People Share F***ed Up Things About Their Country That Foreigners May Not Realize

Spain

Lost children from Francoism. Basically babies would be stolen when they were born and parents would be told that their newborn baby died.

nobitanobii

Canada.

Indigenous women in Canada have been subjected to forced sterilization in public hospitals, going back many decades and into 2018. That's seriously f***ed.

retropomme

United States

United States - I don't think people talk enough about how f***ed up the private prison industry is. There are private companies that own prisons and get paid based on how many prisoners are there. There was a case a few years ago where a judge was convicted for making a deal with private prisons to give people harsher sentences so that they could keep the prisons full.

Similarly, there are private companies (i.e. Amazon, Costco) that use prison labor for their companies, which is beneficial to them because minimum wage laws don't apply to prisoners, and in some states it's legal to make prisoners work and not pay them at all.

MaxTheFalcon

Philippines

Homophobia and racism is the norm here. People are only friendly to foreigners because they expect something in return. Police can just shoot you in the street and frame you for drug dealing/using, it will be a sloppy job, an obvious one, but nothing will happen, hell, some people will actually believe him. To name a few.

flyingdoritowithahat

Brazil

Brazilians may not be as friendly and nice as people would like to believe, unless you are, well, white. We can be fickle, mean, egotistical, and racism is quite common countrywide.

fellfromthesun

Wales

People don't realise how my country was stolen time and time again by the Normans, Anglos and more recently the English. They tore up our land, oppressed our people and took all the resources. Now we are a joke. There was a huge Christian revival here that people went nuts for and built dozens and dozens of amazing (and now derelict) chapels amongst slums. Our language was deliberately quashed with people being beaten for using it. Children were punished if they spoke our native tongue.

theshonkuk

Belize

Belize: the murder rate is obscenely high. Right after i moved out of there, two kids burned an old man to death on a sidewalk near my old house.

jetrocket223

Scotland

Often portrayed as a friendly and hospitable nation. The amount of religious bigatory in the west of my country is appalling. Things are improving a bit with the younger generation (under 20s).

RunningAndyScotland

Finland

Finland:

• Where 7% of population are alcoholics (in 2015.).
• Second place in EU in violence against women statistics (almost 50% have faced some type of violence after age of 15).
• Most racist country in the EU.
• Country where people kinda forget we were Nazi allies during the last years of WWII
• One of the bloodiest civil wars in the 20th century, based on deaths/population ratio.
• Forced sterilisations of transgender people are still required by the law
• High suicide rates
• People are lonely, and creating meaningful connections and relationships is hard

Just to mention a few.

renaissancewoman

Mozambique

Mozambique. The country has been ruled by a party dictatorship since independence, Frelimo being the ruling party. The government is corrupt and is scamming the IMF. They are also killing their own people up north due to the natural gas underneath the native lands, and they are calling it casualties of a civil war between political parties when the opposition leader has been dead for two years.

saphic_immigrant

Mexico

Mexico

People always romance the machismo and women being very housewife/family oriented.

Reality: There is a lot of domestic abuse and sexual harassment of women. In very rural areas it's very common for men in their 30s to seriously flirt and pursue relationships with teenage girls. Sadly most of society in Mexico either ignores this problem or promotes it. Age of consent is way lower in parts of Mexico.

This why it's very easy to spot the difference between a Mexican-American male and a Mexican male, by just seeing how they treat women or behave around them.

I know this, because my whole family is originally from Mexico and I have traveled back and forth from the US and Mexico through out my life. And I'm constantly around Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans. This is why I'm very aware of these issues.

I don't mean to shame my fellow Mexican men, I just want this disgusting behavior to change.

ACELUCKY3

Netherlands

Even many Dutch people don't know this:

During WW2 there was a famine (the Hunger Winter) and everyone knows people ate sugar beets and other weird stuff to survive, and pets were eaten too. Well, many small children also went missing around this time, and although it was claimed that they had been sent to the countryside for their safety, some were never found.

It has never been said outright, but many people from that time had suspicions that children were abducted and eaten.

Azzacura

Australia

We stick our refugees in detention camps on smaller islands so they're out of sight, out of mind.

ShitOnAReindeer

Jamaica

Jamaica is one of the most bloodthirsty countries in the world. I used to live in Kingston and not a day went by without fear of getting shot to death on the way to primary school.

I live in the Cayman Islands now so I'm fine. Especially without the constant stress.

PotatoTurt

French Polynesia

Over a period of eight years, we have had thirteen government changes and five different presidents.

Politics in French Polynesia is completely f***ed up. Like the majority of the people my age living outside of the country, I stopped remembering who was the president because it could change at any given time.

mikaxu987

Ireland

Ireland- the long list of abuse of power by the Catholic Church and related organisations, more recently the mother and baby home in Tuam. Not for the faint of heart. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home

Darrkarronion

Poland

We have the most strict anti-abortion, anti-drug, anti-LGBT laws in the whole region. Some politicians proudly call our country a Catholic stronghold among the sea of evil.

_citizenzero

Russia

A man in my country has beaten his wife to death and his only punishment was a 133$ equivalent of fine (iT wAs HiS fIrSt OfFeNcE!!)

Another woman then speaks up about her husband beating her and gets fined by the same amount of money.

alueit

Kenya

When I say Kenya, you probably think of safaris or maybe even the Lion King's "Circle of Life" intro song. Some people might even think of poor, destitute and starving Africans. We're a lot more than just one thing.

1. Under colonial rule, many Kenyans were sent to concentration camps and endured torture for years until independence. We're talking Nazi tactics by Britain, after WW2, across the African continent. We learn about the horrors of the Holocaust in school but not so much is taught about the murder of Africans by Europeans during the same period.
2. Kenya is deeply divided along tribal lines and although the younger generation denounce it more, it is still prevalent especially around elections.
3. Kenyan politicians unlock a new level (depth?) of corruption every year.
4. The police are partial to Caucasian expats and rich people. If you don't have any bribe money or are most in need of protection by the police, you are more likely to be a victim of the police.