Former parliament member Ano Turtiainen charged with ethnic agitation | News Julia

The charges relate to tweets about George Floyd and foreign-born taxi drivers that Turtiainen posted while he was a Finns Party MP.

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The Finnish Prosecutor General’s Office brought three charges of ethnic agitation against the former deputy Ano Turtiainen (VKK).

All three charges relate to messages Turtiainen wrote on Twitter while he was a Finns Party MP.

Turtiainen published tweet mocking George Floydshortly after Floyd was strangled by a police officer in the American city of Minneapolis in 2020.

The second charge also relates to a 2020 tweet in which Turtiainen used a derogatory term to refer to black or foreign-born taxi drivers.

The consequences of the scandalous tweets led to Turtiainen excluded from the Finns Party in February 2021. He then created his own one-man parliamentary group and party called “Power belongs to the people” (VKK in Finnish).

Turtiainen ran for the VKK in the spring 2023 parliamentary elections, but did not receive enough votes to retain his seat in parliament.

Police were also investigating Turtiainen’s Facebook post. written during the Covid pandemicin which he said he considered Finnish police an “enemy in time of war” after officers broke up a protest against coronavirus restrictions.

However, the case was not referred to prosecutors because police said it did not meet the threshold for incitement against a public official.