NEWS ANALYSIS: Death threats have become an everyday phenomenon
Atmosphere of blind rage colours Finland’s immigration politics
By Hanna Kaarto
So it has come to this: death threats against politicians by racists have become an everyday phenomenon in Finland.
Already for some time now the Minister of Migration and European Affairs Astrid Thors (Swedish People’s Party) has been targeted by those criticising Finland’s immigration policy.
The critics stepped up a gear, when Thors recently advocated a more tolerant approach with regard to Finland’s law on foreigners.
And Thors remains in the line of fire. Last week headlines were made by a Facebook hate group containing death threats against her.
The members of the group said they were prepared to do some jail time for killing Thors.
Yesterday’s papers reported on an openly racist website where death threats have been posted against several politicians.
The site also includes a link entitled: “Things can be resolved by voting”.
A mouse click on the link takes the viewer to the homepage of the right-wing populist True Finns party.
The Facebook group had been set up by a man who was a former non-aligned True Finns deputy councillor.
True Finns chairman Timo Soini told Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday that he was thoroughly fed up with having to answer for the doings of Internet troublemakers and a former “not-quite councillor”.
Soini also said that he was categorically opposed to all forms of threats with violence.
Last weekend, the late-edition tabloid Iltalehti reported on an opinion poll according to which the largest group of the floating voters, 99,000 people in all, plan to give their vote to the True Finns in the next general election in a year’s time.
The popularity of the True Finns reflects the local population's dissatisfaction with the country’s immigration policy, despite the fact that Soini has repeatedly denounced the troublemakers and does not ride on the anti-immigration ticket himself.
In this atmosphere of blind rage, the fact that the government has done and is doing a lot of work to tighten the immigration policy has gone largely unnoticed.
According to the National Coalition Party immigration expert Arto Satonen, the only mistake is that such measures are greatly overdue.
At least politically the NCP feels that it is coming in late to the debate: hence the party is about to begin its own “Hey, we’re talking about immigration policy” campaign.
The government changed its course regarding the matter already a year ago.
As a result Parliament is now discussing a motion according to which the asylum-seekers’ age tests should be written into law.
The idea is to prevent people from faking that they are underage.
At the same time politicians seek ways to make the unification of families programme more strict.
The aim is to prevent in the future the foster children of asylum-seeker families from using the programme to bring in their original families as well. Furthermore, the subsistence support for asylum-seekers was cut at the beginning of February.
Immigration policy in Finland has been in many respects much more lenient than in many other EU countries for some time.
This has also gone largely unnoticed, for here the number of asylum-seekers has remained significantly lower.
In recent years, however, the numbers have turned upwards, which has caused the government to tighten its policy.
This fact has remained in the dark - and to a certain extent the media is also to blame.
The stridency of the racist elements should not drive the politicians in power to give in to populist measures, such as suggestions to put a stop to receiving the so-called quota refugees.
Their number is not more than a couple of hundred per year and they come to Finland in a controlled manner and predictably from the most difficult conditions on the planet.
Last week Helsingin Sanomat reported that Finland and the United States screen their quota refugees more tightly than any other nation.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.3.2010
Previously in HS International Edition:
Racist website contains list of politicians to be killed (2.3.2010)
Police investigate Facebook group about Finnish minister as unlawful intimidation (1.3.2010)
See also:
Security Police investigating Kanerva death threats (19.3.2008)
HANNA KAARTO / Helsingin Sanomat
hanna.kaarto@hs.fi
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NEWS ANALYSIS: Death threats have become an everyday phenomenon
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