The director of a specialised healthcare centre claims Finland’s immigration service has a callous disregard for torture victims, as dozens are deported back to their homeland each year.
Pekka Tuomola of the Centre for Torture Survivors said that, in contravention of the UN Convention Against Torture, Finland sends many victims of physical and psychological abuse back to their country of origin when their asylum applications are refused.
According to Toumola, nearly 60 percent of asylum seekers suffer from some kind of torture trauma, whether it is psychical, sexual or emotional abuse; the latter is often caused by the anguish of watching family members killed and raped. He said that around 200 torture survivors are referred to the centre each year, but psychological torture cases are often ignored by immigration officials.
“We can make a well-grounded assessment of whether somebody has been tortured or not, and we write that in medical statements,” said Tuomola in a YLE report. “According to the UN convention, torture victims should not be returned to the country where they were tortured. The problem is that the Immigration Service does not always believe us, or consider our statements,” he added.
The centre, which is run by the Helsinki Deaconess Institute, often starts asylum seekers onto recovery programmes, only to have their progress interrupted when the patient is deported. “This is a really awful experience when you find out that a person is going to be returned to the same situation in which they were tortured. In effect, it’s a death sentence,” said Tuomola.
Hi again Alfred,
I appreciate your points and would iterate that my girlfriend comment was somewhat tongue in cheek. It is clear that this conversation has gone as far as possible without causing anyone to get genuinely offended, so we should probably leave it here.
However I would ask you to ask yourself, as a principled and open-minded individual, why it is that you never make such impassioned comments on all the many negative news pieces on IceNews about Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway.
Runestone: Good to hear that you agree with me on this story. I believe however that sending people off to be tortured or killed is more than, in your words, “very regrettable”. It is a horrible, heartless and probably racist act on the part of the Finnish state. Pekka Tuomola and the UN would most certainly characterize this act as more than “regrettable”, and so would I. How about you?
Now try not to spend any more time concerning yourself about my relationship with my Finnish wife and where I live and why I write about the things that I feel are important to write about. After all, I couldn’t care less about your personal life or where you live. And by stating that I write an occasional critique of Finnish society or the Finnish government because I was “dumped by a one time Finnish girlfriend” you have exposed how narrow minded and immature you are. It may be hard for you to believe but some people find fault in governments and societies for more genuine reasons than that, e.g., did you like what the Americans did in Iraq? No? Why – did you get dumped by an American girlfriend? See how stupid that is?
Hi Alfred: I wouldn’t say I am SO interested in you. It is just that I have noticed your almost automatic negative response to Finnish news on this website and wondered what you have against Finland. Especially as no country is perfect and Finland’s own unique set of drawbacks are no greater in number than any other country’s.
However, with regard to this particular story, of course I believe the doctor is right and that any situation whereby torture victims are not helped by rich northern European nations when they request help is clearly very regrettable.
So yes I do care about this story, but my question to you was not precisely on-topic. And no, I’m afraid you have not quite satisfied my curiosity. For example: what country are you from?
Peace!
Dear Runestone: Why are you so interested in me? The article is about refugees being sent to torture or death by the Finnish government. Do you care about that at all? If you take the time to ponder my personal life you may be focusing on the wrong thing.
By the way, my one-time Finnish girlfriend who is my current Finnish wife agrees with me on this. When we visit Finland her family tells me what Finns really think of the “darkies” (their words not mine). Did I satisfy your curiosity?
Alfred: What on earth happened to you in Finland? Every single time there is a negative story about the country you comment on it with the sort of bile usually reserved for North Korea and Nazi Germany. You also always ignore the positive stories about the country.
My guess is that your one-time Finnish girlfriend dumped you….
Kind, liberal country. Lectures the rest of us on social responsibility and how to be just like them, the “model society”. And turns refugees away, sending them back to be tortured and killed. What’s wrong Finland, do these desperate people have the wrong skin color for your precious homogeneous society? Hypocrite country.