Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Free Speech Tried, Convicted, and Fined in Finland

A couple of weeks ago we reported on the case of Jussi Halla-aho, the Finnish writer and member of the Helsinki city council who was on trial for writing “racist” statements on his blog.

Mr. Halla-aho had now been convicted and sentenced to pay €330 in fines. Tundra Tabloids has the report:

Jussi Halla-ahoIt was to be expected. The Tundra Tabloids was asked just yesterday by someone living outside of Finland, what the outcome of the trial would be. Responding that it would be too close to tell, but the gut feeling however, was that most likely Jussi Halla-aho would receive a fine. That’s was indeed the case, as the District court in Helsinki fined the City Councilman to pay 30 day fines amounting to 330 euros.

This judgement by the Helsinki District Court violates the very essence of what “Freedom of Speech” stands for; the right to say out loud, that, what people do not want to hear. As an American who has been living in Finland for the past 22 years, I’m appalled at what just took place.

The Finnish judicial system just violated the sacred right of every Finn to speak his or her mind freely, on any given subject, no matter how polite or offensive that speech might be. From now on, and in no unclear or uncertain terms, the Finnish state makes itself the sole arbitrator of what kind of speech in Finland is permissible and what is not. Big Brother has spoken.

Prosecutor, Simo Kolehmainen, Chief Prosecutor, Jarmo Kalske, Prosecutor Mika Illman, Minster of Justice, Tuija Brax, you all are traitors to your country, and for that the Tundra Tabloids holds you all in contempt.
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So, it is the personal opinion of the owner of this blog, The Tundra Tabloids, that the central figure of Islam, the person that Muslims revere and worship around the world and here in Finland, their “prophet Mohammad”, was in fact a pedophile by today’s standards, and it’s the continued intention of this blog to keep pointing out that fact, that the founder of Islam was indeed a pedophile, and that many of his faithful followers till this day, adhere to that institutionalized religious practice of Islamic inspired pedophilia.

[…]

True Finns Councillor Fined for Defaming Religion

City Councillor Jussi Halla-Aho of the True Finns Party has been found guilty of defamation of religion by the Helsinki District Court. He was ordered to pay a fine of 330 euros. However, the court dismissed a charge of inciting hatred against an ethnic group.

Prosecutor Simo Kolehmainen said Halla-Aho had publicly defamed the Islamic faith in his blog writings. Halla-Aho had also written derogatory statements about Somali immigrants on his internet site.

The prosecutor said Halla-Aho’s writings insulted Muslims residing in Finland and endangered religious peace. The District Court ruled that in the indictment the claims (Halla-aho’s) were multiplied and by their reasoning were not designed to have a mature debate on grievances about Islam, but at the expense of the freedom of speech issue to discredit the religion’s values.

Halla-Aho admitted to writing the comments but challenged they were intended to defame. He said the comments had been taken out of context added he was not guilty of any criminal offence. YLE

10 comments:

X said...

€330 fine? Hmm... would it be possible to view it as a yearly free speech charge? Free speech for the rich!

That should get the socialists raging. No? Oh well.

laine said...

It's not as though one could retain some semblance of "free" speech by paying for it after the fact in cash fines.

I'm sure jail would be in the cards for a repeat offender.

The Finns once fought off Russian communist totalitarianism but have now handed the wave of Muslim invaders and their totalitarian ideology disguised as a religion a singular victory. The new enemy cannot be named, cannot even be "offended" let alone fought.

Norway, Sweden and Finland all appear to be write-offs due to an epidemic of the highly contagious and terminal brain-rotting disease of socialism. Sigh.

Rasmus Hochreuter said...

@laine:

Norway might rid themselves of their current government on Monday and elect Fremskrittspartiet (FrP), who are much more critical to islam, instead.

I wish them good luck! :-)

laine said...

Rasmus. From your mouth to God's ears.

JGP said...

How about a charitable fund for defenders of Europe? I'll kick in $10 CDN.

JGP

Watchman said...

This case was such a farce. In his blog, he brought up a "study" that claimed that drinking and stabbing is in Finns' genes and asked whether it's ok to claim that living off welfare is in Somalis' genes. Then someone decided to sue him over this so called accusation he made about Somalis.

Finland will go down quicker than Sweden. We have no conservative political party. In fact, our "center-right party" (i.e. liberal party) is the reason for loosening up immigration laws because "we need work force". The social-democrats were in charge before and they generally had a negative view on foreign work force because of their strong ties with trade unions.

Also, the Swedish lobby is very strong in Finland and every Finn is taught to envy Sweden. It's a common joke that whatever Sweden does, Finland will follow in some years. And guess which party our immigration ministers belong to? Yup, Swedish national party (or whatever their party is called in english). And any criticism is brushed off with the words "Sweden has much more immigrants than Finland".

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Funny, I have read several commentors on swedisg blogs who thinks of escaping PC MC by emigratting to Finland as they think they are better off than us. Looks like theyäre dead wrong about that. Looks like Denmark is a better option, even Norway might be better if it goes well for Fremskrittspartiet next week. Heck, even Iceland might be a better option. Brothers and sisters in the east, you need your famous sisu now. You need also to start a new party eloquent to our Sverigedemokraterna, Fremskrittspartiet and Dansk Folkeparti. It sucks you only have mainstream traitoreous parties to vote on.

Valkea said...

Watchman wrote: "Also, the Swedish lobby is very strong in Finland and every Finn is taught to envy Sweden."

- This needs clarification. Finns in general don't envy Swedes. But socialists in the media do, because Sweden is more socialistic than Finland. They do they utmost to engender envy in Finns towards the Swedish system (read: Swedish socialism). Finn-Swede politicians in Swedish people's party and Finn-Swedes with similar liberal values on the other hand try create envy in Finns towards Sweden, because Sweden has more liberal values and more open borders than Finland.

Artificial envy indeed.

Valkea said...

Laine wrote: "Norway, Sweden and Finland all appear to be write-offs due to an epidemic of the highly contagious and terminal brain-rotting disease of socialism."

- Hey, fun has just started. We Finns have such a structural defect in our backbones, that we can't kneel down in front of socialists, Islam or third world trouble makers.

Daath said...

I'd be cautiously optimistic about the long-term future of Finland. We started walking down the PC-MC road only in early 90's, and 3rd World immigration is and has always been proportionally much lower than in Sweden, even considering the recent rise. Sure, the immigration law was changed for the worse a while back, but the original draft was much worse, and having to significantly water down the original proposal (which contained such gems as family unifications for foreign criminals waiting for deportation) was a definite loss for Minister Astrid Thors and the rest of loonies.

During the last couple of years, debate on immigration and minority policy has become increasingly public, and at least on that front, multicultists are definitely on defensive. Of them it could be said that 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity'. I know many sworn antiracists who've become at the worst lukewarm on the whole idea of open borders and multiculturalism, and sometimes stubbornly opposed (once upon a time I was one such person as well). This ridiculous blasphemy charge, this blatant assault on freedom of speech will only bring more publicity to Mr. Halla-aho, bring more people to their senses and divide the opposition. The sentence has zero punitive effect, since he need not be paid until the next stage of court (or the High Court, should the case eventually go there) has heard his complaints. We here in Finland also have a working system for collecting donations in order to pay fines for cases like this.

Translating all this into political change is of course a lot harder, but there is True Finns party which got about 10% of votes in last election. It's no DFP, but it has many nationalists in it, and may move in that direction. There's also the new Change 2011 party, though its prospects are obviously unknown. As for the three big parties, most of their members are at best lukewarm on the whole thing and will bend whatever way the wind is blowing.

A reform will not be easy, but thanks to our late start on this insanity, I doubt we'll be irreparably harmed even if it takes a while.