A U.K. travel ban on two European Christians persecuted for their faith is preventing one, a prominent Finnish politician, from speaking to a U.K. legislative body this week. The revocation appears to be based on a wrongful conviction of Finnish Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing a booklet discussing the Bible’s theology of male and female differences, says free speech law firm Alliance Defending Freedom.
“The U.K. authorities initially granted the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) to Paivi Rasanen and then approximately one week later they withdrew the ETA,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel Lorcan Price told The Federalist via text Tuesday evening. “This is undoubtedly connected to her conviction for hate speech in a split decision before the Finnish Supreme Court.”
It’s the latest in a long escalation of European repression of free speech and peaceful religious expression not just in Europe but across the globe, despite massive subsidies U.S. taxpayers pay European governments as ostensible allies. The United Kingdom has in recent years jailed citizens for praying silently on public property, flying the British flag, and civilly objecting to importing migrants who don’t assimilate. Meanwhile, it has refused for decades to track down and punish majority-Pakistani mass rape gangs who often target white, Christian children.
Europe has become the epicenter of Western restrictions on Christianity and basic human rights developed and established for centuries by Christian belief across the West. European restrictions on global communications monopolies such as Apple, Google, and Meta form the Western Great Firewall of mass internet censorship that privileges leftist ideology while hiding factually accurate competing ideas, including across the entire United States, according to numerous reports. The Biden administration worked with the EU to enhance internet censorship in the United States, and it continues from abroad despite the Trump administration’s reversal of stateside censorship policies.
In a case that has received international attention and cries of concern from human rights advocates and the U.S. State Department, Rasanen was convicted in March of “hate speech” for writing a booklet titled “Male and Female He Created Them,” a quote from the Bible. Pohjola was convicted for publishing the simple theological pamphlet. They have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
Finland’s “hate speech” law is part of its criminal code forbidding “crimes against humanity.” The punishments for the conviction include banning the booklet from print and the internet in Finland and imposing fines on Rasanen and Pohjola. The statute also allows for jail time.
“I was convicted of ‘hate speech’ in Finland for peacefully expressing my Christian views. This was an egregious case of state censorship, noted with concern by observers around the world, including the US State Department and the US Religious Liberty Commission,” Rasanen said in a statement Wednesday. “Even though this unjust conviction is currently on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, the UK has likely refused me travel authorisation on this basis. In doing so, the UK is punishing me for exercising my fundamental human rights.”
Rasanen is a democratically elected member of an allied government, she also noted, which makes her denial of entry even more notable and diplomatically offensive. Finland and the United Kingdom are also U.S. allies and the recipients of massive U.S. military expenditures through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Rasanen’s seven-year legal persecution for publicly affirming basic Christian teachings about the sexes has given her message international attention. She frequently travels abroad to advocate for free speech for people of every religion and sexual behavior.
Rasanen received permission on June 17 from the U.K.’s home secretary to enter the country, says ADF. That permission was cancelled on July 3 with the explanation, “The information you provided in your ETA [Electronic Travel Authorization] suggests that you are not eligible for an ETA and it has been canceled,” according to a government communication ADF provided The Federalist. ADF is assisting Rasanen and Pohjola with their legal cases.
An ADF spokeswoman says Rasanen followed the instructions and applied for a full visa, and received no response. Next, Rasanen privately petitioned Mahmood to reinstate her entry approval and received no response. Rasanen and ADF then publicly appealed on Aug. 18 to Mahmood to allow Rasanen to speak at the conference in person, as previously scheduled, instead of via livestream.
Rasanen was set to speak this week in person to the Northern Ireland Assembly on religious liberty. Because of the ban, she instead must speak by Zoom if U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood does not intervene. The Northern Ireland Assembly is a legislative body of that part of the United Kingdom.
The travel ban also disrupted a layover for Rasanen and Pohjola’ journey back home to Finland through London’s Heathrow Airport in July. The U.K.’s Home Office press team did not respond to a Tuesday request for comment nor to a follow-up Wednesday.
Mahmood, a Muslim whose parents emigrated to the United Kingdom from Pakistan, is a Labour Party member who spent five years of her childhood in Saudi Arabia. Since the 2010s, the U.K. has enabled a dramatic rise in Third World immigration. The consequences include shifting Mahmood’s coreligionists from a leftist voting bloc into a distinct political party, as The Federalist’s John Davidson has explained. This dynamic is also underway inside other Western nations such as France, Spain, and portions of the United States, including in Michigan, New York, and Texas.
Mahmood, however, refused to serve a Cabinet position under the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist. Despite previously supporting blanket amnesty for illegal migrants, she has taken a new, law-and-order stance on immigration amid rising public discontent with Labour’s open-borders policies. Mahmood narrowly fended off a recent challenge in her half-Muslim district from another Pakistani immigrant Muslim who called her an “infidel” for not more strongly supporting violent Islamism in the Middle East.
Islamic teaching matches that of the Bible on the question that brought about Rasanen’s conviction. Both reflect the reality that men and women are physically different and therefore cannot procreate within same-sex couplings.
Because of this underlying physical and biological reality, all orthodox major world religions decline to falsely label same-sex interactions “marriage.” For affirming this, Rasanen and her booklet’s publisher, Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, were convicted 3-2 by the Finnish Supreme Court of “hate speech” after being cleared by every lower court on free speech grounds.
Surveys put Muslim-majority nations among the worst in the world for abuse of free speech and religious freedom rights that have been protected for centuries across the Christian West. Religious genocide and other repression against Christians is common in many Muslim-majority nations, according to aid organizations.
The other most dangerous regime for Christians is Communism, such as in North Korea and China, and its former holdings, such as Russia, Ukraine, and parts of Europe. European “hate speech” laws such as that used to convict Rasanen and Pohjola were imposed under post-Soviet Communist influence.
