Finnish Parliament Member Päivi Räsänen has reportedly been denied her electronic travel authorization (ETA), the required permit allowing her to travel to the U.K.
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As CBN News previously reported, Räsänen said the British government revoked the ETA after initially approving it. The shocking purported move came after Finland’s Supreme Court upheld a conviction finding Räsänen was guilty of “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group,” the result of a hate speech charge.
The politician and doctor was acquitted on another charge related to a tweet she sent defending traditional marriage, but the guilty verdict surrounds a pamphlet she wrote that detailed a biblical view on marriage.
Räsänen said she applied for the ETA and initially received a positive response in June — but that soon changed.
“Then, just two days before my travel, I got an email from the government of U.K., where they said that my application was canceled because of what I had told about my conviction,” she told CBN News, noting she had to reveal her conviction when applying.
Räsänen said she’s supposed to speak in Northern Ireland next month at a worldwide ministry event about freedom of speech and faith, but that she now doesn’t know how she will get there. She is able to apply for a visa, which would allow her entrance if approved.
“I got to an immigration center here in Finland to give my fingerprints, and I try to get a visa,” she said. “It is a little bit more difficult and more expensive, but I don’t know if it is possible; they will tell in three weeks if I can get it.”
The irony is that Räsänen has traveled many times to the U.K. as a member of the Finnish parliament and as the former minister of the interior.
“So I find it very, very odd that they do not want me to come there,” she said.
Bishop Juhana Pohjola, a faith leader who was also convicted alongside Räsänen over the same pamphlet, reportedly faced the same issue with trying to travel to Australia.
As for the general battle Räsänen has faced, she told CBN News it has been seven years of court trials and chaos.
“It started from a Bible tweet where I took a photo from the Bible and now I’m convicted for publishing and writing this pamphlet, this booklet, ‘Male and Female He Created Them,’” she said. “I got this conviction last March. Before that, I was acquitted for all the charges in two courts, in district court and court of appeal, but now there was a very close vote in [the] Supreme Court, three to two, and I was convicted.”
Rather than lamenting her own situation, the politician worries about the broader implications.
“This really has consequences to the freedom of speech and freedom of faith here in Finland,” she said. “And, especially, I’m worried for many Christians who are now afraid because they have written very similar views — biblical views that I have in this booklet — and they are afraid that they will be in a similar process in the future.”
Räsänen is appealing her case to the European Court of Human Rights, where she hopes to see the Supreme Court verdict overturned.
“I’m praying that it would give a good result,” she said.
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