Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Muzzled in Finland

Vasarahammer posted an appeal in the comments of this morning’s post, on behalf a fellow bloger in Finland:

Sorry to disturb a perfectly appropriate thread.

I have a message, a freedom of speech alert, to be specific.

One of the foremost Finnish immigration and islam critical bloggers Mikko Ellilä is facing a police investigation concerning his blog posts.

Mikko posts in Finnish in his blog.

Mikko is due to have a hearing in the local Police department and I believe he is about to face an investigation for incitement against a group of people (hets mot folkgrupp). So far, no charges have been pressed.

So if Baron or Dymphna would be so kind to contact me, so I could provide you with the details of the case if you are interested.

I’ve written to Vasarahammer, and we will be working on it. Meanwhile, here is his appeal — he and other Finnish readers are invited to provide further information.

I talked it over with Christine of Vigilant Freedom, and here’s the information she would like to see:

1. The law that he’s being tried under (all in English if possible).
2. Contact information for anyone in the Finnish parliament or government or Justice Department that our readers and others and members can write to.
3. What specifically he wrote that they are going after him for — it can’t be his whole blog; it will be some post or several posts.
- - - - - - - - - -
We need those things. And any info on the background of this blogger — that is, who he is, any political party affiliations, past repression or criminal charges, etc. A photo would be helpful.

We can push this but we need information. I’d like to begin putting our State Department on the spot here. They need to come out against the Islamization of Europe; we need to begin demanding that they take a position on things like this — it won’t have an effect, but it helps push the offensive tack

I know we have a fair number of Finnish readers — I see all those referrals from Scripta: Kirjoituksia uppoavasta Lännestä! — so let’s hear from some of you, either in the comments or by email.

Sandmonkey had to shut down his blog, but that was in Egypt. We don’t want the same thing to happen in Finland, which putatively has freedom of speech.

7 comments:

shoprat said...

This is sickening. First SandMonkey and now this.

Exile said...

Baron,
I have a Brit living in Finland on my skype list. He has been there for about 20½ years so he speaks/reads finnish. His name is Kenneth.. something.

I dropped him a skype message with a link to your post on the finnish blogger. I have info'ed Vic. Hopefully, he'll contact you.
He isn't awake or online yet so I can't get directly in contact with him just now. I'm off to bed.
He blogs at http://www.tundratabloid.blogspot.com

He found me through GoV. He knows Steen, Fjordman, and a few others. Maybe he could help us.

Leaving this in your capable hands.... I'm worn out now.

Your e-mail isn't working according to my systemadmin.

Anonymous said...

The method of madness may have simply been something along the lines of https://www.spletno-oko.si/en/eye/hate_speech/ - which is an "anonymous" "hate speech" and child pornography reporting tool here in Slovenia, obviously made in celebration of the recent EU abominable Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating racism and xenophobia. Not delving into the obvious problems of such legislation (which has most competently been done already: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2066), I find such methodology eerily reminiscent of the East-German Stasi…

Baron Bodissey said...

Exile,

Well, if my email doesn't work for you, you're the only one in the known universe with that problem, based on the amount of mail waiting for me this morning!

Vasarahammer just sent me a doc with more information on Mikko. I may be posting on this again shortly.

KGS said...

Special thanks to Exile for SKYPing me about Mikko Ellilä. At the present time, there is little to go on since we are in the dark about what exactly the Finnish police are investigating.

We had a similar occurence during the Mohamed cartoon brouhaha, when the www.suomensisu.fi website received the same notice from the central police investigation unit. They are duty bound to examine all charges leveled, regradless of how clear the situation is.

The Suomen Sisu group is a nationalist group and on the edge somewhat of provoking everybody, but they did not violate any laws and the case was dropped. I assume the same situation is repeating itself, this time with a lone blogger, but unless prolonged malicious intent can be proved, this case will be dropped as well.

The laws that govern this type of scenario were invoked last year which saw two newspapers guilty for publishing an openly anti-semitic op-ed, both papers were fined as well as the man who wrote it.

I hope this helps somewhat. KGS

JohnLobenstein said...

"A person who spreads statements or other information among the public where a certain race, a national, ethnic or religious group or a comparable group is threatened, defamed or insulted shall be sentenced for ethnic agitation to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years."

Shouldn't this law also be applied to publication, public discussion(s), or recitation of passages(verses) from the Qur'an. There are, after all, several verses in which Christians and Jews are equated to apes, monkeys, or swine(pigs). These verses, and those closely associated with them, strongly suggest that the Christians and Jews be eliminated form society.

thad lucken said...

all Finn are equal,
its just that some Finns are more equal than others...

what happens when you elect socialists?