Finland and the Freedom of Expression - part I

I apologize in advance for the boldface and the length of the post, but I feel I'm writing about a topic that demands length and boldface.

Just before the holidays, Finland's "minority ombudsman", a state official charged with looking after the interests of minorities, declared that "Internet racists" need to be arrested and tried (Ombudsman: Bring Net Racists to Justice, YLE news, amusingly referring to "racialist" sites).

According to Ms. Suurpää, the current ombudsman (ombudsperson?), there are "large amounts of material promoting racial prejudice" currently available on the Internet. "She told the newspaper the prevailing wisdom seemed to be that anything could be placed on the net."

Of course,this being Finland, you can't just place anything on the net. The Finnish penal code, Chapter 11: (translation from finlex.fi)

"Section 8 - Ethnic agitation (578/1995)
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."

A few years ago, Professor Tatu Vanhanen almost found himself in court for publishing results of a study on the varying average IQ of different nations in IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Amazingly, the Finnish state decided that publishing scientific results isn't criminal after all, and Vanhanen was not tried. When the scandal over the Danish Mohammed cartoons erupted, a Finnish extreme right-wing organization published the cartoons on their website, and after several parlamentarians demanded the police stop them, an investigation was launched into whether publishing the Mohammed cartoons in Finland constituted "ethnic agitation".

Think about that for a moment: most other European countries rallied around the freedom of the press and freedom of expression in support of Denmark and Jyllands Posten, who had published the original cartoons. Finland wanted to criminalize publishing them. That should give you an idea of the state of freedom of speech in Finland.

Also note that these were both totally victimless crimes. No Muslim came forward to complain that the cartoons insulted their faith. No native of the countries whose people Tatu Vanhanen's study reckoned has a lower IQ than the others complained that they felt defamed or insulted. Neither of these police investigations into ethnic agitation was undertaken because someone felt agitated against, insulted, defamed or in any way attacked; they were undertaken because the state wanted to. When no private citizen or organization starts a lawsuit, the police are left with the freedom to choose which texts they want to consider "ethnic agitation".

Under Finnish law, the penalty is fairly stiff; fine or up to two years of imprisonment. I'll give some examples of crimes that are, by the magnitude of the penalty attached to them, comparable to ethnic agitation.

If you can't be bothered to read the lawyerly text, scroll on down to my executive summary. Here is a series of crimes for which the same penalty can be applied:

Section 18 - Distribution of sexually obscene pictures (650/2004)
(1) A person who manufactures, offers for sale or for rent, exports, imports to or through Finland or otherwise distributes sexually obscene pictures or visual recordings depicting
(1) children,
(2) sexual violence or
(3) bestiality
shall be sentenced for distribution of sexually obscene pictures to a fine or imprisonment for a maximum of two years.

Section 5 - Assault (578/1995)
(1) A person who employs physical violence on another or, without such violence, damages the health of another, causes pain to another or renders another unconscious or to a comparable condition, shall be sentenced for assault to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.

Section 12 - Brawling (578/1995)
A person who by employing physical violence or otherwise takes part in a brawl or attack which has several participants and where someone is killed or a serious bodily injury or illness is inflicted on someone, if he/she had reason to believe that the brawl or attack would have the said consequence, shall be sentenced for brawling to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.

Section 13 - Imperilment (578/1995)
A person who intentionally or through gross negligence places another in serious danger of losing his/her life or health, shall be sentenced, unless the same or a more severe penalty for the act is provided elsewhere in the law, for imperilment to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.

Section 14 - Abandonment (578/1995)
A person who renders another helpless or abandons a helpless person of whom he/she should take care, and thereby causes danger of said person losing his/her life or health, shall be sentenced for abandonment to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.

Here are a few examples of crimes for which the penalty is lower than that for ethnic agitation:

Section 8 - Buying sexual services from a young person (650/2004)
(1) A person who, by promising or giving remuneration, engages a person younger than 18 years of age to have sexual intercourse or to perform other sexual acts shall be sentenced for buying sexual services from a young person to a fine or imprisonment for a maximum of one year.
(2) An attempt shall be punished.

Section 15 - Neglect of rescue (578/1995)
A person who knows that another is in mortal danger or serious danger of losing his/her health, and does not give or procure such assistance that in view of his/her options and the nature of the situation can reasonably be expected, shall be sentenced for neglect of rescue to a fine or to imprisonment for at most six months.

Executive summary: In Finland,it is a crime to agitate against an ethnic group. A comparable crime, in terms of the magnitude of the penalty allowed by the law, is assault, abandonment or producing or distributing child pornography. That's right. The penalty for "Internet racism" is the same as for child porn.

Going by the maximum penalty allowed by the law, in Finland it is a lesser crime than ethnic agitation to engage the services of an underage prostitute, or cause someone to die by not assisting them when they're in immediate, mortal danger. That is to say, the maximum penalty allowed by the law is less for these crimes than for ethnic agitation.

Leaving someone to die or engaging the services of a child prostitute are lesser crimes than "Internet racism".

In a twist of macabre humor, the crime of ethnic agitation is listed under Chapter 11 - War crimes and offences against humanity in the Finnish penal code. It immediately follows Section 6 - Genocide and Section 7 - Preparation of Genocide. Under Finnish jurisprudence, publishing a cartoon is on the same page as genocide.

You would think that, given the comparably severe penalty for ethnic agitation and its classification as a crime against humanity, this law would only be applicable to something really serious. Instead, according to the Finnish government and police, a blog post is a crime against humanity.

Mikko Ellilä has recently been sued, by the previous "minority ombudsman", for ethnic agitation over a blog post (Espoolaismiehelle syyte kiihottamisesta kansanryhmää vastaan internetissä, YLE news). The post, in Finnish, is to his blog on thinkertothinker.com: Yhteiskunta koostuu ihmisistä. He talks about this on his blogs, fi-lib and Uusi viesti. As I said at the beginning of this post, the current minority ombudsman, a civil servant, has said that more people need to be sued for the same reason.

Because of this blog post, Ellilä is going to be placed on trial for ethnic agitation. As I've shown, under Finnish law this is a crime that calls for a penalty similar to that for assault or distributing child porn. Had he attacked a random passerby on the street or taken pornographic pictures of a 12-year old, he would face the same penalty. I'd ask you to think about that, but I don't really want to think about it myself.

Had he, on the other hand, hired a 15-year old prostitute or left a person to drown, he would face a lesser penalty. Instead of doing something less serious like causing someone to die, he instead committed the more heinous offence of posting something in his blog.

I know Mikko Ellilä personally, and consider him a friend. I also thoroughly disagree with what he says in his blog entry, and I do consider it racist. What I simply cannot deal with is that according to the laws of this country, his blog post constitutes a crime, and a fairly serious crime.

I think Mikko's blog post is based on incomplete facts, and the conclusions he draws from it are wrong and, quite frankly, racist. Before anyone asks me to qualify that, I'll return to the topic later in this blog. I vehemently dislike and oppose racism, so obviously I don't want to defend it.

What I do want to defend is our freedom of speech and expression. I firmly believe Mikko has the right to write about whatever he damn well wants to in his blog, without being sued by the government.

The only crime he has committed is holding an opinion, and writing about that opinion in his blog. In Finland, this constitutes a crime against humanity, and the government is empowered to press charges against him and imprison him.

More than likely he won't go to prison, and he may not even get a fine. But because we're dealing with the law and our human rights as citizens, what matters here is principle. Those of us who are citizens of Finland should not, indeed if we believe in human rights at all can not, accept the fact that a blog posting is a crime against humanity. Those of us who are citizens or residents of other countries should take note of what's going on here, lest it happen in your country as well.

Accoring to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

In Finland, everyone does not. In Finland, a blog post can be a crime against humanity if the government wants it to be.

I firmly believe something needs to be done about this. As a start, I'm trying to raise awareness about this particular case. I'll be returning to the theme of freedom of expression in Finland in later posts, and I believe that the state of Finnish legistlation is such that those of us who believe in freedom of expression need to start fighting for that freedom, even if it means taking the side of people whose opinions we disagree with.

Wikiquote tells me that a famous quote that I like is not in fact from Voltaire, but from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who used it to sum up Voltaire's opinion on free speech:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

We need to think long and hard about whether we actually believe in that or not. If we do, then something needs to be done.