From something I posted on the Corner in 2013:
Bored, bored on a recent flight to Finland I turned to the Finnair magazine in the desperate hope of something. What I found was a piece (“Invest in Finland!”), by the country’s foreign minister, Alexander Stubb. Most of the article was pretty standard (convenient location, good logistics, highly qualified work force, lakes, forests and so on), but this caught my attention:
“The number of foreigners in Finland is growing rapidly. By 2020 there will be more than 250,000 immigrants [Finland’s population is currently 5.4 million people]. Give it another ten years and ten percent of the population will be international. Great stuff!”
Great stuff!
Back to 2013:
Quite why Mr. Stubb feels that Finland should not be satisfied with the Finns it already has must remain a matter of deduction. In part, it may be that he subscribes to the delusion that mass immigration is the way to combat the threat supposedly posed by declining birth rates to the welfare state, and in part it may be that he has bought into the conventional pieties of the EU’s governing class.
Here he is (quoted in Helsingin Sanomat) back in 2010:
“Finland needs to be international and multicultural”, says Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Stubb (Nat. Coalition Party). In his view, Finland’s current debate on immigration has taken on a negative slant. “The point of view that is critical to immigration, the extreme part of it, dominates debate. The debate is excessively one-sided. It reeks of racism, nationalism, populism, and xenophobia. It is very unpleasant”.
That Finland needs to be “international and multicultural” is, you see, a given.
Mr. Stubb later served as Finland’s Prime Minister.
Scroll forward to 2017, and here’s the Dhaka Tribune:
Latest Bangladeshi IS fighter killed in Iraq is Taz Rahman. Hailing from Mohammadpur in Dhaka, Taz is the son-in-law of Abdul Mannan, who leads the Islamic Society of Northern Finland.
…Swedish-Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil told the Dhaka Tribune that he had possibly been killed in Iraq earlier this month.
“Taz Rahman was active in the Finnish jihadi/Islamist scene until 2013/2014 before migrating to Syria,” Tasneem added.
The Finnish jihadi/Islamist scene.
Great stuff!
Radical Islamic networks have an increasingly strong presence in Finland, Jyri Rantala, the head of communications at the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), estimates in an interview with Talouselämä.
“We could even say that a ‘jihadist underworld’ is emerging in Finland. These networks have ties to all key terrorist organisations,” he said.
Great stuff!