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BFF-29
FINLAND-RACISM-POLITICS
Racism, intolerance ‘escalating’ in Finland: Council of Europe
HELSINKI, Sept 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Racist and abusive language is
“commonplace” online in Finland and is on the rise in political discourse, a
report by the Council of Europe warned on Tuesday.
Although the Nordic nation frequently tops international comparisons
regarding happiness, gender equality and quality of life, the population has
the lowest share of foreign-born residents in western Europe, at 6.6 percent,
and anti-immigrant sentiment is widespread.
The hardline Finns Party, which campaigns on a platform of staunch
opposition to asylum, has been the second-largest party in the past two
general elections.
“Racist and intolerant hate speech in public discourse is escalating; the
main targets are asylum-seekers and Muslims,” the council’s Commission
against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said in the report.
Meanwhile online “expressions of racism and xenophobia containing anti-
immigrant rhetoric as well as targeting persons of African descent, LGBT
persons and the Jewish community are commonplace, as is abusive language when
referring to Roma,” the authors said.
Last year, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency found that people of African
descent in Finland suffered the highest levels of perceived racial harassment
and violence out of 12 member states studied.
Although ECRI welcomed recent measures to try and address the problems, it
said that “the responses of the Finnish authorities to these incidents cannot
be considered fully adequate”.
Finnish authorities recorded 1,165 hate crimes in 2017, but the report
criticised the patchy collection of data which it said prevented accurate
year-on-year comparisons. Nonetheless, it noted that civil society groups
have marked an increase in hate incidents since 2015.
Ethnic profiling by the police appears to still be common practice,
despite being outlawed in 2015, ECRI said, and criticised the lack of
diversity in the police, which it says does not reflect the make-up of
Finland’s population.
The report also singled out Finland’s so-called “trans law”, which
requires people to undergo sterilisation before they can be recognised as
another gender. In June new prime minister Antti Rinne pledged to overturn
the widely criticised sterilisation requirement.
BSS/AFP/RY/1535 hrs