Päivi Räsänen missed a Northern Ireland church conference on free speech despite personally asking the home secretary for an expedited decision.
LONDON — Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish Christian politician who had been barred from entering the United Kingdom to give a talk on free speech at a Northern Ireland church conference last week, was eventually granted a visa to enter the country — but it arrived too late.
After her Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) was canceled in July, Räsänen applied for a full visa and wrote to the U.K.’s home secretary personally to ask that it be granted ahead of the conference.
The visa eventually arrived, but just 45 minutes before her scheduled speaking time at the conference in Northern Ireland, despite the government knowing the dates of the conference and her flight schedule. Räsänen had been slated to speak on Aug. 19 and 21 but had to contribute virtually instead.
“The visa approval also took more than four weeks, when she was told it would take three weeks to process her application,” said Lorcán Price, legal counsel for the free-speech legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom. “By granting the visa when they did, it is undeniable that the Home Office knew, or ought to have known, that they were blocking Päivi from attending her event.”
The withdrawal of Räsänen’s ETA and the late granting of her visa are believed to have been connected with her conviction by Finland’s Supreme Court of “hate speech” in March 2026 for expressing her Christian beliefs on marriage and human sexuality. She made her beliefs known in a 2004 booklet titled Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual Relationships Challenge the Christian Concept of Humanity.
The Supreme Court held that passages in the booklet, which called homosexuality an “aberration of psychosexual development” and a “sexual deviation,” were derogatory toward homosexual people as a group on grounds of sexual orientation.
Under U.K. law, the home secretary may exclude a foreign national if it is believed that admitting him or her is “not conducive to the public good.” The policy is normally reserved for extremism or serious crime but can be applied to “unacceptable behavior” in the form of speech, publication, preaching, websites or a position of influence that “fosters hatred” that it believes might lead to inter-community violence in the U.K.
Price, who is representing Räsänen in her appeal before the European Court of Human Rights, told the Register that her barring was “yet another example of the U.K.’s free- speech crisis, which is deeply entrenched and worsening,” and that her case “demonstrates yet again that Christian expression is increasingly being censored, both in the U.K. and Europe.”
Räsänen’s case follows other Christian or conservative public figures who have been denied a U.K. ETA over the past year, such as Dutch Catholic activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek, conservative Polish Member of the European Parliament Dominik Tarczyński, and Flemish conservative parliamentarian Filip Dewinter.
Price pointed out that Räsänen, a Lutheran, is a former interior minister for Finland, which is an ally of the U.K., and so “should never have been blocked from entering the U.K.” He added that he believed the “absurdity of this case” was magnified by the U.K.’s failure to control its border from illegal migrants. “Nearly 16,000 people, whose criminal records are unknown, have illegally entered the country so far this year,” he noted.
“Meanwhile, the U.K. blocked Päivi, a Christian politician, from attending a church event because she peacefully expressed her views in a church booklet over two decades ago,” said Price. “The contrast is striking and demonstrates the alarming direction of travel in this country.”
A Home Office spokesman told the Register Aug. 26 that staff “do not routinely comment on individual cases” and that it is “standard practice to refuse or cancel an ETA if someone has declared a criminal conviction in the last 12 months or they receive a custodial or suspended sentence of 12 months or more.”
He added that all individuals seeking entry to the U.K. “must meet the requirements of the immigration rules,” adding that anyone who does not hold a valid ETA “may choose to apply for a visa if they wish to travel to the U.K.”