Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP Jussi Halla-aho was convicted today by the Finnish Supreme Court (KKO) for defaming a religion and inciting ethnic hatred. Halla-aho, who was fined in 2009 for defaming religion, was now criminally charged as well for inciting ethnic hatred.
The sentence dates back to Halla-aho’s blog writings of 2008, when he claimed that Islam is a pedophile religion and Somalis are genetically inclined to rob and live off welfare.
The latest ruling is another blow to the embattled and scandal-ridden PS’ credibility, which has seen its popularity plummet in recent opinion polls.
Migrant Tales applauds the sentence by the KKO to a politician who has made his questionable career on spreading hatred and racism of other groups in Finland. It is certainly an important ruling and warning to others. The sentence reinforces our rejection as a society of racism and populism based on hate speech.
Kimmo Wilska writes on Facebook: “Personally I think that bringing criminal charges against Halla-aho was not a very wise move. Being able to portray himself as a free speech martyr was all he needed to win big in the Parliamentary elections.”
Halla-aho is chairman of the administration committee of parliament responsible, among other matters, for immigration policy.
As Finland learned from the April 2011 election, being complacent and silent on a social ill like racism is definitely the wrong way to go. Allowing such a social ill to roam freely in our society is like letting out a deadly predator.
The party’s chairman, Timo Soini, claimed to the media with a poker face after the April election that there was not one racist among the PS and that earlier that if Halla-aho got criminally charged he’d get sacked from the party.
The ball is now in Soini’s court.
UPDATE: PS chairman Soini said later today on Helsingin Sanomat that the party would take no action against Halla-aho since the fine imposed by the Supreme Court was sufficient punishment.
It is crucially important this guy and more other like-minded PS MPs to be sacked from the parliament because it is shameful to our country that criminally charged persons to be in our parliament. Otherwise, the hate speeches,hostility and other racial actions will continue for ever and untill they become part of our norms.
I suspect that the office staff at the Supreme Court will be busy over the next couple of months duplicating and stapling this judgement. Anyone passing through Helsinki Market Square can drop in and request a copy.
The most interesting thing about this latest and legally final judgement is obviously the new conviction for incitement against a population group that had been withheld by the lower courts. Our regular readers will recognise the familiar codes RL 11:10 and RL 17:10 that are used by our moderators on Migrant Tales. KKO has now given Halal–höpö his yellow card for both of these offences, but somehow I doubt that Timo Soini will have the intestinal fortitude to issue the red card that he previously promised.
You did not mention above that KKO also ordered Halal–höpö to take down some of his blog entries.
This morning’s KKO press release neatly summarises the grounds for the judgement:
There is electronic mail Justice demon, I take you have heard of that. Readers who want can read it that way. I suppose you failed to understand the essence in the report.
Why is that?
Of course anyone can also visit the KKO website for an unofficial electronic copy of the Halal–höpö judgement.
The offending remarks were still shown on the Halal–höpö hate site as of 1 p.m. today.
It’s interesting that they were originally posted on 3 June 2008, just six weeks before the Feret v. Belgium judgement of the European Court of Human Rights.
It remains to be seen whether Halal–höpö now has the stomach to submit a petition to ECtHR arguing an infringement of his right to free hate speech.
Perhaps you did not read the report at all, or you misunderstood the conviction or did so purposely.
Mark said recently, it is allowed to critisize islam which is of course incorrect. Criticism of islam is forbidden, if it is true or not what you are saying.
Incitements.
Halla-aho compared a statement in a newspaper saying that it is a genetical thing for Finns to kill when drunk. Then he added, Somalis live on welfare and rob bypassers as a part of the Somali genetics.
Both statements were true, however Finns kill less people when drunk than Somalis rob people and live on welfare. Halla-aho’s statement was softer and more valid than the newspaper’s but but. 🙂 🙂
The court saw that they had to protect the minorities..so regardless of what you say it does not matter if it is true or not. An insult is an offense eventhough it is based on true facts.
I think you should always let him make the conclusions, you seem to listen to him on a wide range. It will come a response within a week or so.
Onhan totta että moni somali elää sosialliturvalla. Somalit tekevät kyllä rikoksia mutta en sanoisi sen olevan jokin somalialaisen kulttuurin piirre. Sellaista kuin rikollisuus kulttuuri on konvervatiivisten väsäämä humpuukki teoria jolla on hyvin vähän kosketusta todellisuuden kanssa.
Somalialaiset ovat kulttuurillisesti paimentolais kanssa aavikoilta.
Mitä tulee islamiin. Islam ei kyllä ole maailman tasa-arvoisin uskonto. Se on sovinistinen uskonto kyllä. Mutta koraania voi aina tulkita monella tavalla ja sen eri käskyjä voi totella halunsa mukaan. Kannattaa muistaa että suurinosa muslimeista ei ole millään tavalla fanaatikkoja. Etenkin muslimi intelektuaalit ovat erittäin maailistuneita ihmisiä.
Moomin uskotko sinä raamatun kirjalmelliseen tulkintaan. Pitäisikö naispappeus kieltää. Voisimmeko palauttaa orjuuden. Olisitko valmia lähtemään ristiretkelle niin kuin raamattu määrää.
Raamattuhan opettaa, että Jeesus Kristus on ainoa tie taivaaseen. Kaikki muut joutuvat kadotukseen.
It’s not clear what report you are talking about.
We are familiar with the background to the case. I recall someone arguing here a while back that a public prosecutor has a positive ex officio duty to prosecute an offence that has not been reported. There is no such duty, of course. If there was, then the public prosecutor in question would have committed an offence in office merely by failing to respond to something that came to his attention incidentally and outside of the registered [diaarioidut] communications of his office. The situation changes when an incident is referred to the prosecutor for a formal criminal law evaluation. Halal–höpö could have referred the case in this way, but chose not to do so.
If anything, his conduct resembles that of a motorist who announces that speed limits are not enforced in his town, and that he will prove this by driving along the high street at 160 km/h, whereupon – surprise, surprise – he gets prosecuted. Even a clear proof that others have not been prosecuted for an offence does not, in and of itself, constitute a defence against such a prosecution. At most, all it shows is that there is a problem of enforcement.
It seems obvious to me, and was equally obvious to the court, that this point could have been made quite adequately without indulging in wilful civil disobedience at the expense of a population group.
Mark has elsewhere stressed the perfectly valid point that truth is not an absolute defence to charges of defamation. This applies even more obviously to collective defamation than to individual defamation.
The offence of desecration is, again, another area of criminal law, and it is important not to conflate defamation and desecration, even though Halal–höpö has now been finally convicted of both of these offences.
Do you really think so? I would say that both statements are rather obviously false. Can you find any reputable geneticist who supports the view that Finnish people are biologically predisposed to violence while intoxicated?
Moomin
You do not even understand Finnish law or the law on incitement. Parts of your own comment are in this context illegal and it will be interesting to see how the moderators here deal with it.
First. Criticism of Islam is perfectly valid. A discussion of child marriage in Islam is also perfectly possible. However, Allah-oho went a great deal further in presenting as a Fact that Islam promotes and advocates peadophelia. These are not the same thing.
First, he tried to obfuscate the law by suggesting that he had presented this as an idea only, in a discussion about the lack of prosecution of a claim that killing was in the genes of Finns (ignoring for now that this was made by a Finn, and that links between aggression and genetics are not so far fetched). I think this claim is directly contradicted by his writing.
He also claimed after the first court case that his claim in regard to Islam would be accepted as factually true but that this ‘fact’ cannot be publicly stated in writing. This again obfuscates the point. The fact of stating that Mohammed married a girl of 9 is not contested and not illegal or even contencious. Extrapolating from that that Islam directly promotes peadophelia is, and clearly so.
As a so-called ‘scholar’ trying to defend his Islamaphobia under the banner of free speech, he is plainly a charlatan. He does not discuss the fact that average lifespan in those times in that part of the world was 35 years old, and that an equivalent age of consent in today’s world would make sex legal at the age of 19, while in the future, if the average lifespan becomes a very feasible 85 years, then an equivalent stage in the lifespan would make all people having sex before the age of 21 today into sex offenders of the future.
Likewise, in all other species on the planet, procreation typically begins at the age of puberty, and this does not become a moral issue. In fact, the morality and psychology of childbearing among humans has been greatly informed by religion prior to the modern day, and if we took a purely biological or even anthropological perspective, then this behaviour of child marriage in no ways appears strange.
Allah-oho makes no attempt to discuss this subject in a scholarly context or even in a broadly moral context. Rather he sets out to be deliberately provocative of Finland’s laws protecting individuals from defamation based on their religion or nationality by defaming their religion and nationality.
Moomin
JD has already pointed out that you do not demonstrate what YOU think is a crime by going out and carrying out an obvious crime.
Not true. It would be true to say that some Somalis live on welfare and some Somalis rob people. But there is nothing strange at all about this. Somalis are a population, and as such, there are criminals in that population and people in need of welfare support. The exact same can be said of Finns.
There was nothing ‘soft’ about what Allah-oho wrote. Interesting that you absolutely refuse to see the obvious, as it was understand and articulated by Finland’s Supreme Court.
Likewise, you fundamentally misunderstand the law on religious and ethnic defamation if you think it is about minorities. The very same laws should protect the majority too.
Moomin ´´Both statements were true, however Finns kill less people when drunk than Somalis rob people and live on welfare. Halla-aho’s statement was softer and more valid.´´
OK. All Finns are racist, Mr Halla is a Finn, therefore Halla is racist
If what he wrote were true, this conclusion is more valid. Isn’t it?
Ehkä Halla-aho yritti sanoa että, koska somalit ovat sosiaalituista eniten riippuvainen etninen ryhmä suomessa ja tämä yhdistettynä taipuvuuteen rikoksiin ja etenkin ryöstöihin (v 2008) niin tämä on valtava kustannus veronmaksajille.
Rikosten-selvittäminen ja -torjunta maksaa yhteiskunnalle kohtuuttoman paljon. Ryöstön uhreja pitää hoitaa ja kuntouttaa ja syylliset pitää saada oikeuden eteen jne.googletin vähän, voisit Sasu sinäkin kokeilla sitä. Halla-aho tietää että hän on suurennuslasin alla, miksi hän sanoisi jotain sellaista missä ei ole perää?
Islamista. Kerro Sasu miksi Islamin pitäisi nauttia erityiskohtelusta. Kaikkia muita uskontoja on saanut kritisoida vapaasti jo kauan.
Tuomioissa ei ole juurikaan rationaalisuutta, niinkuin perustelin yllä.
I will make a bet with you, Elf, that Timo Soini will not pursue that line of defence.
LoL
Hyym en sanonut että islamia ei saisi kritisoida. Uskontojen kritisointi on kyllä vaarallista puuhaa. Itse uskon että saa kyllä kritisoida uskontoa kunhan tietää mitä tekee. Tarkoittaen että olet valmis ottamaan vastuun sanoista koska aina, kun heristää sormea uskonnolle tulet saamaan paljon ihmisiä jotka ovat vihasia.
”OK. All Finns are racist, Mr Halla is a Finn, therefore Halla is racist
If what he wrote were true, this conclusion is more valid. Isn’t it?”
Can you open this?
Perhaps you did not read the report at all, or you misunderstood the conviction or did so purposely.
The conviction protocol you reflected on yourself earlier.
How do you reason with a conviction that has more priority to protect people than to look at the facts?
Are you Soini’s cousin or spouse bro or similar? Are you Elf yourself or what are you trying to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf
Moomin
So what ‘facts’ of the case do you refer, Moomin, I wonder? Or are you still trying to defend his attack on Islam as fully justified?
The defence behind ‘facts’ is a complete ruse. The facts are clearly up for discussion. What is not up for discussion is trying to extrapolate from those facts to make baseless and slanderous claims against Islam. That is clearly what Allah-oho did, and any attempt to cloud that fact is totally dishonest.
I feel perfectly safe stating the facts in regard to this discussion about Mohammed and his marriage to Aisha. I would also feel perfectly happy to defend Islam against the kinds of claims made by Allah-oho, in spite of the fact that I am non-religious and that I certainly do not advocate child marriage in today’s world.
Nevertheless, the most telling omission from Allah-oho’s ‘analysis’ is the connection between cultural conditions of childhood and life expectancy.
As life expectancy has increased, so has the length of childhood. In the time of Mohammed, procreation began as early as biologically possible, given the short average lifespan of 35 years, with puberty beginning around a quarter of the lifespan.
In the next 60 years, modern lifespan is expected to increase to 100 yrs average in some countries. The same logic would make anyone having sex today under the age of 25 into prospective child sex offenders in the space of less than two generations.
In the context of Islamic culture, the same ridiculous extrapolation is made over a period of 1500 years. It is absurd and unnecessary, even if Allah-oho were to be advocating against child marriage, not that I think he realy gives two hoots about the topic.
Allah-oho was not one bit interested in discussion of the facts! The man is an intellectual fraud!
Justice demon or Elf or Soini’s partner. Shouldn’t we all give as you suggested applauses to the Finnish legal system?
4 years of hard work for 2 statements resulting in a fine on a few hundred euros. Good return on the money.
What are we going to prohibit next? As Halla-aho stated, we know that Somali immigration is a cost, but how big is the cost based on the 2 facts above. Will the one who declaires it be sentenced to prison?
That would be a logical step right?
Well, I’m sure the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade would have sent him down for the maximum two years. Short sharp shock. Discipline. Return to meaningful values etc. etc. Errr…
Anyway, you have exhausted the “nobody else gets fined for speeding here” argument, so now you are moving on to the “haven’t you law enforcers got anything better to do than harass busy motorists” approach.
As the traffic cops say: “tell me one I haven’t heard, Sir”.
So, as I predicted, Timo Soini lacks the gonads to act on this conviction, notwithstanding his previous promise to kick racists out of the party.
He couldn’t even come up with a plausible excuse. “Sufficient punishment” misses the point that membership of a political party is a privilege, not a right. Expelling an individual from a political party is not a punishment, but an adjustment that the party is entitled to make in order to ensure consistency of values in its membership. Declining to do so also sends a statement about those values. Evidently there is room in the peruSSuomalaiset for convicted racists. Well who would have imagined such a thing?
More amusingly, it seems that Halal–höpö has put down the sickbag and is now reconsidering his antipathy to European institutions and human rights. A cynic might suggest that this newly discovered interest in defending human dignity as an end in itself comes at a rather convenient time…
how do you define racist? who is racist? what has Soini said about racism?
Moomin´´Finns kill less people when drunk than Somalis rob people and live on welfare´´
Can you open this? quoted.
If many Somalis live on welfare then they are forced to do so because they are excluded from the job market and many restrictions were put on them to be more vulnerable. But if somalis do crimes why there are no Somalis in prisons? if they are criminal people as you mentioned or Hala and his groups say, there could be more Somalis in Finnish prisons and there are no, then that shows they are not violent people as you are blaming. This story is one of the stereotypes that we face all the times.
What do you think when you assaulting and killing us , and if we react, you say they are violent. Moomin, please be fair who is doing all these crimes in less than two months Somalis or Finns?
http://www.migranttales.net/migrant-tales-february-1-2012-why-write-about-a-somali-immigrant-who-died-in-oulu-finland/
http://www.migranttales.net/abdisalam-mohamed-abdulahi-returning-to-finlands-dark-february/
http://www.migranttales.net/somali-taxi-driver-gets-attacked-in-helsinki/
http://www.migranttales.net/update-older-woman-assaulted-at-myllypuro-metro-station-in-helsinki/
Sasu: Hyym en sanonut että islamia ei saisi kritisoida. Uskontojen kritisointi on kyllä vaarallista puuhaa. Itse uskon että saa kyllä kritisoida uskontoa kunhan tietää mitä tekee. Tarkoittaen että olet valmis ottamaan vastuun sanoista koska aina, kun heristää sormea uskonnolle tulet saamaan paljon ihmisiä jotka ovat vihasia.
Sasu
Kyllä Sasu olen sinun kanssa samaa mieltä uskonto saa kritisoida ja tullekin kritisoida, ja kenenkään uskonto ei saa olla koskematon, mutta KOKONAISTA kansanryhmää on varottava herjaamasta ja leimaamasta koska silloin on vaarana syrjäyttää ihmisiä. Tässä halla ahon tuomiossa minun mielestä suuri osa tekijä oli että hänen hyökkäys kohteena oli kokonaista kansan ryhmää joka minun mielestä halla aho epäreilusti käytti silmätikkuna, ryhmä joka on heikossa asemassa.
Sasu
Jos Halla-aho on väärässä islamista niin perustele miksi? Ehkä samalla tavalla kuin Halla-aho perusteli.
Keksi sitten lisää omia illuusioitasi…yritä nyt edes vähän pysyä asiassa.
Well, I’m sure the embecille philospohy cry, weep, moan is valid somewhere.
However, all people do not buy it for a good cause, decent people do not have to do so. Never in human history give standing ovations to this kind of acts.
Turku muslims may come and piss on Halla-aho’s back-yard but tell me something new yawn yawning.. ZZzzzz fart burp snore
So, no coherent reply to make to any of the comments, except to imply a baseless sense of victim hood for Allah-Oho as a result of some vague reference to Turku Muslims. Incoherent nonsense!
Somalit tekevät rikoksia siinä missä muut kansat tekevät rikoksia vähemmin tai enemmin, minun mielestäni ei ole mitään syytä korostaa heitä mitenkään, ymmärrän että islam uskonto saattaa olla länsimaalaisille kova pala koska islam elämäntapa eroaa valtavasti länsimaalaiestata elämäntavasta. Minä olen Somalialainen, en ole rikollinen ja pyrin elämään Suomen lain mukaan ja monet minun maalaiset tekevät samoin.
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RL 17:10
–Halla-aho made his conclusions based on the written doctrines of islam. Nothing wrong with that.
Sure, Moomin, from your point of view. Not much gray matter in that opinionated statement.
Moomin:
So you’re saying that we Somalis are genetically criminals and that Halla Aho is write about saying so? are you serious? ofcours the’re portion of Somalis o welfare nobody is denying it just like many albanians or iraqians or afghans or arabs or other ethnicities are on welfare in Finland, but why drag genetics in to this when you know that doing crimes or being on welfare is a individual matter? to me your statement is kinda bursting with racism no offence.
”albanians or iraqians or afghans or arabs or other ethnicities are on welfare in Finland”
Blame the Finnish press. They labeled Finns as drunkard murderers. Why wouldn’t it be correct to label Somalis as robbers and welfare abusers, if it has statistical basis?
Halla-aho did not communicate via the press so his message had presumably less coverage…
there are Iranian ex-muslims who could comment on Islam.
Then it is not so much about opinions but direct reflections on islam in Iran.
Are they allowed to enter Migrant tales without getting blocked out without justification?
My understanding is that anyone may comment on Migrant Tales, provided that the comment is lawful and constructive.
I see that you were yellow carded above for a remark that infringed section 10 of chapter 17 of the Finnish Penal Code. If you are unable to express yourself without desecrating things that religious communities consider Holy, then you will have to go somewhere else.
I have many friends from the Middle-East who have turned away from Islam and Judaism, but they do not express this by daubing swastikas in pigs’ blood on the local mosque or synagogue, any more than you would break into a church and steal the communion wine … err – maybe that’s a bad example.
I wonder if you read a female site and respond to this=not reading the content.
It is ok for you to make personal insults but not ok to criticize a religious practise. It is in relation to the Finnish legal system that analyzes 2 sentences for 4 years and gives a few hundred euro fine.
Iranians have very little to do with your fantasies, not that they would make hating of islam a hobby or a lifestyle. If they are asked they say what they think. They do not go near a mosque, they engage in no islamic activity, they have very little positive to say about their islamic upbringing and so forth.
If you have so many friends in the ME, why do not you go to live there? It seems that your communication does not attract too many friends in Finland. Take your chance when you still have it.
The only bad thing I have to say about churches is that they ring their bells too loud on Sunday mornings, the rest is out of interest.
That seems to be your style, not theirs. As you correctly state:
None of which amounts to desecration.
Which underlines the question of why you cannot take a similar attitude to Islam, but instead see fit to desecrate matters that its adherents consider Holy.
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Commenting from multiple accounts.
This comment fell short of our community standards and was deleted by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.
Commenting from multiple accounts.
That same statistical basis that compares 80-year old Finnish ladies living in the countryside with a young male population living in the city? Or that same statistical basis that has been used to stigmatize an entire youth generation of young Africans in Finland on the basis of the actions of what Police discovered to be a gang of about 20 kids in Helsinki?
Moomin, you feed on myth, hysteria and hate, and you cannot respond to even the simplest refutations of your ignorant defense of a convicted racist.