I spoke to a distraught Iraqi mother who told me how she was harassed, even shoved and pushed by six people who threatened to kill her in the Helsinki neighborhood of Malminkartano. Why? Because she and her daughters are Muslims. “I was traveling with my nine-year-old daughter on the train from Vantaa and got off…
Tag: hate crime
What happened and led to the death of a Somali Finn? Where do we go from here?
How would we tell the events that led to the death of an eighteen-year-old Somali Finn youth last Sunday at the Kannelmäki railway station? According to one account, supposedly the victim’s witness that experienced the whole horrific event, which has shocked many, especially Somalis and other black people. According to one account, the victim and…
Abdisalam Mohamed Abdulah: Returning to Finland’s Black February 2012
Migrant Tales insight: The story below was one that was published in February 2012 about “Black February,” when three Muslims died and a Finn committed suicide after killing one Muslim and wounding another. As with the Pakistani who was viciously attacked in February 2018, there were a lot of question marks about how the police…
Kuopio tragedy: The Muslim “terrorist” and the “mentally troubled” lone wolf white guy
The tragedy that took place Tuesday in Kuopio, which claimed the life of a person and left ten injured, including the suspect, raises a lot of questions. One of these is if we should treat what happened as a terrorist act or just some mentally troubled lone wolf? The National Board of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi) Detective…
Finland should wake up to its hate speech, hate crime and racism problem
Green League MP Iris Suomela raised an essential question in parliament on Wednesday about rape. She said that there are “hundreds of thousands” rape cases in Finland of which 50,000 are reported annually to Victim Support Finland (RIKU). “The end result of all this is that the police record about 1,200 [rape] cases [annually] of…
European Network Against Racism Shadow Report on Racist Crime and Institutional Racism in Europe
Brussels, 12 September 2019 – Institutional racism prevails in criminal justice systems across the EU and impacts how racist crimes are (not) recorded, investigated and prosecuted, according to a new report published by ENAR today. “Twenty years after the Macpherson Report revealed that the British police was institutionally racist, we now find that criminal justice…
Council of Europe: Mayday, Mayday, Finland must get a grip on rising hate speech, racism, and implement trans rights
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED In the face of rising hate speech, racism and the lack of trans rights, the Council of Europe Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) called today on Finland to tackle such social issues. ECRI added: “[t]o tackle growing racist and intolerant hate speech, better coordinate integration activities for immigrants and review…
Milliklubi night club makes the headlines and for all the wrong reasons. Is it a coincidence?
For some foreigners or Finns who are not white, Milliklubi (Kaivonkatu 12, 00100 Helsinki) is not the top night club on their list. In 2013, a Yle documentary on discrimination showed how the bouncers at the night club denied entry due to ethnic background. Daniel Malpica, an artist who lives in Finland, states in a…
Junes Lokka’s “racist” and “Nazi clown” case: Court sends clear message who has racist immunity in Finland
When white people decide what is racism and what the boundaries are, they mess up and make matters worse for migrants, minorities and Others. What are we supposed to make out of this? A well-known anti-immigration activist with ties to neo-Nazi and Islamophobic groups is called in a closed Facebook group by a journalist “a…
QUOTE OF THE DAY: The police’s and media’s double standards and racial baises
“We read about two cases involving 10-year-old girls who were attacked and were not white and Muslims. In the case of Oulu, where the police were especially active together with Yle and other media in racializing the sexual assault cases, should we be surprised that this way of looking at things is a one-way street? …