'Sambo' Sweet Packets Attacked

Photo: Marc

Anti-racists campaigning against offensive imagery on the packets of one of Finland's most popular sweets have scored a double victory.

Firstly, the largest Finnish community centre outside the Scandinavian country have banned the products. And, Britain's powerful Commission for Racial Equality have joined the Finnish Church in London and written to manufacturers Cloetta Fazer to raise their objections. Both organisations want an explanation about why the offensive  'Sambo' picture of a Black face is still being used by the company, Scandinavia's largest maker of confectionery.

Rector of the Finnish Church Juha Rintamäki acted after being contacted by editor of The-Latest Marc Wadsworth who complained about Fazer's controversial liquorice being sold in the church shop. Rintamäki immediately removed the products from the shelves and fired off a letter to Cloetta Fazer. He told The-Latest:  "I don't like the image and nor do many other people. But the problem is that the product is very popular because people like the taste. The matter isn't over yet."

The church's service manager Marja Lyhty, who is responsible for the shop, added:  "We have decided not to stock the product any more. In fact we are considering replacing it with Panda sweets (manufactured by another Finnish company) because Fazer have told us they have no intention of changing the design unless they are forced to by Finnish law."

The Finnish Church, in Albion Street, Rotherhithe, holds a10-day Christmas market in November visited by more than 6,000 people. Rintamäki said the Fazer liquorice was the most popular sweet on sale throughout the year and it was worth more than a thousand pounds in revenue.

But the products removed from the church's shop would not be returned to Fazer. Meanwhile, lawyers at the CRE in the UK have written to the Finnish sweets company  'advising them to reconsider the future manufacture and distribution' of the  'Sambo' liquorice packaging because it is  'offensive and distasteful'.

Despite the fact that Cloetta Fazer have stubbornly refused pressure from anti-racists to ban the image for almost a decade, the CRE seem confident that their  'advice would be adhered to'.

See also: 'Finnish Celebs Want 'Sambo' Image Ban' (The-Latest, World News).

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2 Responses to "'Sambo' Sweet Packets Attacked"

OmnisFlusis

Sun, 12/10/2006 - 17:59
<p>I am a young university student from Finland. I am a native citizen of Finland. I understand the fuss of these pictures in abroad. I really haven`t given a thought before of these images. To&nbsp; ME there is no more deeper meaning or a&nbsp; message on the plastic candy sac. Fazer has&nbsp; always characterised their sweets, like for instance Dumle. It has a&nbsp; friendly chocolate face or figure, which pose to represent the candy. I quess their first thought was a black person&nbsp; in this case a black boy called Sambo, since liquorice is usually black. </p><p>Some of you say or might think of Finland as a forerunner&nbsp; of social-democratic state. I laugh, when I hear this. A few months ago I read about how Finland is the least corrupted country in the whole world and the freedom of the press is highly developed that there is no other place like this.&nbsp; This is not the case - far from it. The true power in Finland is&nbsp; held by a small elite called swedes of Finland. Because of this small and powerful elite -&nbsp; 91,64% of the population of Finland&nbsp; are forced to study swedish through out a&nbsp; comprehensive school to a university. Without the language proficiency you cannot get a job i.e.&nbsp; from a public office.&nbsp; This by the way violates UN`s resolution on human rights.&nbsp; &nbsp; Here lives about 260 000 swedis people, which is 5% of the population of Finland. 4,9 million people speaks finnish as a mother tongue.&nbsp; Because this 5% of our population we must study at least 6 years of swedish and plus one year, if we want to get a&nbsp; higher education. If you ask why 4,9 million people are forced to learn language of&nbsp; former occupier - the asnwer is - so that we could serve these bilingual fellow citizens - which already speaks finnish, but they want service in their native language. Isn`t this insane? The former prime minister of Sweden Johan Persson, said in a TV-interview that Sweden will never have the wealth to make Sweden bilangual as Finland. They don`t have the money even Sweden is far more wealthier than Finland. Where do we get ours? In Sweden lives 400 000 finns. I have read horror stories from there&nbsp; that in the 80&nbsp;´s teachers beat up kids in schools who dared to speak finnish. Most of the finnish media is controlled by this swedish elite. We have three TV-stations, which are YLE, MTV3 and channel four (Nelonen). Yle is in hands of the government, which is biased to the elite. MTV3 owns by Swedish company called Bonnier. Channel four is owned by the richest man&nbsp; of Finland, which is by the way a swede of Finland. In the last summer there was a lot of talk about&nbsp; a russian fighter plane, when the plane violated finnish airspace. This is nothing new, but there has been&nbsp; occasions,&nbsp;  when a swedish fight plane has violated finnish airspace, but nothing has ever mentioned in public. In the finnish governent is a party called SFP - swedish party of Finland. This party has been in the administration for 40 years in a row! How about that! In the previous governmental election the party got 4% of votes and still got seats from finnish parlament - as always. This country is&nbsp; a far from a democratic state. It is a disgrace to democracy! SFP gets a financial help from straight from the king of Sweden! Finland is not a independent state by a long shot! In USA this kind of&nbsp; an action is forbidden in constitutional law, but not in Finland. In Germany a party have&nbsp; to get at least 5% of all votes before they can&nbsp; join in&nbsp; the parliamentary session. In 2004 was ruled a new language law. The commission, which ruled this present law -consisted of persons who belong in the power elite. Even a minister of Sweden <em>Mona Sahlin</em>, took part in this commission. The ruling was unanimous. All provinces of Finland, which have 2 % minority of swedes are from&nbsp; now on bilingual provinces, where everything has to be done in swedish also, road signs etc. The former law defined a province bilingual, when it had about 10% minority of swedes.</p><p>&nbsp; Since we are talking about racism, let me tell you about SFP`s founding father and his thesis. SFP gives an annual award to anyone who has done an effort for the elite. It usually means that someone has narrowed rights of finnish people, thus giving more power the swedish elite. The award is called Freudenthal- medallion.</p><p>Axel Olof Freudenthal thesis are not far from nazi-germany ideology. I bet you wont get these anywhere else&nbsp; in english.</p><p>* Finns never could create an original culture in their land, before swedes arrived, because of&nbsp; their racial heritage. (The man thought of us as mongolians.)</p><p>* In history we know that those who are members of their tribe or are related<span> to them - have no anykind of natural talents for their self-reliant development&nbsp;  as a nation in cultural- or agricultural-wise.</span></p><p><span>&nbsp; * No other nation in Europe have&nbsp; showed so little effort for being an&nbsp; independent nation as finns.</span></p><p><span>* In&nbsp; intelligence-wise finns are not equals to others. A&nbsp; swedish yeoman thinks that a finnish yeoman is an inferior creature - a lumber head of the wilderness, who is inferior in everyway to a swedish yeoman.</span></p><p><span>* Power should not been seen, but&nbsp; it should be felt!&nbsp; </span></p><p><span>Axel Olof Freudenthal lived in the 19th century. To this day he is the guideline of SFP. This kind of place Finland really is. Know you know it.</span></p><p>edit: I forgot to tell you that SFP has demanded different school buildings and hospitals&nbsp; for swedish speakers where would be only swedes. Sounds&nbsp; like apartheid?&nbsp; There are still huge benefits in our society, if you happen to be a swede i.e. there are language quotas for swedes in the University of Helsinki. So they can get in the university easier than finns and finns have to pass a language test that they really speak swedish - swedes don`t have this kind of test where should be proven that they speak finnish. Sounds fair - doesn`t it? In 1906 in Espoo a city nearby Helsinki -&nbsp; finns build a school for their children where they would get&nbsp; an education in finnish. Swedes reponded to this barbwiring the whole school so that no-one would get in. Even in&nbsp; 1950`s in&nbsp; Helsinki&nbsp; there were massive fights for pro-finnish education in the university of Helsinki.</p>

webmaster

Fri, 08/13/2010 - 05:51
<p>This definitely has to stop. There should be tons of protests on this. Lets get this going in the future. Keep up the good work.</p> <a href="http://www.casinoenlignedu.com/">casino en ligne</a>