Very rarely does the Finnish media approach a member of the Russian community to ask their views about news that impacts them. A good example is during the presidential debates when asked if the candidates would be ready to take away Finnish citizenship from Russians retroactively.
Katja Marova is a dual citizen of Russia and Finland who has lived in this country for fourteen years. Like some Russian speakers, she believes that some in her community saw the presidential election of Aleksander Stubb negatively.
Katja Marova, who lives in Lappeenranta, is worried about the civil rights of Russians.
Apart from Finnish and Swedish, the Russian-speaking community is the third biggest in Finland.
“The measure [to exclude Russians from getting Finnish citizenship] is clear discrimination and very concerning, coming from our president,” said Marova, a city of Lappeenranta deputy councilperson for the Left Alliance.
It is surprising that in the media there was no column or editorial written against taking away the right of dual citizenship from Russians. If Finland ever went through such a plan, it would be an eternal black spot in our history, a modern version of the Nuremberg Laws that excluded Jews from German society.
“Russians don’t only face the wrath of a despotic regime, but racism and hatred in Finland by politicians, the media, and society in general. We have a good government program,” says the government.
While parties like National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) and xenophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* try to score brownie points with their hateful messages, the closing of the border offers such parties an opportunity.
“In my opinion, the closing of the [Finnish-Russian] border is illegal,” said Marova. “It is illegal because it breaches refugee rights, human rights, freedom of movement, and the right to maintain family ties.”
PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, who has gained notoriety for her Islamophobic posts that were taken down on social media after the election, claims that closing the border is due to national security considerations.
“It is a good question, and we don’t know,” she said. “Nobody knows what kind of threat these [1,000-odd] asylum seekers are because the government says that it is a secret. If we think of it, refugees cannot be a security risk because they are refugees seeking asylum.”
A question: When over 32,476 asylum seekers came to Finland in 2015, was the government closing borders and justifying its policies by claiming that these people were a threat to national security?
Of course not.
The present logic of the government opens up a question: Why are matters different today when compared with 2015?
Finnish media
The Finnish media does not rank high among some minority groups in Finland. And for good reason.
Marova believes that the media does not recognize at all that there is a Russian community.
“They silence us by arguing that our opinions are straight from Putin or the Kremlin,” she explained. “It is a clear way of silencing us [the Russian community].”
Labeling the Russian community as “Putin’s mouthpiece” is a common tactic employed by the media and politicians, according to Marova.
“It feels like we are being pushed aside from society,” she continued. “They don’t care about our opinions or our [civil] rights.”
In the face of taking away dual citizenship rights from Russians, some fear that such a measure may lead to legislation that will prohibit dual citizenship altogether.
Marova admits that it’s difficult to get heard by large dailies like Helsingin Sanomat and Yle.
She mentioned that Aleksanterinliitto, a newly created association that aims to fight for the civil rights of the Russian community of Finland, and Yle’s Novosti, the Russian-speaking news channel, are ways to bring to the attention of the public the community’s concerns.
