Suldaan Said Ahmed, a Somalian-born leftist immigrant activist here in Finland, advocates that our country should pay for a welfare state in African countries because Western countries did slave trade. To illustrate the horrors of slavery, the Facebook post where he put out this idea has a staged picture of Bantu people in chains.
Bantu people, the people who Arabs sold as slaves to Somalians until early 1900’s. That's when the new Italian colonial masters somewhat incompetently stopped the local slave trade. Across the Red Sea in Arabian peninsula, slave-owning continued officially until 1960's — Oman was the last country there to abolish slavery in 1970 — and unofficially, who knows. In West African Mauritania, slavery was abolished in 1981 but actually keeping slaves became a crime only in 2007.
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| Wikipedia: A female Bantu slave in Mogadishu (1882–1883). |
I politely pointed this out to Suldaan. His reaction? Remove my comment, block me from his open wall.
Great. That's a good indicator about the integrity of our country's Left Alliance. It's good we know. Of course, we knew before, but a reminder is good to have.
However, there is something about slave trade that someone should tell Suldaan. Finland had nothing to do with African slave trade; we were actually not an independent country at that time but even during Russian reign, we retained the Swedish laws which did not allow slavery or serfdom. In Russia, a rich man could own many souls (and trade in them); in Finland, he could not.
Our last actual involvement in slave trade was in early 18th century, during and after the Great Northern War, when some 10 000 – 20 000 Finnish people were captured and sold as slaves in Russia — among other things, as expendable workers in the construction of St. Petersburg which is founded on corpses of forced labourers.
If Suldaan had bothered to read a bit of the traditional literature in his new home country, he would have learned that a well-known children's story Koivu ja tähti (Björken och stjärnan), written by Zachrias Topelius, tells how two children escape slavery in Russia and, guided by little birds (who turn out to be an angel form of their deceased sisters) finally find their way back home, of which they only remember that there was birch-tree outside the house and a star above it. There they are re-united with their parents. Not a realistic story, because so few came back from slavery in Russia, but it's a story of hope.
So, Suldaan, if you want reparations to be made to victims of slave trade, we could justifiably ask your country of birth to pay us. However, I'll grant you this: let the reparations be paid out to African countries who are in need, but you need to go to the former paymasters of your party in Moscow and St. Petersburg to ask for the money.
Our last actual involvement in slave trade was in early 18th century, during and after the Great Northern War, when some 10 000 – 20 000 Finnish people were captured and sold as slaves in Russia — among other things, as expendable workers in the construction of St. Petersburg which is founded on corpses of forced labourers.
If Suldaan had bothered to read a bit of the traditional literature in his new home country, he would have learned that a well-known children's story Koivu ja tähti (Björken och stjärnan), written by Zachrias Topelius, tells how two children escape slavery in Russia and, guided by little birds (who turn out to be an angel form of their deceased sisters) finally find their way back home, of which they only remember that there was birch-tree outside the house and a star above it. There they are re-united with their parents. Not a realistic story, because so few came back from slavery in Russia, but it's a story of hope.
So, Suldaan, if you want reparations to be made to victims of slave trade, we could justifiably ask your country of birth to pay us. However, I'll grant you this: let the reparations be paid out to African countries who are in need, but you need to go to the former paymasters of your party in Moscow and St. Petersburg to ask for the money.
Go ahead, do it. Good luck.
