UK Blocks Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen’s Entry Amid Hate Speech Row

Key Points

• Home Office in the UK cancelled Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen’s ETA shortly after it was issued, about a week ago.
• Räsänen was to speak to the Northern Ireland Assembly in person on religious freedom this week, but has been given a video link instead.
• Both Räsänen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola were cleared by two lower courts before being found guilty in Finland for a booklet on Christian teaching on sexuality.
• The pair are both appealing the decision to the European Court of Human Rights, which has a narrow 3-2 margin of conviction.
• The UK’s refusal is linked to that conviction, says legal charity Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents Räsänen and Pohjola.
• She then re-applied for a full visa and got no reply, so she sent a petition to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood herself, says Räsänen.
• The prohibition on travel also caused delays for Räsänen and Pohjola in July when they returned to Finland, since they had to land at Heathrow Airport with a layover.
• At the time of the original report, the UK’s Home Office had not responded to requests for comment.

Belfast (Britain Today News) — August 19, 2025 — A UK travel ban imposed on a Finnish member of parliament is preventing her from appearing in person before the Northern Ireland Assembly this week, according to reporting by The Federalist. Päivi Räsänen, who was convicted in Finland over a booklet setting out Christian teaching on sex and marriage, had her UK Electronic Travel Authorisation approved and then withdrawn within the space of roughly a week, the outlet reported, citing Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the legal charity representing her.

What happened to Päivi Räsänen’s UK travel authorisation?

Räsänen was granted an Electronic Travel Authorisation by UK authorities on 17 June. Around a week later, on 3 July, that authorisation was cancelled. The cancellation notice sent to Räsänen reportedly stated that the information she had provided suggested she was not eligible for an ETA. ADF’s senior legal counsel, Lorcan Price, told The Federalist that the withdrawal appeared to be linked to Räsänen’s Finnish conviction, describing the case as one in which she had been found guilty of hate speech in a split ruling by Finland’s Supreme Court.

Why was Räsänen convicted of hate speech in Finland?

The case centres on a booklet titled “Male and Female He Created Them,” which Räsänen wrote and Pohjola published through his Lutheran diocese, drawing on a biblical passage to discuss theological teaching on sex and marriage. Finnish prosecutors pursued the pair under a section of the country’s criminal code covering incitement against a group, sometimes described in reporting as a “crimes against humanity” provision. Two lower Finnish courts had already cleared Räsänen and Pohjola on free speech grounds before the case reached the Supreme Court, which convicted them by a narrow three-to-two margin in March. The penalties reported include restrictions on further distribution of the booklet in Finland and financial fines, with the underlying statute also allowing for potential imprisonment.

How has Räsänen responded to the travel ban?

Räsänen issued a statement addressing the decision. She said,

“the UK is punishing me for exercising my fundamental human rights.”

Beyond that remark, Räsänen described her Finnish conviction as an instance of state censorship that had drawn concern from international observers, including, according to her statement as relayed by The Federalist, the US State Department and the US Religious Liberty Commission. She also noted that she holds an elected position in an allied parliament, framing the UK’s refusal to admit her as diplomatically significant given that both Finland and the UK are NATO members.

What is Alliance Defending Freedom’s role in the case?

ADF, an international legal organisation focused on religious liberty and free speech cases, is representing both Räsänen and Pohjola in their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and has been assisting with the UK travel matter. A spokeswoman for the organisation told The Federalist that Räsänen had followed the UK’s own guidance by applying for a full visa after her ETA was cancelled, but received no response. She then petitioned Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood privately to have her entry approval reinstated, again without a reply, before Räsänen and ADF made a public appeal on 18 August asking Mahmood to allow her to attend the Northern Ireland event in person rather than by video link.

Why was Räsänen due to visit the Northern Ireland Assembly?

Räsänen had been scheduled to speak in person to the Northern Ireland Assembly, a devolved legislative body within the UK, on the subject of religious liberty. With her travel authorisation withdrawn and no visa granted in time, she is instead expected to address the Assembly remotely by video call unless the Home Secretary intervenes before the event. The Federalist’s report noted that the same travel restriction had already affected Räsänen and Pohjola once before, disrupting a layover the pair had at London’s Heathrow Airport in July as they travelled home to Finland.

What has the UK Home Office said about the decision?

The Home Office press team did not respond to a request for comment sent on the Tuesday before publication, nor to a follow-up request the next day. As a result, the department’s own explanation for revoking the authorisation — beyond the brief line in the cancellation notice stating Räsänen was “not eligible” — had not been made public at the time of that report.

Who is Shabana Mahmood, and what is her position on the case?

Shabana Mahmood is the UK’s Home Secretary and a Labour Party MP whose parents emigrated to Britain from Pakistan; she spent part of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, according to The Federalist’s report. The outlet noted that Mahmood had previously declined a Cabinet role under former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and that she has more recently taken a firmer public stance on immigration enforcement than some in her party, amid what the report described as rising public unease with Labour’s record on immigration. The Federalist also reported that Mahmood had faced a challenge in her constituency from another candidate who reportedly criticised her stance on Middle East policy. These details relate to Mahmood’s political record generally and were not accompanied, in the original report, by any direct comment from Mahmood on the Räsänen case specifically.

How does this case fit into wider debates about free speech and religion in Europe?

The Räsänen and Pohjola prosecutions have been cited by free speech and religious liberty campaigners, including ADF, as an example of European hate speech laws being applied to religious expression. The Federalist’s report placed the case within a broader argument — one advanced by the outlet and by some free speech advocates, rather than an uncontested fact — that several European states have tightened restrictions on speech and religious expression in recent years. That is a contested and actively debated area of policy in the UK, Finland and the wider EU, and characterisations of the scale or motivation behind such restrictions vary between commentators, governments and rights organisations. Readers should treat claims about the underlying causes of any such trend as a matter of ongoing public debate rather than settled fact.

What happens next in Räsänen and Pohjola’s legal appeal?

Räsänen and Pohjola have taken their Finnish Supreme Court conviction to the European Court of Human Rights, a Strasbourg-based body that hears complaints against European states for alleged breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. That appeal was ongoing at the time of The Federalist’s report, meaning the underlying Finnish conviction had not been finally resolved. ADF has indicated it will continue to represent the pair through that process, in addition to pressing the UK Home Office and Home Secretary Mahmood over the travel authorisation dispute.
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What has been the international reaction to the case?

Räsänen has said the Finnish proceedings drew concern from the US State Department and the US Religious Liberty Commission, according to her own statement as reported by The Federalist; that characterisation of US government interest reflects Räsänen’s account as relayed in the report and had not been independently verified through a direct statement from those US bodies within the article. Räsänen has continued to travel and speak internationally on free speech and religious liberty issues since her original prosecution began, a process ADF has described as spanning several years of legal proceedings in Finland.

Where does the story stand now?

As it stood at the time of reporting, Räsänen’s UK entry remained blocked, her scheduled Northern Ireland Assembly appearance was set to proceed by video link rather than in person, and the Home Office had not publicly explained its decision beyond the standard eligibility line in its cancellation notice. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood had not responded publicly to ADF’s appeal or to Räsänen’s own petition as of publication. The European Court of Human Rights appeal by Räsänen and Pohjola against their Finnish conviction also remained unresolved.