     Fatiha | Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 05:36 am
This is the reality of living in Finland. Racial attacks are very common and approved of. Even the police force are racist and support people who attack foreingers. Many Somalis are moving out due to these problems. Are people elsewhere confronyed with these problems?
HELSINKI, Finland (Reuters) -- Television footage of Finnish and Somali youths fighting in a Helsinki suburb has confronted Finns with what it is like to be a foreigner living in their country.
A group of Finns assaulted a Somali youngster, which led to retaliation by Somali and Iraqi youths. Parents, fearing their children could be attacked on their way to school, kept about 60 Somali youngsters at home for several days after the fight.
The incident sparked a national debate over racism, with officials, ministers and President Tarja Halonen all condemning the violence.
"The recent increase of racism in Finland is a worrying phenomenon," Labour Minister Tarja Filatov told a Council of Europe meeting on racism last month.
"We should not close our eyes to racist incidents, however small they may seem."
Foreign nationals in Finland comprise only 2.5 percent of the country's 5.2 million population compared with nearly 10 percent in Germany.
The small percentage is due to Finland's location on the fringe of Europe, an historically tougher immigration policy than those of its Nordic neighbours, and a unique linguistic and cultural heritage.
But Finland is slowly changing. The country has seen the number of immigrants rise from some 18,000 in 1987 to 90,000 at the start of 2000.
And with the percentage of pensioners forecast to rise more quickly than in many countries, Finland will soon need fresh faces to keep the economy booming.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has forecast that Finland's ratio of people of working age to those of pensionable age will fall to two in 2035 from the current four, some 15 years ahead of the OECD average.
"I fear (racism) is becoming (a bigger problem), and I actually fear it is one already...actions should be taken while we still can control it," said Magdalena Jaakkola of the Population Research Institute.
" Racism) is a serious problem...improvement can been seen in actions by officials and media, but for ordinary people on the street, it is unbearable," said Mulki Molsa, who represents Somalis on the Labour Ministry's ethnic relations commission.
Silence 'a serious problem'
Recent studies show that racist attitudes in Finland -- especially towards Russians, Arabs and Somalis -- have risen in the past 13 years, although those towards foreigners were more positive now than during the deep recession of 1993.
A 1997 study by Eurobarometer, a survey on racism and xenophobia requested by the European Commission, showed that 10 percent of Finns considered themselves very racist, while the average for European Union (EU) countries was nine percent.
But Jaakkola, who has studied Finns' attitudes towards foreigners since 1987, said responses to other Eurobarometer questions and to her own studies showed Finns' attitudes were less racist than those of Europeans on average.
Violent attacks, especially on Somalis who arrived as refugees fleeing civil war in their homeland in the early 1990s, do take place, but more rarely than in Europe in general, said police officer Kalle Kekomaki.
And no anti-immigrant parties have emerged in Finland like those in France, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Norway, which researchers and police say is due largely to a lack of charismatic leaders and the still small number of foreigners.
"With the far-right groupings we have, either they are groups of young in which music and booze play quite a big role, while older groups are made up of middle-aged alcoholics," Kekomaki said. "They do not gather support from large masses."
Jaakkola said racism in Finland appeared mainly in the form of job discrimination.
Outside the workplace Molsa said the biggest problem was verbal abuse by ordinary Finns on the street.
Officials, police and researchers said the silent approval of racism by a large part of the population was also a problem.
"The biggest problem in my view is that there are so many people who do not take any view on the matter, who think this does not concern them," said Risto Laakkonen, a member of the Labour Ministry's ethnic relations commission.
Jaakkola said her study from last year showed that most Finns were least negative about immigration from Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries. Their attitudes towards Russians, Arabs and Somalis were the most negative.
She said that in general those with high education, contact with foreigners, women and young people had the most positive attitudes towards foreigners, while those in rural areas, pensioners and the unemployed had the most negative views.
Government plan of action
Laakkonen said the problem should be attacked from both ends, with Finns taught to be more tolerant. Ethnic minorities should be encouraged to join civil organisations, sports groups, labour unions and political parties.
Several people with immigrant backgrounds were elected to the local councils in recent municipal elections.
The government is also preparing a plan of action to combat racism and ethnic discrimination which includes setting up a post to monitor official discrimination and rules to promote hiring people from ethnic minorities in the public sector.
The programme also includes a plan to set up a project in which immigrant youngsters would be trained and encouraged to seek education in the growing information technology, services and education sectors.
But a 28-year-old Somali male at a Helsinki metro station said officials should be more open in declaring immigrants an important part of the Finnish society.
"People never say openly that immigrants benefit society," he said. "We have to get acceptance. There is no use spending money on immigrants if we are not given a sign that we belong."
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| NATURAL | Thursday, November 30, 2000 - 07:50 pm
Hey fatiha, that was the longest stuff I have ever read in a forums, I guess that copyright thing doesn't apply to you, as you have already copied Reuters into this page/forums. Assuming that you live in the states, have you ever seen anybody that likes foreigners? Bottom line is no body likes foreigners and I am sure that no matter how bad people might think Europeans are, they are 100 times less racist than Americans. All I know about Finns is that they are the shyest people on earth, they are terrified of talking to one another, let alone foreigners. |
