Maria Lohela is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* speaker of the parliament who has real issues with Islam and cultural diversity. Last week a man dressed in Ku Klux Klan sheet and mask protested in Lahti against the arrival of refugees to that city. His picture was published in many newspapers abroad.
The only party that continues to have an especially ambivalent stand on the KKK Finn and racism is the PS. The foreign minister, Timo Soini, was more worried about the KKK impersonator carrying a Finnish flag than wearing something that represented white supremacists in the United States.
Lohela doesn’t even condemn on her Facebook the attacks against refugees and refugee centers in Lahti, Kouvola or in other parts of Finland but blames the media for Finland’s poor image abroad. If the Finnish media lacks teeth then it will be the foreign media that will name and shame us into action against racism.
Lohela writes at the end of her Facebook posting about what a great country Finland is but for whom? For white Islamophobic Finns like her?
Finland’s poor image abroad is being caused by the PS and the likes of her who are totally indifferent to the suffering of others and denying our ever-growing cultural and ethnically diverse society. That diverse society is here to stay irrespective if people like Lohela are upset by it.
* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.