An ankle bracelet will not do a woman/child being raped and/or murdered any good whatsoever…
Kick them out.
Domestic abusers and failed asylum seekers: Finland mulls expanded use of ankle tags
NGOs saw electronic monitoring as a means to curb violence against women in Finland, but now government is considering ankle bracelets for rejected asylum seekers.
A.H. (name withheld to protect identity) is a 27-year-old Iraqi who came to Finland in 2015 after his father and siblings were killed in violence in his home territory. He was granted a residence permit in 2017. If his application for asylum had been rejected, he would have been one of many potentially affected by a contentious proposal to track failed asylum seekers by fitting them with ankle monitors as an alternative to detention.
“It seems foolish and incredible because you should never treat an asylum seeker as a criminal or a terrorist! They are human and have the right to live in peace without an ankle monitor,” A.H. commented, adding that he felt very strongly about the proposal.
The apparent crackdown coincides with heavy media coverage of child sexual abuse offences committed by quota refugees, asylum seekers and others who had already received Finnish citizenship. The previous government also sought to prod unsuccessful asylum seekers who became undocumented migrants to leave the country, in part by making life uncomfortable by denying them municipal and health services.
Critics of the previous administration’s policies have pointed out that other legal reforms introduced in 2016 to rule out granting asylum on humanitarian grounds have in turn increased the number of undocumented migrants in Finland. In 2018, Turku University researchers estimated that the number of undocumented migrants — including the so-called “newly paperless” or rejected asylum seekers — was between 3,000 and 4,000.
Coalition clash over government agenda
Asylum seekers are not the only ones rattled by the proposal for electronic monitoring. Government partners also seem to be split by the planned policy. Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo has previously said that the new administration led by centre-left PM Antti Rinnehas not made any decisions about the use of ankle monitors for rejected asylum seekers.
But Ohisalo’s Centre Party government partner Antti Kurvinen recently parted ways with her on the issue of Finland’s refugee policy. In a Facebook post (in Finnish) put up after Ohisalo’s comments, he specifically stressed that the use of ankle monitors on failed asylum seekers is a part of the current government programme and that Ohisalo would have to implement it.
