Sunday’s “Helsinki Calling” pro-human rights demonstration promises to gather thousands of protesters on the eve of a summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. But internal divisions over messaging and vision appear to have caused rifts among some of the NGOs involved in the movement.
Helsinki University researcher and SahWira International activist Dr Faith Mkwesha, who recently took on the Finnish aid organisation Plan Finland over its casting of a pregnant 12-year-old in one of its campaigns, described what she called “the policing of language” by the Helsinki Calling organising committee as “problematic”.
Mkwesha claimed that the organisation has culled terms such as “protest” and “resistance” from its communications.
“How is resistance a bad word? Should we be trying to please the people we are protesting against? The whole point of a protest is to create discomfort,” she told Yle News.
She pointed out that organisers green-lighted use of the term “demonstration” only after pushback from some members of the collective.
“Only white women can use their privilege to say that you must speak nicely about the people who are oppressing you and that you should not be angry about oppression,” Mkwesha added, noting that while she continues to support the Helsinki Calling demo, she is also working with another protest group, Helsinki against Trump and Putin, that will take to the city streets on Monday.