The Finnish appeals court announced Wednesday that it has upheld a district court decision to fine Perussuomalaiset (PS) Kotka city councillor Freddy van Wonterghem for inciting ethnic hatred.
While Van Wonterghem is a small fry in the anti-immigration party, far-right PS MP James Hirvisaari blew his stack by slamming the appeals court decision on his Facebook page as “sick, sick.”
“The Kouvola appeals court would end up under sea but it’s lucky that it will even be transferred to Kuopio,” Hirvisaari wrote. “So lawyers are in favor of whipping to death a raped girl. There’s no other way that [van Wonterghem’s] sentence can be understood.”
It is surprising that Hirvisaari and van Wonterghem, who have built their political careers on spreading hate speech, are now upset that it’s legal pay-back time. Without the PS party, social media and Hirvisaari’s hate speech, it’s doubtful that this railroad engineer would have ever been elected to parliament.
Van Wonterghem commented on a blog entry written by Migrant Tales that he had no regrets about what he wrote in the summer of 2011. He said that if a Muslim girl would die it was a good matter since it would be one less woman giving birth to a member of that religious group.
Hirvisaari, who belongs to the legal committee of parliament, said on Uusi Suomi that deputy state prosecutor Jorma Kalske and state prosecutor Mika Illman were “politically corrupt.”
Kalske laughed off Hirvisaari’s claim.
“I can’t remember during my 40-year career of ever hearing an MP that is a member of the legal committee using this type of langauge against the judicial authorities,” he said.
The chairman of the legal committee, Anne Holmlund of the National Coalition Party, doesn’t consider it appropriate for a member of the legal committee or MP to criticize Finland’s legal system in the way that Hirvisaari does.