Finnish deputy PM under fire for racist remarks in old blog

Finland’s Deputy Prime Minister Riikka Purra is facing harsh criticism for making racist comments in online blog posts published in 2008.

Purra — from the right-wing populist Finns Party — has been accused of writing: “Is anyone up for spitting on beggars … ?” as well as using racist slurs historically used to demean Black people. The racist comments were published under the acronym “riikka” in the guestbook of former Finns Party leader Jussi Halla-aho’s online blog Scripta.

The Finns Party entered government last month, in coalition with the conservative National Coalition Party who narrowly won April’s election.

According to Finnish media, after online detective work around the posts, the “Riikka” from the Scripta blog is Purra, who is also Finland’s new finance minister. Halla-aho was also known for publishing his anti-immigrant ideology on his blog and is now the speaker of the Finnish parliament.

“I have expressed myself in ways that I would not accept today,” Purra wrote on Twitter on Monday evening, while not denying she made the racist comments.

However, on her own blog Purra showed no sign she would consider her position in the Finnish government. “It would not occur to me to start resigning or regretting what I did and said years and decades ago,” she said.

Riikka was slammed by Antti Lindtman — chairman of the social democrats’ parliamentary group — on Twitter on Tuesday morning. “When the deputy prime minister says that it would never occur to her, to resign over previous writings, the question arises as to what the government’s policy on hate speech and racism is,” he said.

Two weeks ago, then-Finnish Economy Minister Vilhelm Junnila resigned after making historical Nazi references.

So far, Finland’s Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has been silent over the Purra scandal — and the consequences for the embryonic coalition government remain unclear.