Tried for a Tweet – Public Discourse

These complaints resulted in eighteen months of police investigation and thirteen hours of interrogations. As a former government minister, sitting parliamentarian, and grandmother, I found the situation unreal. Just a few years before, I had been in charge of the police as Minister of Interior, and now I was sitting in the police station being interrogated, with the Bible on the table in front of me. 

The questions were shamelessly about the Bible and its interpretation. I was asked, What is the message of the book of Romans and its first chapter? and What do I mean by the words sin and shame ? A joke spread on social media that Päivi Räsänen was once again meeting for a Bible study at the police station. The police asked if I would agree to delete my writings within two weeks. I said no and reasserted my belief in the Bible s teachings, no matter the consequences. I will not apologize, I explained, for what the Apostle Paul has stated.

After the investigation, I was charged criminally for my post about the Bible s teaching on marriage. A second charge was filed about a booklet called Male and Female He Created Them, which I had written for my church in 2004. Bishop Juhana Pohjola also was prosecuted as responsible for publishing the booklet. A third charge was filed about my biblical views presented in a 2019 radio interview. It was at this time that ADF International came alongside me and we began to defend my case. 

The possible sentence for the crime of ethnic agitation, of which I have been accused, is up to two years imprisonment or a fine. In Finnish law, it falls within the war crimes and crimes against humanity section of the criminal code. The hate speech law had passed parliament unanimously without any real debate. I was part of parliament at the time, and I can say that no one saw the danger of this ambiguity back then.

But now I see it quite clearly. An ambiguous law broadly banning hate speech that can imprison someone for speaking about their faith on social media is bad enough. But the greatest danger is the threat of society-wide censorship and the crushing effect on freedom of speech and religion. A judgment against me would open the floodgates to a broad ban on the public expression of religious views or other beliefs and the threat of modern book burnings.

via www.thepublicdiscourse.com

Päivi Räsänen.

It’s Finland but plenty of people wish it were here.