PM backs test to asylum seekers on social values

Prime Minister Juha Sipilä said on Sunday that he endorses arranging an entrance test to asylum seekers about Finnish social values.

Sipilä said in his monthly radio encounter with journalists that the knowledge about the unconditional rule of the human physical inviolability in Finland should be verified particularly.

He said he had also heard that the information that asylum seekers have been given so far about Finnish values may not have been sufficient in all cases.

The remarks followed recent major national attention to sex crimes allegedly committed by people with refugee background.

Sipilä commented on the decision by the cabinet to review international agreements Finland has signed related to refugees. Sipilä said the idea is to find out if there would be space for changing the current interpretations and to find out what other countries are doing.

Sipilä also recalled the decision by him and his wife in 2015 to place their private house in Kempele at the disposal of refugees. The announcement by Sipilä at the height of the influx of asylum seekers got major international attention at the time.

The Prime Minister now revealed that the offer had targeted one particular family in danger. "They were Christians from a muslim country, and were further endangered on account of assisting western aid organizations in their country of origin."

Sipilä said the family had later found asylum in another country. Finnish officials had concluded they would not have been safe even in Finland.

Sipilä later sold the house in Kempele, south of Oulu in northern Finland.