Text: Editorial staff, Ali Delphi, Sera Heikkilä, Nora Sayyad
Photography by: Ali Delphi, Sera Heikkilä, Nora Sayyad
December 13, 2023

In the last several weeks people around the world have taken to the streets, to their institutions and social media in unprecedented masses to demonstrate against Israel’s apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.

Protests have gathered together people of all ages and backgrounds in demanding the end of Israel’s war crimes and our governments’ and institutions’ complicity in them. The outroar has made it clear that support for Palestinian liberation all around the world is stronger than ever. We asked three photographers to share with us what they have captured during various demonstrations arranged in Helsinki and Jyväskylä.

Ali Delphi

“I am an Iraqi photographer. Three years ago I was introduced to Elokapina, Extinction Rebellion Finland, XR FI. I didn’t have any pictures of my childhood, because I had lost all of them on my way to Finland, and as I joined Elokapina, I decided to document moments of my new life.

Not having any pictures of myself as a little boy is an odd feeling, a mixture of pain, nostalgia, regret, and loss. It feels like a 'missing link' in my evolution as a human. The feeling alone was enough to make me purchase a camera. It felt like a bridge between myself and everything happening around me. I sometimes feel like an impostor. In Elokapina all I do is take pictures, but it seems people find it important and inspiring, even though I consider myself a fake photographer.

Photography is fun, but exhausting as well. A shot can fail because of a single mistake in a fraction of a second. And still it’s worth the risk. Photography is also a way for me to communicate with Finnish people - who don’t  seem to enjoy communication at all to begin with -, even without a shared language.” 

13.10.2023 Helsinki

21.10.2023

“There is a long history of portraying indigenous people as criminals, as has been the case with the indigenous people of America, Australia, South Africa as well as Palestine. Finland being no exception with the portrayal of indigenous Sámi people. Through the ideology of colonialism, our pasts have been distorted, in unbelievable ways. And just as then, also today our realities are being manipulated in front of our eyes through media propaganda. I feel it is my duty as a human being to capture the truth from a crowd of lies. Presenting it to the public through my photography proves my own humanity.”

28.10.2023

“When it comes to documenting demonstrations, I like to stay a bit further from the crowd. I take any opportunity to capture a shot. It’s those spontaneous moments that make pictures closer to reality. In the words of Albert Camus, ''Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth.”

7.11.2023

11.11.2023

19.11.2023

Sera Heikkilä

“I am a Finnish-Iranian-American sociology student and activist currently residing in Jyväskylä. In my photography I am interested in capturing the emotional atmosphere of the moment as well as finding wonder in even the most mundane everyday settings. My love for sociology surfaces in my photos as attempts to portray power dynamics, social relations and phenomena, as well as people’s relationships to their environment.

The first demonstration I ever went to was in support of Palestine in 2014. Almost ten years later the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom has changed me yet again. Seeing people everywhere organising for Palestine in the ways their time and resources allow has given me renewed hope and changed my views on how different ways of activism can be meaningful and impactful. Even though I wish it wouldn’t have to be, activism is a way of life. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

It can be a challenge living in smaller cities and participating in white institutions, let alone trying to organise within them. It’s hard not to make comparisons to bigger cities, their diversity and their community. But I’ve realized that in places where there isn’t much momentum, in smaller cities where the impact feels minimal, is actually where action matters the most. A single conversation or leaflet feels so much more consequential here.”

8.12.2023 Jyväskylä

Nora Sayyad

“I’m a Finnish-Palestinian photographer. I find photography to be just one out of many tools for me to express myself and the world around me, to examine social issues, and make an impact for change, to investigate, to create, to love. This time it has been different though. It has been really hard for me to go out and photograph without having any time to stop and grieve.

As a Palestinian, someone who has family living in Palestine, our decades-long struggle, plight for freedom, and the ongoing genocide, cuts deep. All I want is to do something, but like many of us, I also want to hide, cry, be safe, and find a way out.

Palestinians are made to feel that we not only have to educate the world of our plight, but also prove our innocence over and over again. This has come with the suffocating price of normalizing images of Palestinian bodies cut in pieces, vulnerable, fragile, alone, crying for help, tortured, burned, stripped naked or eaten by stray dogs, only to prove that we are the actual victims, we are the indigenous people of the land, this didn’t start on the 7th of October, and that Israel’s ultimate goal is to ethnically cleanse us all, only to take all of the land for itself. It makes me wonder, where have people been for the past 75 years; when Israel was created as a colonial project and when Palestinian lives have been taken daily?”

21.10.2023 Helsinki

“How are we supposed to have time to grieve in the midst of all this, while we are forced to fight against the Israeli propaganda machine with no resources? Our very existence is being dehumanized – again and again. Some even have the audacity to question why, after decades of oppression, there are armed resistance movements. Wouldn't it be strange for any people to not grow a tremendous amount of anger after going through what we have been through?

Palestinians really need all the help and love that is humanly possible. All the support in the past weeks has already made a difference – even in Finland. This is the first time we’ve seen such a movement that opposes any kind of human right violations, apartheid, state terror, colonialism, imperialism, racism, and facism. A concrete example of this has been funding a collective movement such as the Finnish Palestine Network Sumud and the rising popularity of the Instagram platform Palivoicesfin that offers information, opinions, and voices in Finnish, also from the younger generation, for the youth and everyone interested to join, learn, and make an impact.

Communal activism for a free Palestine movement in Finland is something entirely new. I hope it is here to stay.”

Protests have been and continue to be arranged all around Finland in places like Tampere, Turku and Rovaniemi. Find protests and other ways to take part through accounts like @palivoicesfin and @sumud.fi or organize one yourself.