‘Fortress Finland’ and the treachery of the Social Democrats

Since December 2023, the right-wing Orpo-Purra coalition government of Finland has imposed a blanket ban on migration across its eastern border under the pretence of resisting Russian ‘hybrid warfare’. It maintains this brutal immigration policy with the collusion of the so-called Social Democratic Party (SDP), which has continued to expose its bankruptcy after it was booted from government in 2023 due to scandals and its implementation of austerity.

Finland’s eastern border has been closed since 2023, the same year that Finland joined NATO and opened up a 1,300km shared border between Russia and a hostile military alliance. The Finnish ruling class justifies the closure of this border by claiming that Russia organises “instrumentalised migration” – i.e. that Putin is deliberately sending a flood of migrants across the border in order to destabilise his neighbour. The indefinite closing of the border has also come with new, more restrictive immigration laws across the board.

SDP votes for anti-refugee attack!

Evidence for Russia’s supposed ‘instrumentalised migration’ is mostly limited to speculation in the media and selectively picked statistics. Nevertheless, new legislation banning asylum seekers from crossing was presented as critically important for Finland’s security. It passed in July 2024, despite legal experts and other high-profile critics warning that the legislation may break the Finnish constitution and international law.

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, stated in 2024 that countries “with a less developed practice of upholding human rights” could use Finland’s precedent as a pretext for further oppression of asylum-seekers, possibly with even harsher methods.

The law allows border authorities to refuse asylum applications at border crossings and return asylum seekers who have entered the country back over the border, without the right to appeal. So far, though the law has been passed, its provisions for denying asylum have not been activated, which means it is being held for ‘emergencies’, as a reserve weapon.

The law was so extraordinary and controversial in nature that the Finnish ruling class deemed it necessary to have it pass with a 5/6 majority, a measure which also applies to constitutional changes. This meant that of the total 200 members of parliament, 167 needed to vote for the legislation. In the end, exactly 167 MPs voted for it. The legislation also needs to be renewed periodically to stay in force.

The guarantor for the successful passing of the legislation was the SDP, the main opposition party. The party leadership dutifully promoted this reactionary policy on behalf of the ruling class, regurgitating the arguments of the racist and chauvinistic Finns Party (which is a junior party in the ruling coalition). As the law was coming up for renewal in 2025, the SDP parliamentary leader Tytti Tuppurainen stated unequivocally: “The need to secure the border is just as pressing now as it was a year ago.”

SDP as the ruling class’ lapdog

The measure, extraordinary even by standards of bourgeois international law, depends on support from the Finnish Social Democratic Party (SDP, Sosialidemokraattinen puolue), a leading party in the Finnish parliament (eduskunta).

The law was so extraordinary and controversial in nature that the Finnish ruling class deemed it necessary to have it pass with a 5/6 majority / Image: Chief National Guard Bureau, Wikimedia Commons

During the First World War, the SDP joined the Zimmerwald internationalists, who opposed the imperialist slaughter and agitated for ending the war through proletarian revolution. Today, they are a class-collaborationist, opportunist ‘workers’ party’, guided by base national chauvinism and subservient to the interests of US-led NATO imperialism.

It was under the previous, “historically left-wing” (according to the bourgeois press) SDP government, which was led by Sanna Marin who has since joined the Tony Blair Institute, that Finland entered NATO. It also finalised the purchase of the David’s Sling missile system from Israel’s Rafael, as well as F-35A fighter jets from the US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Additionally, the party held a reactionary policy in the rising Finnish class struggle by breaking a national nurses’ strike.

The SDP also has a reactionary record on immigration. In the autumn of 2015, the Finnish ruling class entered crisis mode as 32,000 victims of imperialism from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria sought asylum in Finland, most of them crossing the border from Sweden. The then coalition government, headed by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä (the Centre Party’s businessman leader), including the traditional right-wing bourgeois National Coalition Party and for the first time the populist right Finns Party, instituted a vicious, 80-point asylum programme, imposing stricter immigration laws and worse conditions for asylum-seekers.

Rather than break with this rotten policy, the subsequent SDP government preserved most of it, rolling back only three of the 80 points. This was despite pledging “a more humanitarian immigration policy” in its election campaign. It also failed to advance the rights of ethnic minorities in Finland, such as the Roma and the Sami people. With friends like these, the working class in Finland scarcely needs enemies.

Internal dissent in the SDP

Back in 2024, in the run-up to the adoption of the law, the SDP party leadership was aware of serious disagreements within its own ranks, including from the Afghanistan-born vice chair Nasima Razmyar, whose family came to Finland as refugees in the 1990s, as well as vice chair Matias Mäkynen.

As the opposition, the party leadership has performed a cynical balancing act where it grants individual MPs special ‘voting permits’ to performatively ‘vote with their conscience’ even while the party as a whole votes with the government’s anti-migrant policy. This time however, as even small opposition would jeopardise the law, the leadership acted to quash dissent and limit voting permits to their absolute maximum: six votes.

There were reports of heavy-handed dress-downs and arm-twisting by the SDP leadership as the vote came closer. Anonymous party insiders revealed in Ilta-Sanomat that originally nine MPs were planning to vote no, but that the number was whittled down to the six required to pass the law by means of pressure and threats. Antti Lindtman allegedly promised the governing parties that the SDP was on board with the tough immigration law!

The law was eventually renewed to apply through 2026, with the same six SDP members of parliament casting their no votes, just as in 2024.

Next up for the SDP: landmines

After closing ranks with the Finnish capitalist ruling class to pass the reactionary immigration law, the SDP moved directly to commit another shocking betrayal: Finland has now withdrawn from the Ottawa Treaty, which bans landmines, even against the last-minute appeals of the UN General Secretary António Guterres.

There are already rumours of restarting the production of landmines in Finland / Image: public domain

When Finland signed onto the treaty in 2012, it was hailed as a landmark in international arms reduction. Now, as capitalism’s crisis deepens, the imperialists are retrenching for a new redivision of the world. Militarism is on the order of the day everywhere, including for ‘values-based’, ‘human-rights-friendly’ Finland. No doubt, the Finnish ruling class is contemplating laying mines along its eastern border. There are already rumours of restarting the production of landmines in Finland now that the ‘irritating’ anti-mine treaty has been done away with.

This time, the vote did not require an exceptional 5/6 majority. Even so, the bureaucratic SDP leadership took no chances, as the interests of Finnish capitalism were at stake. The SDP dispensed with even the appearance of democratic debate as, before the vote, Tytti Tuppurainen decreed that “security comes first” and that no special permits would be allowed. Dissenting SDP members of parliament could only absent themselves as the vote was cast.

Sick of these betrayals? Join the Finnish Revolutionary Communists!

As Lenin observed in State and Revolution:

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.”

In few places is this more evident than in the repeated, gross betrayals of the Finnish workers by the Social Democrats and the Left Alliance, the two parties that purport to represent the Finnish working class. When push comes to shove, when actual principles need to be defended, the Finnish workers get betrayals, bureaucratic posturing with parliamentary procedure, and condescending lectures about what is ‘realistic’ in politics and what is not.

The Finnish working class urgently needs genuine leadership that will advance its interests, rather than serve as a loyal instrument of the ruling class. We invite all Finnish workers, students and youth seeking a way to a new society, free from the stifling shackles of capitalist oppression, to join our fight against the rotten Finnish bourgeoisie and their agents in Social Democracy!