Finland tries to reach potential Afghan asylum seekers living in Russia via social media

Finland has used a social media instrument trying to tell Afghans living in Russia not to consider getting an asylum in Finland on thin grounds, media reported on Saturday.

Finnish Foreign Ministry has purchased targeted visibility on Facebook. Based on the customer profiles of Facebook, the Ministry wanted to reach "young, Dari or English speakers in Northwestern Russia and Moscow."

The customer group were informed about new stricter asylum criteria for Afghans and new techniques introduced for finding out the applicants' real age.

It has reported that some asylum seekers claimed to be minors but they were actually not.

Finland has also informed about the first fast track decisions to send asylum seekers back to Russia.

Afghans who had entered Finland from Russia via a northern crossing near Salla, Lapland area, last week, were sent back to Russia Friday night on scheduled trains crossing the Finno-Russian border in southeastern Finland.

Finnish authorities admitted they were aware of the fact that many of the potential Afghan asylum seekers coming from Russia have already had Russian as their first language.

Vesa Hakkinen, Head of the Current Information at the Foreign Ministry told newspaper Iltasanomat that possibly the message did not target correctly on all Afghans living in Russia. He hoped the message would spread through human contacts as the same info had been released by the Finnish Embassy in Kabul.

The number of Afghans coming to Finland via Russia has been small in comparison with people coming from the Middle East and Europe, but there are fears in Finland the number may increase.

Earlier in the autumn, Finnish authorities used Facebook in the Middle East to reach potential asylum seekers in Syria and Iraq. Endit