Nordic nations’ progressive brand damaged by rising bigotry and book burning
HELSINKI – The Nordic brand, a perfectly curated world with progressive ideals, Eurovision pop and clean-cut design, is under threat. Not from outside, but from within.
A spate of Quran burning in Sweden and the rise of Finland’s far-right party True Finns – now in government with a leader found to have blogged about her desire to gun down immigrants on a train – has thrown so-called Nordic values into question.
Now there is a dawning realisation that little has been done to protect minorities, with more protections afforded to the so-called sacredness of freedom of expression.
Central to that has been a paradox to Nordic progressiveness; a growing intolerance of both immigrants and Islam, often blurred together in far-right discourse.
The Swedish city of Malmo has long been portrayed as a ghetto run by young Muslim criminals, despite the fact local police chiefs have publicly stated that those of a white, Swedish background are responsible for the majority of crimes perpetrated there.
The far-right have long targeted Malmo, and have a history of Quran burning in the name of “free speech”.
“They [Quran burners] want to stir up existing and imagined confrontations between the Muslim minority and other Swedes,” Rouzbeh Parsi, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told Finnish public broadcaster YLE.
In Sweden, permission from the police is required to destroy holy books. A dozen people have applied for permission to burn the Quran, as well as the Bible, Torah and other holy books. A man’s request to burn the Hindu holy book Rigveda in front of the Indian embassy is pending.
Many of the applicants justified their intentions with freedom of speech. Sweden’s Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, accused outsiders of stirring up hate using the country’s freedom of expression laws. For Muslims living in Sweden, it is an excuse by the government not to tackle bigotry head on.
Denmark, meanwhile, has said it will “explore” legal means of stopping protests that involve the burning of holy texts in some circumstances.
For Amjad Sher, an activist working with Amnesty International in Finland’s capital, Helsinki, the problem is not necessarily just with the far right, but the wider population both in Finland and across the Nordics.
“People who would be up for internationalism and openness have become scared,” says Mr Sher, who lives in Finland having moved from Pakistan seven years ago.
Immigration to Finland is relatively new compared to Britain, rising only in the last decade.
Official statistics show that more than a quarter of those born in Europe or Africa have lived in Finland for over 15 years.
This period coincided with far-right leader Riikka Purra’s online blog posts from 2008, replete with racial slurs and violence, only brought to light since the True Finns party were invited to work as a coalition partner by Finland’s centre right following April’s general election.
When i reported on Finland’s election in April, a deluge of Finns on social media refuted the framing of the True Finns as a far right party in the reporting. Since April, at least three racism scandals have dogged the True Finns.
Some positive signs are there. Unlike its neighbour, Finland prohibits the burning of religious books. Mr Sher notes that while the political situation has deteriorated, there is reason for optimism.
Finns across the political spectrum, he says, are “rising up and realising that although immigrants were portrayed as a problem, it’s actually the government that’s the problem”.
