FINLAND: Complaints about alien's office (1)
01 January 1991
FINLAND: Complaints about alien's office
artdoc August=1994
Lost mail, illegal refusals of entry, failures to provide
translators and denied family re-unifications are among the
accusations in a leading Finnish NGO's complaint against the
country's foreign affairs administration. In a complaint to the
Ombudsman of the Parliament in Helsinki in July, the
Pakolaisneuvonta (Refugee Advisory Centre) demanded a special
inspection at the SUK police department in Helsinki, where asylum
cases are dealt with.
Hitting a low of only 430 asylum-seekers entering Finland
during the first six months of the year, the reasons are to be
found in faulty procedures. In the complaint, the lawyers refer
to cases of Iraqi asylum-seekers having been turned away at the
Russian border without having had the right to a translator. In
another case 15 Somali asylum-seekers where not allowed to leave
a plane from Bulgaria at Helsinki airport.
Re-unification of refugee families are also being denied. In
one case an SUK official is said to have told a Somali man he
could not bring his son to Finland, as `somebody must have been
taking care of him all this time, and he's a member of that
family now, just like a kitten adjusts to any new family'. In
another case an SUK official is reported to have told a Turkish
torture victim that `this kind of thing could happen to any
country-side worker'.
The NGO's complaint comes only a few days after the Finnish
Ombudsman for Alien Affairs, Antti Seppala, had criticized the
practice of train conductors on the St Petersburg-Helsinki trains
`sorting out' foreigners with suspected false travel documents
and handing them over to Russian militia before the Finnish
border.
New Attempt to Close Borders
The governments of Finland and Estonia are negotiating for a
readmission agreement, which would close the 80 km passage across
the Bay of Finland for immigrants and asylum-seekers. On 24 May
the Finnish Minister of the Interior, Mr Mauri Pekkarinen, and
his Estonian colleague, Mr Heikki Arike, confirmed in Helsinki
that the countries are negotiating for a readmission agreement,
similar to the one in force between the Nordic countries. Estonia
claims it has no funding for settlement of refugees and has not
signed the Geneva Convention on Refugees.
This comes only four months after the centre-right coalition
decided, against the advice of the Interior Minister, to still
consider Russia and the Baltic republics unsafe for citizens of
other countries.
The Minister of the Interior also proposed in June a reduction
of asylum-seekers' rights to appeal decisions. Leaders of Finnish
reception centres are challenging the changes. Finnish asylum
decisions can be appealed to a Ministry of Justice board of
appeals. Deportations can be appealed to the Supreme Court of
Administration - the entire process in some cases lasts for more
than three years.
Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994