SC upholds ethnic agitation conviction of Perussuomalaiset MP

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction of Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party) lawmaker Sebastian Tynkkynen awarded by Oulu District Court in 2021 for inciting ethnic agitation, local media reported.

The court denied Tynkkynen leave to appeal his conviction, reported national broadcaster Yle.

The Oulu District Court on October 4, 2021 sentenced Tynkkynen to pay a 70-day fine, about 4,400 euros, for inciting ethnic agitation.

The convict in his social media X wrote that he was considering the possibility of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Earlier in October 2022, the Rovaniemi Appeal Court also upheld the conviction of Tynkkynen.

With this, Tynkkynen has been convicted of inciting ethnic agitations for three times following publishing texts on social media.

The district court awarded the punishment as the involvements of the Perussuomalaiset lawmaker to insult the immigrants and refugee people through writing in his social media were proved beyond doubt.

Earlier, in October 2019, the Oulu District Court sentenced Sebastian Tynkkynen to pay a 50-day fine, about 4,050 euros, for agitation against an ethnic group.

The verdict applied to the text and images shared by Tynkkynen from the populist Perussuomalaiset in his Facebook account in 2016.

He was also convicted of ethnic agitation against Muslims and sentenced a 50-day fine in January 2017 for another posting which claimed "the less Muslims in Finland, the safer."

Born in 1989, Tynkkynen was elected member of Finnish Parliament in April 2019. He has been chairman of the Perussuomalaiset youth league for five years and the third vice chairman of the Perussuomalaiset for four years.