this model society has issues with intolerance as well.
What are the equal opportunities?
If you comethere without language skills, education or relevant work experience, what do you expect? Still get employed against much more skilled native swedes?
Equal opportunities in education? How when you burn down your own schools? How will the teachers teach when half the kids dont even know enough swedish to understand the teaching? So results in immigrant dominant schools are bad.
Sweden has taken too many uneducated immigrants who they have no jobs for. Results we can see here.
Yossie
Yes, and put them into the poorest parts of Stockholm. The issue though is racism. The Toxteth riots in the UK were the same. Everyone blamed the ‘immigrants’ and poor blacks, complaining that their riots were just criminal actions. Politicians were ready to write the whole city off. But some people and politicians kept up hope, decided that the answer was indeed jobs, regeneration and an overhaul of the police and a routing out of racist behaviours and attitudes among the police.
Today, Liverpool is a thriving and diverse city. Since the mid-80s, Liverpool has gone from strength to strength and has a higher per capita GDP than anywhere else in the North West of England. There is hope and there is a future – but racism has to be tackled, and so must the deprivation be tackled.
Swedish people are discriminated in their own country.
Migrants salary costs are paid for(social costs)-discriminating etnic Swedish
Husby pupils got an I-pad each (worth 400-500 €)
More teachers in Husby than the national average
Marke
Bollocks. Populist nonsense. Sweden is run by Swedes, so if Sweden discriminates against Swedes, then Swedes are to blame for it. This is just hot air, designed to make Swedes ‘unite’ under a populist banner of being the ‘oppressed people’. Sweden is an incredibly highly developed democracy where democratic processes operate at all levels of society. Indeed, it is these democratic processes that are the best safeguard for preventing or diminishing discrimination in Sweden. Your idea of everyone getting behind a hate banner that says Swedes are victims only puts the power in the hands of a very few ‘populist’ politicians who are expected to magically fix discrimination by actually increasing discrimination against immigrants – to which everyone is supposed to say ‘yeah! down with the foreigner’. That’s not democracy and it’s not healthy politics.
not at all Mark. the government pays 80% (max 800SEK) of the salary for those who got their residence permit within 36 months-until you become a Swedish citizen.
do you think all Swedish pupils have an I-pad?
What’s your point exactly? The government pays most of the salary so as to promote their integration into the workforce? You are complaining about this? Because it ‘discriminates’ against Swedes? So, you are telling me that you are against all forms of financial incentive as a means for governments to implement policy and influence public behaviour? Fine if you are, but you do realise that society will very quickly grind to a complete standstill if you remove all financial incentives.
Sounds like an excellent investment in immigrant children, telling them that they are valuable, part of society and that their future is important. The iPad is an excellent tool for integration and for personal development. It’s money well spent. Kids will also realise that to maintain one’s participation in this modern society, you have to get ahead too. Hell, if they can give tablets to kids in developing countries for the exact same reasons, why can’t they do it at home?
All the time you are looking for reasons to feel grumpy and aggrieved, even though these are clear attempts to redress a horrible inbalance, an imbalance that you at the same time condemn. You condemn the problem and you condemn the solution – get the fuck out of here you idiot! The world does not need morons like you!
800 SEK/day
-yes sir, discrimination
-well spent when is spent on immigrants. I thought people were equal, equal oportunities.
Here on Migrant Tales you are experts on discrimination but you do not see this as a problem. How many Swedish youngsters have been swept away to give space to immigrants because it is more or less free labour for the employer.
-do you think they share your view once they have been put off?
Marke
This is a tried and tested policy that has been used on many different population groups to get them into the workforce. Suddenly, when it’s immigrants that are benefiting from it, it’s wrong?
You cannot have your cake and eat it too, Marke. You cannot claim that there are problems and that somethign must be done and when it’s done you complain that it is now ‘special favours’.
I don’t know what notion of equality you have, but it hardly seems applicable to the real world. Are you saying that the government can NEVER give anything to special needs groups without also giving TO EVERYONE ELSE? Really!!!
Well, that seems to be all you are interested in, trying to make this a ‘them and us’ issue, and how immigrants are just take take take. Well, like any population group, there will be take, and if all you do is point to the ‘take take take’, then you will get a very distorted picture, especially if you assume that the native population only ever ‘give give give’.
I’m happy for any underprivileged kids to be given iPads.
Again politians defending the criminality of immigrants on others when the immigrant’s actions should be condemned unreservedly and completely.
If everyone took the streets and behaved in the same manner when unhappy about something then society would break down immediately.
Certain groups of people need to realise that if they want change or are displeased then dialogue and debate is needed not violence. Unfortunately where they come from (or their origins) that does not exist and therefore act as if they still lived there.
Klay
Take a lesson from history, demonising poor/oppressed people who riot is not a solution. Yes, these are criminal actions, but rioting is a feature of ‘unhappy populations’, not criminals having a collective day out at the shops.
Zzzzz. Yawn. Really, are you that fooking naive? These poor people should just just the fuck up and carry on being poor…if the rich took to the streets to complain about being rich, what would the world be coming too!?
That’s about as racist as it gets. And who exactly is listening to these people people? It is accepted wisdom that are living in deprived areas of high unemployment. Nothing is done. On top of that, they are targeted by racist police.
The same think happened in Liverpool – nothing was done until the Toxteth riots – which forced the government to act. You might call it criminality, but in the pages of history, ‘direct action’ is often seen in hindsight to be the desparate and effective last resort of marginalised society to get something to change.
What should be done then Mark? Where are you finding that work for unskilled people lacking language skills when more and more jobs are drifting to China and similar countries?
You people keep telling Europe needs immigration to fill the jobs but at the same time you say we need to find jobs for immigrants.
Europe does need sustained immigration. This isn’t news. The problem is that many of the available work is not in the places where immigrants or refugees are put or where they move to, in some cases.
As for language skills – I really don’t get this one. Give me ten experts, a few computers and a bit of office space for two years, and I could provide you with a language course that would suit everyone at any level and rapidly develop this skills. It amazes me that nations have achieved so much but have failed to adequately find a way for foreigners to learn their language rapidly and flexibly.
The issue of jobs is that service sectors in particular require more immigrant labour. The difficulty, as with Spain, is that you bring the immigrants in, then there is a financial downturn and they are first out the door. Then they are asked ‘why did you come here if you don’t have a job?’ Typically bloody hypocracy of those that are only interested in exploiting labour and nothing else.
–If everyone took the streets and behaved in the same manner when unhappy about something then society would break down immediately.
This is a good example of why we should not take you seriously. If society moved in the way you think, we wouldn’t have a society. To defend our civil rights we’d be ready to put in cold storage our rights. It would be a Pyrrhic victory.
One thing that Finland has in it’s favour as supposed to nearly all other Western Countries is mandatory military service.
I think this benefits everyone especially immigrants as takes people out of their natural environment they grew up in (comfort zone), forces them to interact with others they wouldn’t otherwise have done and brings a bit of discipline.
Also in the aftermath years later it also serves as a common factor that all men born or raised in Finland can relate to breaking down boundaries and differences partially.
Maybe. But this is not an issue of ‘discipline’, as you put it. It’s an issue of hopelessness. Until you make an effort to understand that, the cars will probably carry on burning.
Mark you talk as if these people have no access to education, health care, housing or any other kind of service. This isn’t the 3rd World where if you are born poor you and your family are more or less guaranteed to remain poor for the rest of your life.
There are opportunites to better one self. If you don’t take advantage of those and but instead expect everything to be given on a plate without hard work then there’s only one person to blame.
There are different groups of immigrants who come to a country, live in the same neighbourhood, go to the same schools, and income levels are the same. But after a generation or so some groups excel while others don’t even though they all started off in very similar positions. How do you explain that?
The bottom line is some cultures value education and hard work more than others. If you can’t even admit that then you really do have your head in the sand and might as well think everyone is literally the same and are clones genetically and culturally and where differences exist.
Klay
Clearly ou know nothing about social mobility, whether it be Sweden or Finland. Resources come in many shapes and sizes, it’s not just money, or education, or ‘opportunities’. It’s about knowledge, about social networks, about personal resources, self-esteem (an important factor in stigmatised populations), it’s about environment. The reality is that poverty is an intersection of many different factors, and a one- or even two-dimensional view of the problem will not provide the mechanisms for change. It requires an integrated and whole-hearted approach by civic society to repair deprived areas of major cities.
It doesn’t need explaining. The same stupid argument was made about blacks or women calling for representation, rights and liberty – there are women/blacks who manage to live in their God-given roles who don’t complain, so why can’t those civil rights communists do the same?
The issue is one of simply obtaining an equal status. In this case, it is fair and equal treatment from the police.
So, back to the racist world-view again. Klay, you have got worse in your absence. What have you been reading? So now you are saying that immigrants won’t work hard enough, even though they are doing the shittiest, worst paid jobs in Swedish society? Fuck off and fuck off again!
there is not many countries where people have such a good life as in Sweden. Free education, healthcare, housing…everything for everyone is free till you get a job and earn your own money.
And still, you have to take the discrimination to the level that you pay immigrants to work. If this ever reached a court outside Sweden this would of course have serious impact. But you do not see it.
What if you were in the same situations as the Swedish people are. Unemployed knowing there is a reserve of 100 000 perhaps 200 000 that qualify before you, just because you are stuck in your skin.
Would you emigrate? Or start burning (many) cars?
Marke
You’re so right, Marke – let’s bring back slavery and we wouldn’t have to pay them at all!
Marke
In areas of Malmö, unemployment among immigrant quarters runs at 80%. When the refugees came, the housing was there in Malmö already from the textile factors and shipyards, but the jobs had already long gone. In these areas, white-owned companies are still preferencing white workers in spite of the high immigrant demographic – what do you do? You have to dangle the carrot. If there wasn’t such obvious discrimination in the first place, you wouldn’t have to use the bloody carrot.
So mark
Would you emigrate? Or start burning (many) cars?
so it is the racist employers in Malmö that is the problem? Do you really believe in that yourself? I am not saying that it is not impossible, I just do not believe in it.
Marke
Why are you thinking in such ‘either them or us’ terms. I’m not. It’s part of the problem. Another part of the problem is that the education they do get is poorer. Once Swedish schools receive about 20 per cent immigrants, they start to empty of white Swedes. Parents take their kids to different schools. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are worried that standards will slip, and by withdrawing their child, they encourage standards to slip. Immigrants often have special needs, and while the percentage remains low in a school, these needs can be managed, but once it goes over 20%, the system becomes overloaded.
Marke, you believe what fits to your current belief system and me the same, but look closer at this subject. It’s not so simple as the populists are making out.
Marke
If they are 3rd World immigrants they riot and burn cars, schools or whatever else they can get their hands on as we have seen across countries around Europe.
If they are civilised and can’t find the opportunities they emigrate. Not so long ago when Europeans faced hardship in their own country much worse than any immigrant does now they moved to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South America or even Sweden in the case of Finns.
Klay – you have had your account suspended for one month (24/06/13) for making repeated racist comments on the blog. Regards: MT Moderators!
Klay_immigrant – on a visitor’s visa on May 24, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Marke
If they are 3rd World immigrants they riot and burn cars, schools or whatever else they can get their hands on as we have seen across countries around Europe.
Klay,
So whats your mean now?
Oh come on u r not a lawyer for Europeans , are u klay?
U speak for the people in Europe?
With respect for Europeans,
Do u mean only European have right to move to other countries in Europe if they have problems or they have not enough opportunities to improve their life?
Who made this law?
Europeans are different, some countries in Europe are poor, and racists in Europe are not civil but wild.
We r all living on planet earth , all in one planet.
and
My country Iran is a first world country,We are on the top 20 richest countries in the world.
Iran is a first world country with dignity, wealth, and technology, scientists,…
By the way where r u from Klay?
What ever ur colour is u r equal with every human in third countries.
We are equal in every colour,nation,religion, without religion and language.
A human cant be slave for other human, GOD gave us life and so we all deserve it life.
and Finally i am proud of myself and all i have, i dont wish to be European, or else and am not against u or African and etc etc… i wish u get my message.
I am telling u and all that peace is best.
You made this problem for Swedish people and Swedish employers. That is probably not the case.
Employers get free labor if they employ an immigrant, the state pays the salary