Päivi Räsänen About Her Hate Speech Case: “It Was Absurd. How Can This Happen In Finland?"
Prosecuted for quoting Bible on Twitter, Finnish MP Räsänen says in an interview it is an odd and absurd feeling to be investigated for it by your own country.
The criminal investigation of Päivi Räsänen started from her Twitter post in June 2019, when she criticised the church for participating in Helsinki Pride festival. As a Christian, she believes homosexual relatsionships are a sin and she has advocated against same sex marriage for years. At the end of March 2022, she was acquitted by Helsinki District Court, but the prosecutor filed an appeal.
Now she waits for Helsinki Court of Appeals to discuss the case in August this year. We wrote about her case and about the “hate speech” situation in Finland here earlier. In an interview to us she explains her case and discusses the threats such “hate speech” cases pose for freedom of expression.
It is evident that freedom of speech is being limited all around the world. How concerned should we be about the situation that is developing?
I am worried about the situation. I have been in politics for 28 years and a big change has happened during these years. We have seen it in Finland as well as in other European countries. The general atmosphere towards, for example, Christianity and conservative values is becoming increasingly hostile in Europe. The rise of so-called cancel culture, the idea of publicly defaming a person that holds certain beliefs, kicking them out of social media or professional circles, is a threat to democracy and any free society.
It is quite a new phenomenon, I would say. And I was quite surprised 4 years ago when my case started, that something like that could happen in Finland. Finland has such long roots in freedom of speech and freedom of religion and democracy. And, of course, long roots in Christianity. I think that if we do not now use the right to speak freely, employ the space to use our rights – our freedom of speech and religion – it will soon turn even smaller. So it is important to speak now and use these freedoms that are based on our constitution and international conventions.
You said something because you believe in something and your country started prosecuting you. How does that make you feel?
I have to say that it was a very absurd and odd feeling to be investigated and interrogated by the police, and all that because of the opinions and statements that are based on my conviction. All the time I have been very open in the public about my Christian faith and personal values. All I’ve said over the years, what my statements have been, there is no change. But the environment has changed. For example, 4 years ago when this entire process started from a Twitter post of mine – that led to criminal charges and police investigation – I was sitting there in the police station, interrogated and questioned about very theological issues. I had the Bible on the table and the police was asking me, what does this mean and what does that mean. What do you mean by the words ‘sin’ or ‘shame’ and what is the meaning of the letter to Romans and its first chapter? It was such an absurd feeling – can this be Finland? Is it possible that, in Finland, I am questioned, interrogated about my faith? It is based on a very classical view of Christianity. I have not said anything about hating someone or something like that. I just said that I think marriage is between one man and one woman and what the Bible tells about sin – I believe it to be true.
And just a few years earlier I had been the minister of the interior, in charge of the police. And now I was being questioned by the police about these issues. So it was absurd. I felt like I was in Belarus or North Korea. How could this happen in Finland?
How did your case begin?
The starting point of this process was a Twitter update, a tweet I published in June 2019 and that was a reaction to the decision of the Finnish Lutheran Church to support the Helsinki Pride event. I myself am a member of the Finnish Lutheran Chruch and I am an active member. I am also the member of a local church council and my husband is a long time pastor, so we are very much involved in the life of the Finnish Lutheran Church. I was so disappointed about this public support to Helsinki Pride event and I was worried that the church teaching against its own confession, against the Bible, will undermine people's trust in God. So I had the very, I would say, spiritual motivation for this Twitter update. In that Twitter post I included a picture of the Bible about these verses that apostle Paul teaches on the matter of homosexual relationships and asked that how is it possible that the church is supporting something that the Bible calls sinful. Then some citizen made a criminal complaint about this update and then the police started to investigate that. But after that, when it came into public, there were several more criminal complaints made. For example, about an old pamphlet that I had written already in 2004. It was a church pamphlet and its name was “Male and female, He created them. Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.” And Bishop Juhana Pohjola was involved in this pamphlet because he was in charge of its publication. It was his church that needed and asked me to write this booklet. It had not been in the public eye for a long while, but someone found it. It was 20 years old and then the police started to investigate it on top of everything else. And then there were also some radio programs and so on. But then after the police had investigated the case and interrogated us, me and Juhana Pohjola, they said that they did not find that any crime had been committed. But the Prosecutor General ordered the police to continue on the case and then in 2021 the prosecutor put up three charges against me and one against Juhana Pohjola. And then last year it came up at Helsinki District Court, but we won, were vindicated by the district court. The prosecutor decided to appeal to our Court of Appeals and now it is going to go there next August.
What are your expectations from the Court of Appeals?
I am very happy about the decision and the conclusion of the Helsinki District Court. It was very clear, there were three judges and it was unanimous. And in fact, the most stressful and difficult issue in the process was that there were false accusations by the prosecutor, as the prosecutor claimed me to have said things I had never said. For example, the prosecutor accused me of having said how homosexuals are inferior to other people or that they were not created by God, or something like that. I have never said anything like that. I have always said, also in the pamphlet, that I think all people are equal, all are created by God, all have equal worth before God and all are also sinners. We all need forgiveness for our sins. But it is God that says what a sin is and what it is not. And according to the Bible, same sex relationships are against God's will. That was all I had said. And the District Court made it very clear they did not find any such statements in my pamphlet or on the radio programs, contrary to what the prosecutor had falsely claimed. So I have a calm mind when I think about the Court of Appeals. I trust that I will win. But of course the whole proceeding are quite a punishment in itself. I think the prosecutor uses it as a warning to others that they should not speak freely and express their convictions freely. And that is the real issue here.
In 2019, while already being investigated, you said that this will lead to self-censorship amongst the Christians. I would say, it could lead to self-censorship amongst other groups as well, since everybody can understand now that saying certain things can result in them being charged. What is the current situation in Finland? Is there a lot of self-censorship on the topics that are polarizing?
I would say that the problem is there. I have got many messages and letters and phone calls from especially young people, young Christians that say they have difficulties and are afraid to express their faith, as they’re afraid of being labelled, e.g. they could endanger their careers, be labelled at universities or other social circles. So I think this is a problem. And it is not a problem of Christians. If we do no have freedom of speech and freedom to express your convictions, it is everyone’s problem. In fact, there was a study conducted in Finland, and though I do not remember the exact numbers, it was a big number of Finnish people that say they are afraid to openly express their opinions. So the problem is there, since in democracy, freedom of speech is the basis of all democracy. Everyone has a right to express their opinions. And I would say it is also a problem of sexual minorities. They also need the same rights to express their opinions. So it is important for everyone.
Is it clear what kind of speech is criminal in Finland? In Norway you can get prosecuted for stating that a man cannot be a woman. Can you say a man cannot be a woman in Finland?
I would say that it is at least politically incorrect to do so. I do not know if it would be deemed illegal, but at least it is now politically incorrect to state these biological facts. In our legislation, we do not have the words “hate speech”. We speak a lot about “hate speech”, but we do not have these words in our law. And thus nobody really knows what “hate speech” exactly means. In Finland we have a law on incitement against minorities and this is the law, the act, under which this case against me and my statements was categorised. And this act forbids incitement against minorities and is allocated under a broader section of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that is why it is the Prosecutor General who is in charge of prosecuting such crimes. So it is a serious category of crimes. I have to say that we have had this law, just the same law in our legislation since 2010, and when it was brought before our parliament, it did not raise very much discussion. I remember myself, I could never have imagined that one day it would be used against me or against my writings. In fact, I had already written the pamphlet in 2004, six years earlier, and now the prosecutor was accusing it for breaking the law that parliament passed only in 2010.
How did it happen that this law started limiting the freedom of speech then?
This is a very good question. It is a question that I have posed many times by now, as I don’t think anyone in that parliament thought it would be used to ban such kinds of writings at the time. So I would say that the situation is entirely absurd, for our law hasn’t changed in the meantime, my views have not changed, but the opinions of the prosecutors have changed. And this makes it very hard on ordinary citizens, since law should be blatantly clear for everybody to understand what is legal and what is illegal. In my case the police says there is no crime, but the Prosecutor General says there is crime; Helsinki’s District Court says – 3 judges say – they did not identify a crime, but still the process is continuing. I would say that the prosecutor uses the trial as punishment and a warning for others to be very careful about expressing themselves. I would say that there are hundreds and thousands of similar writings in existence in Finland and similar speeches and postings are there on social media, so if I would be convicted, thousands of people would be in danger of being punished for their writings as well. In fact, the police said in their statement that if my writing would be found criminal, then the Bible also should be banned, it should then be criminal to have a Bible. I have to say that I am optimistic, perhaps continuing these proceedings in the Supreme Court could eventually offer a stronger basis for our freedom of speech.
Even though it has been a hard time, it has also been an honor to defend these freedoms that are in danger not only in my case, but in other people's life as well, and I am ready to continue to fight for these freedoms as far as is needed. Even at the European Court of Human Rights, if necessary.
A study commissioned by the Finnish Ministry of Justice found 300,000 examples of online hate speech in September and October of 2020. What might that mean?
I think that there is a lot of ideological thinking going on in the Ministry of Justice. Of course there are also hate speech cases – e.g. someone inciting people to violence or something like that – that are kind of clear cases. But the cases of someone feeling insulted, their feelings hurt by others’ statements, I would not call that hate speech. There are a lot of statements that I feel insulted by, but I don't think they should be censored or banned because of that. I have a different opinion, even if I feel my religious feelings hurt at times, for example. For one, the LGBT activists have been very actively cooperating with our government and ministries and I think that influences these kinds of studies.
Is there a lot of debate about hate speech in Finland now?
In the last parliamentary period (before the last elections on April the 2nd – HS), we had a lot of debate and of course my case raised this discussion as well. There have been other cases, too. And there have been opinions that say we should change the law, the law about incitement against minorities. I would say that our society and our parliament are quite divided. There are politicians who say that we should have very clear hate speech laws. And as you know, there are calls for legislation against hate speech on the European level as well. When the Prosecutor General was nominated to her office (Raija Toiviainen was in office from September 2017 until October 2022 – HS), she said her main aim during her office was to fight against hate speech. And perhaps I was chosen as a case of warning for other people, and she wanted to test these hate speech laws, I suppose.
Conservative politicians say that hate speech law is mainly targeted at them. Is this a well-founded concern in your opinion?
I really believe that there is danger in including hate speech in the legislation and I do agree it would mainly be used to censor conservative opinions. We can see it in Finland and in Europe that these cases go against conservative opinions. In Finland, the possible sentence for a crime of ethnic incitement is up to 2 years of prison, or a fine. But an even more serious side of the problem is that it will result in censorship.