The long legal nightmare of Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen, on trial since 2019 for tweeting a Bible verse, has ended. It never should have begun.
The long legal nightmare of Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen, on trial since 2019 for tweeting a Bible verse, has ended. It never should have begun.
I n 2019, Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen tweeted a Bible verse. On Tuesday, she received a full and unanimous acquittal for the criminal charges she has battled over the past four years under Finland’s “hate speech” laws for her tweet. With the state having expended enormous resources to prosecute and punish Räsänen, along with Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola, free speech in Finland has won the day, but at a very high cost.
The tweet was simple — Räsänen questioned her church leadership for participating in a Helsinki pride event, posting a Scripture passage from the Book of Romans to underscore her point. Following this, she was subjected to invasive police interrogations, which delved into the core of her personal faith as a Christian — and then to criminal charges. It’s hard to fathom that Finland’s former minister of the interior — an elected official for nearly 30 years — could be deemed a criminal for the mere act of voicing her deeply held beliefs in the public square.
Strikingly, Räsänen’s and the bishop’s charges for publicly expressing their Christian convictions on marriage and sexual ethics fell under Finland’s criminal-code prohibition on “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Räsänen was charged for the 2019 tweet, in addition to a 2019 live radio debate and a 2004 church pamphlet she had authored long before the law under which she was prosecuted had even been drafted. Bishop Pohjola was charged for disseminating the pamphlet.
In 2022, both defendants were unanimously acquitted by the Helsinki District Court, with the ruling stating that it was not the court’s job “to interpret biblical concepts.” The Finnish state prosecution was quick to appeal, culminating in an August 2023 trial and Tuesday’s verdict. At trial, the prosecution chillingly stated, “You can cite the Bible, but it is Räsänen’s interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal.”
With this week’s ruling, the Helsinki Court of Appeal has dismissed the arguments of the state prosecutor entirely, upholding the ruling and legal reasoning of the lower court and ordering the prosecution to pay tens of thousands of euros in legal fees to cover Räsänen and Pohjola’s costs. Turns out, it’s decidedly not a crime to interpret the Bible as a faithful Christian.
With this ruling, all who are concerned with the protection of free speech can breathe a sigh of relief with the knowledge that it is not a crime in Finland to publicly voice one’s beliefs on Twitter or anywhere else. This is a ruling that sends a crucial signal to the entire Western world — attacks on free speech make a mockery of democratic institutions, with perilous consequences for fundamental freedoms across the board.
When pausing to consider what it would have meant if the court had ruled the other way — rendering peaceful faith-based expression a crime in Finland, a country that receives near-perfect scores for the protection of freedoms — it’s clear that this is a win worth celebrating. But let us not forget the four years of police investigations, criminal indictments, prosecutions, and court hearings, which never should have happened in the first place in a supposedly free society.
For so long as the “hate speech” law in Finland allows for peaceful expression to be not only criminally prosecuted but also punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment, free speech remains nothing more than a thinly protected illusion. Governments debating the implementation of similar censorship regimes should take note. “Hate speech” laws create arbitrary and ambiguous “crimes,” punishing all who dare to speak their mind, and resulting in a mass wave of silencing for the rest — all the while wasting precious state resources desperately needed in other sectors.
Across the world, censorship at the hands of the state is a clearly visible mounting trend. On Thursday of this week, Adam Smith-Connor will face trial in England for praying silently near an abortion facility. In Mexico, both former congressman Rodrigo Iván Cortés and sitting congressman Gabriel Quadri have been tried and punished under the law for expressions on social media regarding gender identity. And as for Finland, the prosecutor has until mid January to appeal the Court of Appeal’s ruling to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, a key victory for free speech was won, but the battle against censorship continues.