More children seeking asylum in Finland

"Mother said that everything would be all right"

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By Katja Martelius
     
      The glare of the winter sun shines into the car from a low angle. Snow-covered trees line both sides of the road.
      A two-hour journey to the north is ahead - to a family group home, where two Afghan boys are waiting. They arrived in Finland last autumn without their parents, with the help of a smuggler.
      Every year, dozens - perhaps even hundreds - of children arrive in Finland seeking asylum. In Finland, Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki (SDP) has referred to them as "anchor children", with whose help entire families try to get to the west.
      The boys waiting in Ylöjärvi only speak Dari. They have an interpreter in the car - 25-year-old Afghan-born Zarmina Razai.
      Zarmina sits in the back seat and leafs through a Finnish tabloid newspaper to pass the time. She sniffs at an article on the latest phases of the Susan Kuronen story [the former girlfriend of Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen].
     
It was December, 1999. Zarmina was 17 years old. She and her nine-year-old brother were in flight. Someone had taken them to an airport in Ukraine. The smuggler who escorted the siblings took them onto a Russian plane through a side door, where a flight attendant guided them to a seat in the passenger cabin. Zarmina thought that she was on her way to safety - to her relatives in Norway.
      When the plane took off, Zarmina was very nervous. The smuggler had told her to tear up the tickets and forged passports during the flight and to flush them down the toilet on the plane. However, she thought during the flight that if they have no papers at all, they might not be allowed into the country and would be taken back to Ukraine.
     
The flight attendants served a hot meal, but Zarmina and her brother were far too nervous to eat. Zarmina sat in her seat, thinking furiously what to do. Finally she stuffed the plane tickets and the passports into the pocket in the back of the seat in front of them.
      When the plane landed at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, Zarmina walked out of the plane with her brother, just like the other passengers. However, the police with dogs noticed them and pulled them aside.
      The police spoke English, but Zarmina pretended not to understand. The smuggler had advised her to do so. Her younger brother was so tired that he fell asleep in the chair in the corner of the room of the airport police.
      Then the police brought a map and asked Zarmina to show them where they had come from. Zarmina could only obey. She put her finger on the map: Afghanistan.
     
In 2005 220 unaccompanied underage asylum-seekers arrived in Finland. Last year, the number was between 130 and 200, depending on which source is used. According to the Ministry of Labour, most of them came from Afghanistan, but many children also come from Somalia and Iraq.
      Human smuggling is big business. Illegal immigrants are charged as much as EUR 20,000 for passage to Europe. They try to cross borders by plane, train, ship, and hidden inside lorries. Each year nearly half a million of them reach Europe.
     
Many of the children arriving in Finland are Afghanis, because the country has been in a chaotic state for years. In 1996 the Taleban took power in Afghanistan. After overthrowing bickering warlords, they set up a hard-line Islamist state. The United States, which invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taleban in 2001, but no permanent order has been established there. Last year more than 1,000 ordinary Afghanis were killed in clashes.
      Zarmina is from Kabul and belongs to the Afghan upper middle class. Her family - a mother, father, sister, four brothers, grandmother, and uncle - lived in a large eight-room house seven kilometres from the centre of the city. There were fruit trees in the yard - apple, plum, and cherry...
      "A house like that costs a million dollars now", says Zarmina, who visits Afghanistan every year.
     
Kabul was unstable already before the Taleban took power, but Zarmina had lived well there. Her daily routine included school and private English lessons.
      "Going out with your friends like people do here in Finland did not happen there, of course. But it was the custom for friends to visit us, and we would visit them", Zarmina explains.
      All of this ended when the Taleban took over. There was an announcement over the radio: women were not allowed to go to school, and were only allowed to walk outside in the company of a close male relative or their husbands. "Men were told that they had to grow a beard, and everyone had to throw away their television sets."
      Then a high-ranking Taleban minister took notice of the house next door to that of Zarmina's family. The leader of an Islamic party that had been overthrown by the Taleban lived there. He was an acquaintance of Zarmina's father.
      One Friday, when Zarmina's father and the neighbour went to the mosque to pray, the Taleban killed them.
     
"Father's body was brought home on Friday afternoon",says Zarmina. "They thought that he was a party member, but he wasn't. Father was a businessman, not a politician."
      The family had to leave Kabul. They went to their summer home in the north of Afghanistan, but the situation soon got very tense there as well. Then the mother decided to send Zarmina, her older brother, and their younger brother to safety in Europe. The smuggler had said that it was not possible to get the whole family out of the country.
      The trip through Russia took 29 days and cost 20,000 dollars. During that time Zarmina was separated from her older brother. She later found out that he had ended up in Sweden.
     
When a child arrives in Finland without his or her parents, the Directorate of Immigration and the police interview them. The children are placed in group homes, or family group homes, in different parts of the country.
      The children then wait for a decision on their asylum applications. Many get "B" status. That means that the applicants are allowed to stay, but they can be sent back to their countries of origin, if and when the situation warrants it.
      The luckier ones get "A" status - a temporary residence permit. Those with A status can apply for family unification, which means that the child's parents and relatives can get a residence permit in Finland. However, a permanent residence permit is not forthcoming for four years.
      There are about ten family group homes around Finland, with hundreds of children living in them.
     
The car turns into the yard surrounded by white houses. Raija Järvinen, the head of the family group home, serves coffee, banana bread, and biscuits in the kitchen.
      The Afghan boys, Farhad, 15, and Omar, 17, stand at the head of the table looking a bit anxious. Farhad's school ended at one in the afternoon today, but he had forgotten that he had promised to give an interview. Omar has the chicken pox, which has been going around for more than two weeks. Raija feels his forehead, and confirms that it is hot.
      It turns out that Omar does not know that he is suffering from chicken pox. He had not understood what an Iranian interpreter had told him, because the official language of Iran, Farsi, is related to Dari in much the same way that Finnish and Estonian are related, where similar-sounding words can have quite different meanings. Zarmina complains, and asks why Finnish officials send Iranian interpreters to deal with Afghans.
     
The boys live in the house next door. They have a living room, Omar's bedroom, and a secluded corner for Farhad's bed, as well as a shower and a toilet. The boys have placed a Finnish flag in a basket hanging in front of a window. There is a small ceramic Santa Claus in the bookshelf.
      Omar looks up when he is supposed to write his name and age in the notebook.
      "I can't read", he says.
      "Nonsense! You just learned how", Järvinen says.
      "I write not good", says Omar.
      Omar was the only child in his family, and did not attend school in Afghanistan, because he worked with his father, who was a welder. In Finland he has been in school since the autumn. At that time, a smuggler dropped Omar from a car in the centre of Tampere and told him to go to a police station.
      "It was difficult, because I did not know where it was. I waited on the street all the time for a police car to come, but when one came, they didn't notice me", Omar says. He wandered in the centre of town for several hours.
     
Omar has no parents. They died when he was thirteen. Then Omar moved to the countryside with his uncle. However, the uncle coveted the farm he inherited from Omar's father, and beat the boy so that he was forced to leave.
      "My uncle beat me whenever he wanted, and since I was very young, I could not hit him back", says Omar.
      Farhad has been listening and breaks in.
      "Why don't you tell the truth? He wanted you dead. He wanted to kill you. You can say it", he says in an agitated voice.
      Omar shrugs.
      "In Afghanistan almost everyone has problems or difficulties. Almost everyone."
     
      Finally Omar's aunt paid for Omar's escape to the West - a total of 7,000 dollars. The month of travel involved many modes of transport. The most memorable for him was the back of a lorry.
      "I couldn't see anything. There were many goods, and I had to be there for 30 hours", he says. Fortunately, Omar still had food and drink, and he was able to sit. He had no idea where he was being taken.
      Omar is energetic, and has made many friends in Finland. However, at night he wakes up from dreams in which he is in Afghanistan again.
      "Sometimes I think to myself, why God made me like this. Even when I was at home, my relatives lived far away, and then I lost my father and my mother."
      "Since I was born I was an unlucky person. As soon as I grew a little bit I had to work at welding with my father. Work, work, all the time, and I didn't know what life means."
     
Farhad sits on the sofa and looks impatient. When it is his turn, he says what it has been like to live in Finland for seven months. But he cannot get any peace, because he does not know where his mother, four brothers, and two younger sisters are.
      "When I was in Afghanistan, I heard that abroad, especially in Europe, there are organisations that can find families. But that's not true, because I have lived in Finland for six months, and I still don't know where my family is", Farhad says.
     
Järvinen tries to explain to Farhad that the Red Cross can sometimes take several years to find a person. But Farhad will not relent. Aren't there human rights in Finland?
      Farhad's father was murdered in Kabul a few years ago, but Farhad does not want to talk about it any more. One of his brothers also disappeared, and nobody knows what has happened to him.
      Seven months ago. Farhad's mother sent her son and his older brother to Europe with the help of a smuggler. During their escape, Farhad and his brother were separated. Now he is in Ylöjärvi, and is sick with worry. He last saw his family in Pakistan, where they fled from Afghanistan after his father was murdered.
      "I love my little brother more than anything. I remember when I was sick once, and he came next to me and cried, asking why I am sick. He liked me too, very much. We played football together. Sometimes I took him to the park or to the baths", Farhad says, and looks down.
      "When I was leaving my mother she took me into her lap and wept hard. She said not to worry, and that she would come later. Everything would be all right. Only later I understood that she was lying to me because she didn't come after me", he says gloomily.
      "Perhaps she was lying because she thought that you wouldn't have wanted to go otherwise."
      "Listen Farhad", says Järvinen. "The most important thing for a mother is that her children are safe."
     
It is already dark on the way home. On the left side of the car there are three stars in line. It is Orion's Belt.
      "Omar - he tried to speak the standard language all the time", Zarmina says in the car.
      It is not certain that Omar and Farhad will be allowed to stay in Finland, but it is likely. Last year only two Afghans were turned away from the country. On the other hand, the Directorate of Immigration has not been granting A status to Afghans for a few years, because the country is seen to be more peaceful than before.
     
Zarmina looks out the window. It was good that she did not tear up the plane tickets and fake passports eight years ago. They were found in the seat pocket, and on their basis the police were able to confirm that her story about her flight was true.
      When Zarmina and her brother came to Finland, Zarmina had 600 dollars in her pocket and a telephone number. A police woman did a body search, and both of these were taken away.
      Zarmina thought that she would never see the money again. However, the police gave it back. She did not get the telephone number back for several months.
      The number was to her grandmother, who lives in Pakistan. She did not know where Zarmina and the rest of the family were, but Zarmina gave her grandmother the phone number of the family group home in Kontiolahti.
      Then one day the phone rang. It was her mother.
      "My mother said, don't cry, everything will be all right", Zarmina says.
      As Zarmina and her younger brother both had A status, the younger brother - who was still underage - was able to apply for family unification: residence permits in Finland for the mother and the brother. In January 2002 the whole family came to Finland.
      "When the family came to the airport, I cried very much, I cried so much when I saw our mother, and that she really was alive", Zarmina says.
     
Zarmina was lucky. Not all children get their families into Finland.
      In 2005 one in ten children got a negative decision and were sent back to their home countries. In addition to them, nearly one third of all children were returned to another European country where they had sought asylum before coming to Finland. So slightly more than half of the arriving children are allowed to stay in Finland, at least temporarily.
      Zarmina's life in Finland has been a success story in other ways as well. Almost immediately after her arrival, Zarmina went into a Finnish high school in Kontiolahti and did her matriculation examinations. She got a Magna Cum Laude for her Finnish language essay.
      Zarmina got into the University of Helsinki to study languages, and at the same time she is studying to be a health nurse at a polytechnic. The reason for this is that she was told at the Finnish Red Cross that education in health care was the best way to get a job in international aid in Afghanistan.
     
At the same time Zarmina is working at a pharmacy in Helsinki. Last year she was named Refugee Woman of the Year.
      Before she got Finnish citizenship, she applied for a housing loan and bought a 100-square metre apartment in East Pasila in Helsinki, because it would have been ridiculous to spend EUR 1,000 a month on rent.
      "Now I am paying for my own property", said Zarmina.
     
Finland is Zarmina's home now, but sometimes she remembers her house in Kabul with its fruit trees.
      "There were also lots of grapes there. My mother dried them to make raisins, and we had a cabin in the north. My relatives had cows, and the women would milk them", Zarmina laughs quietly.
      "The milk was great. It had a completely different smell than in the city."
      Were there many trees?
      "Not as many as here. Finland is full of trees. But there were mountains. Plenty of mountains."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 25.2.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Woman smuggled from Afghanistan in 1999 gets annual award (23.3.2006)

KATJA MARTELIUS / Helsingin Sanomat
katja.martelius@hs.fi