Politician Punished For Christian Beliefs Targeted Again

A politician convicted of hate speech for sharing her Christian views on marriage said she was “blocked” from entering the United Kingdom to advocate for free speech. 

Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen said Tuesday that officials in the U.K. prevented her from traveling into Northern Ireland, where she was slated to speak at a conference on religious liberty. Räsänen said she was initially authorized to enter the country in June, but that approval was yanked in July. 

“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. “I was convicted of ‘hate speech’ in Finland for peacefully expressing my Christian views.”

Räsänen called on U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to reverse course and allow her to enter the country. She currently plans to address the conference remotely on Wednesday and Friday. 

The denial of entry comes just a few months after Finland’s top court found Räsänen guilty of “hate speech” for sharing her Christian views on marriage in a 2004 church pamphlet. The court found her guilty of “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group.” The “text” she was charged over was a pamphlet explaining the Bible’s position on marriage and sexual ethics, published by Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who was convicted alongside her.

The Trump administration, which slammed Räsänen’s conviction, said the latest development showed the dangers of restricting free speech. 

“Paivi was prosecuted for quoting the Bible. A downstream effect of countries criminalizing speech is that systems designed to flag and filter ‘criminals’ trigger rippling second-order punishments [can] lead to debanking, visa denials, and more,” Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers said Tuesday. 

Throughout her legal battles, Räsänen has been represented by Alliance Defending Freedom International, which called for the U.K. to immediately approve her application. 

“This is not an isolated incident,” said ADF International lawyer Lorcan Price. “The UK 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.”

The U.K. itself has a troubled track record on free speech. In May, a pastor was fined for preaching on John 3:16 inside a so-called “Safe Access Zone” outside a Northern Ireland hospital that performs abortions.