Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen was once again blocked from entering the United Kingdom due to her “hate speech” conviction for defending Scripture, according to Alliance Defending Freedom CEO Kristen Waggoner. Räsänen is a member of Finnish Parliament’s “Friends of the United Kingdom” group.
“My friend Päivi Räsänen – a doctor, grandmother, member of Finnish parliament, and devout Christian – was invited to speak at a religious liberty conference this week in Northern Ireland,” Waggoner wrote. “The UK will not let her enter the country. This is due to her recent ‘hate speech’ conviction for writing a church pamphlet, in 2004, on Biblical marriage.”
“This outrageous ruling by Finland’s Supreme Court provoked widespread criticism from human rights experts, free speech advocates, and the U.S. State Department,” Waggoner continued. “Päivi was invited to this week’s conference in the U.K. precisely because she is a globally recognized champion for free speech.”
“Freedom-loving nations should welcome voices like hers – not uphold the heavy-handed censorship of other nations. ADF is calling on U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to make a last-minute intervention and allow Päivi to attend in person on Friday. Free speech is not a crime.”
According to the ADF, Räsänen’s Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) to travel to the U.K. was approved in June before being abruptly cancelled last month, after which she applied to the U.K. for a full visa and personally wrote to the Home Secretary to ask that it be granted before the conference this week. She has not yet received any response.
This is the second time in two months that Räsänen has been denied entry to the U.K. In July, Rod Dreher reported that Räsänen was informed that she could not travel through London’s Heathrow Airport after speaking at an ADF conference.
The court unanimously acquitted the former minister of the interior for her 2019 tweet quoting Scripture but convicted Räsänen for “hate speech” under the “war crimes and crimes against humanity” section of the Finnish criminal code for a 2004 booklet she co-authored for her church with Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who was also found guilty. Pohjola has also been denied entry to the U.K.
The 22-year-old booklet she was convicted for, however, made the case from the Bible for natural marriage – over a decade before same-sex “marriage” was legalized in Finland.
Nonetheless, Räsänen was retroactively convicted for defending the biblical position on marriage because LGBT activists and their judicial allies relentlessly pursued her prosecution. Räsänen was ordered to pay a fine of €1,800 and the foundation that published the booklet was fined €5,000. Räsänen was previously acquitted unanimously by two lower courts on all charges.
“This is not an isolated incident,” said Lorcán Price, Räsänen’s attorney at the European Court of Human Rights, of the U.K. ban. “The U.K. has in the last year blocked a number of mainstream conservative individuals, politicians, and now even a member of the Finnish Parliament and a Lutheran bishop, from entering the country. This trend is yet another example of the severe and escalating censorship crisis in Great Britain.”
“Furthermore, the British state is increasingly cracking down on the rights of Christians in the U.K.: Christians have been criminalised for silently praying, offering to speak with people, publicly preaching their faith, and now they have been blocked from entering the country for expressing their views.”
“For a senior Lutheran cleric to be criminally sanctioned in one European country and blocked from entering another, for merely publishing a church booklet which peacefully expressed views the Finnish state disagreed with, is extremely alarming,” Pohjola said. “It shows how far our civilisation has strayed not only from its Christian roots but even from respecting the basic human rights of free speech and religious freedom … a new secular orthodoxy has taken root across Western countries, under which dissenters are punished harshly.”
“It is shocking that the U.K. has blocked me, a democratically elected politician in an allied European state, from entering the country,” Räsänen said in a statement. “I was convicted of ‘hate speech’ in Finland for peacefully expressing my Christian views. This was an egregious case of state censorship, noted with concern by observers around the world, including the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission.”
“Even though this unjust conviction is currently on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, the U.K. has likely refused me travel authorisation on this basis. In doing so, the U.K. is punishing me for exercising my fundamental human rights. I call on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to urgently intervene to allow me to enter the U.K. to speak at this event. There is still time for this censorship to be reversed.”
