Racism and homophobia in F-land

Two news items today:

An 8-year-old ethnically Somalian girl was pushed out of a train on the platform by an adult Finnish male, who also called her “a monkey” and told her to get out of his way.

The discussion following this on the newspaper website concentrated on calling the story “a probable lie”, blamed the girl herself for some invented bad behavior “since that’s how they are” and called the news story propaganda since it told of an act of violence towards the Somalian minority. And, oh yes, someone managed to disparage the girl and her family and of course many times they were told to go back to Somalia.

In the Finnish parliament, a parliament member compared gay and lesbian families to “someone marrying a dog”. The discussion following this on the newspaper website lauded him for his “values”.

Sometimes I do not miss Northeast Europe at all.

Local council elections / Finland

I noticed that I am not able to vote in the local council elections of my previous dear home city Helsinki. Makes sense, since I’ve already actually voted in Delft (my vote went for GroenLinks, although nowadays, knowing a bit more, I would probably cast it for SP). But anyway.

Plenty of my friends were happy to vote and some were even taking part:

Helsinki

Yuri Akseli Höykinpuro (The Left Alliance)

Eva Isaksson (Greens)

J. Pekka Mäkelä (Greens)

Espoo

Jerri Kämpe (Swedish Party)

Tampere

Anukaisa Alanen (Greens)

Alas, none of them was actually elected. The Helsinki council got a bit weird, with a so-called “multiculturalism critic” gaining a large number of votes. We’ll see how this effects the city itself. I am beginning to feel that I’ve already been away for so long (over 3 years!) that the city has changed. Yeah, I can’t find my way around Kamppi anymore, but also mentally, and not only geographically.