Päivi Räsänen is a Finnish politician who infamously recently got convicted for "incitement against a group of people" because she is a practicing Christian and she made public comments about homosexuality that are in accordance to conservative Christian beliefs.
When I say that she is the victim of a political witch hunt, I'm being 100% serious. I'm not throwing that term lightly, I'm not blowing things out of proportion, I'm not exaggerating. This is because of the process how the conviction came to be.
Firstly, after she had made those public comments, a complaint was made to the Finnish police about it. The police made the decision that what she said is fully within her right to free speech and that there is no reason to suspect any criminality, and thus they didn't even start a preliminary investigation (which is the first official step that the police performs when investigating a crime and deciding whether to prosecute.)
However, the Prosecutor General of Finland, Raija Toiviainen, was not happy with this, and she ordered the police to start the preliminary investigation anyway.
Räsänen ended up being prosecuted at the district court level, which is the lowest court level. The unambiguous decision of the judge was that no crime had been committed, and acquitted Räsänen of all charges.
The Prosecutor General was not happy with this judgment, so she escalated the case to the next level, which is the Court of Appeals. Again, the new judge there decided that no crime had been committed, and upheld the decision of the previous judge.
Again, the Prosecutor General was still not happy with this judgment, so she escalated the case once again, to the highest court of the country, ie. the Supreme Court of Finland.
In Finland, the Supreme Court consists of five judges. Finally, she was convicted of the "crime" with a vote of 3-to-2, with two of the judges being of the opinion that no crime had been committed, while three of them disagreed. The entire thing felt completely arbitrary and up to random chance, with their decision arbitrarily going either way.
Many have commented that if the law is so unclear that even the highest judges cannot agree with it, there's something very wrong with that law.
But, finally, after literally years of this political witch hunt, the Prosecutor General got what she wanted: To punish Räsänen for her expression of free speech.
It's completely ridiculous.
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