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No Unfriendly Facts. The Image of “Blacks” and Soviets in Finnish Caricature 1956-1990
the Society of Foreigners in Finland, Ahti Tolvanen, submitted a complaint to the
Finnish Media Council in late 1990. He stated that the caricaturists had “insulted
foreigners living in Finland and also one section of the readership of the paper” (i.e.
Helsingin Sanomat), evidently referring to green MPs Pekka Haavisto and Heidi
Hautala, who had raised the issue in Parliament. Several caricatures from the end
of the 1980s did not, in Tolvanen’s opinion, represent the views of the majority
population and they “instigated prejudices” against asylum seekers by not telling
why they had to find refuge in Finland. Tolvanen bluntly classified Kari as a “rac¬
ist”, because he presumably had disseminated the idea that the Blacks were the ones
who had contaminated Whites with HIV and were connected to drug dealing and
trade of falsified passports.‘ All this offended the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights as it undermined the human dignity of the Blacks. Tolvanen picked
up one caricature in particular (December 2, 1990), in which Kari showed how
the Blacks were welcomed by the Finnish authorities while poor, homeless, and
sick Finnish citizens did not get anything, as most of the provisions had gone into
the pockets of the asylum seekers. There was also in the caricature the insinuation
that the Blacks had reached Finland via human trade routes. For Tolvanen, the
caricature made the asylum seekers the scapegoats for Finnish economic and social
problems (Ahti Tolvanen’s complaint May 6, 1991. Archives of the Finnish Media
Council). This cartoon is depicted in the Figure 3.
Figure 3
On the left, one sees poor Finns and a woman from the Red Cross stopping them
from approaching two policemen. In the middle there is a naive Swedish-speaking
Finn expressing the idea that the Somalis should be accommodated in hotels. There
are two policemen to whom the Somalis say: “They are friendly here, we have ar¬
rived in a land of fools” (in Finnish, 4é/mé/d in the caption). On the right we see
a foreigner selling falsified passports and trips to Finland. The caricature was based
on the suspicions that asylum seekers had come via Moscow, where they had been
given money to travel to Finland.
Tolvanen’s complaint tested the limits of the Finnish sense of humour versus
self-censorship, as it was put before the Media Council, the independent institu¬
tion controlling the ethics of journalists.’ The council’s decision created a precedent
to be followed in future cases of this kind. As its principle was audiatur et altera pars
(listen to the opinion of the opposite party), it asked from the chief editor of the
Helsingin Sanomat, Janne Virkkunen, his reply. Virkkunen was able to refer to the
journalists’ rules specified by the Media Council, according to which a caricaturist
like Kari could criticize “sharply and sensationally” any sphere of life and could
* Kari called himself a racist in the sense that there were in his opinion intelligent and stupid races, honest
and dishonest races, as well as developed and wild races—among dogs (Helsingin Sanomat, October 1, 1989).
> The author of this chapter was a lay member of the council from 2009 to 2014.
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