A Finnish member of parliament has been blocked from entering the UK where she was due to give a talk in person on freedom of speech at a religious freedom conference. Päivi Räsänen had been convicted for hate speech by the Finnish Supreme Court in March for expressing her Christian beliefs on marriage and sexuality in a 2004 church booklet.

Räsänen, who is a member of the Finnish Parliament’s “Friends of the United Kingdom” group, was due to give a talk in person on freedom of speech, at a religious freedom conference. In July, however, she was informed that her Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to the UK had been cancelled, despite her application initially being approved in June.

The Finnish MP and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) called on the UK Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to intervene to allow Räsänen to attend in person on Friday.

Räsänen said: “It is shocking that the UK has blocked me, a democratically elected politician in an allied European state, from entering the country.

“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.

“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.”

Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who was criminally convicted alongside Räsänen for publishing her booklet, was also blocked from entering the UK after his ETA was denied in June.

Bishop Pohjola said that it was an “Orwellian reality” that he was blocked from entering the UK by the Government.

He said: “For a senior Lutheran cleric to be criminally sanctioned in one European country and blocked from entering another, for merely publishing a church booklet which peacefully expressed views the Finnish state disagreed with, is extremely alarming.

“It shows how far our civilisation has strayed not only from its Christian roots, but even from respecting the basic human rights of free speech and religious freedom. The two are undoubtedly related, as a new secular orthodoxy has taken root across Western countries, under which dissenters are punished harshly.

“I sincerely hope the UK Home Secretary acts to allow Päivi to enter the country, and that the European Court of Human Rights upholds our right to free speech. Peacefully expressing views on marriage and human sexuality that Christians have always held is not a crime.”

Räsänen’s criminal conviction was noted with concern by observers around the world, including the US State Department and the US Religious Liberty Commission.

Responding to the recent incident, US Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers said: “Päivi  was prosecuted for quoting the Bible. A downstream effect of countries criminalising speech is that systems designed to flag and filter ‘criminals’ trigger rippling second-order punishments. Can lead to debanking, visa denials, and more.”

Räsänen, Bishop Pohjola and the Luther Foundation Finland, who were all convicted in March over Räsänen’s booklet, have appealed their cases to the European Court of Human Rights, where they will be represented by ADF.

On March 26, 2026, the Finnish Supreme Court found the former leader of the Finnish Christian Democrats Päivi Räsänen guilty by a 3-2 decision, with one charge relating to views expressed in a 2004 church booklet.

The church booklet, authored by Päivi in 2004, led to her conviction on the grounds that “after a preliminary investigation into the matter was launched in 2019, Päivi continued to share the article on her own internet and social media pages in 2019 and 2020.”

Päivi, who has served as a member of the Finnish Parliament since 1995, and was Minister of the Interior between 2011 and 2015, had been charged with hate speech in April 2021. The Finnish Supreme Court heard her case on October 30, 2025, following the state prosecutor’s appeal against a second unanimous court ruling that acquitted both Päivi and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola of the hate speech allegations.

The Supreme Court unanimously acquitted Päivi for a 2019 Bible verse post on Twitter (now X), but imposed criminal fines of several thousand euros and ruled that the impugned statements must be “removed from public access and destroyed”.