Finland’s finance minister Riikka Purra has tweeted an apology for “stupid” online comments she made in 2008, including a claim she was “so full of hate and pure rage” towards Islam.
Ms Purra, leader of the far-right populist Finns Party, is the fourth member of her party to be taken to task for racial slurs, anti-immigrant comments and anti-Muslim remarks since taking office last month in Finland’s new centre-right government.
Ms Purra’s apology came via Twitter on Tuesday after days of speculation and controversy over whether she was the author of comments by a poster called “riikka” on the blog of her predecessor as Finns leader.
In one post she complained about “[N-words] selling counterfeit Vuittons” in Barcelona while attending a conference. Another complained about “the sound darker males make when they pass you by”, which she described as “a f**king hiss between the teeth”.
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In other posts she fantasied about “spitting on beggars” and “beating [N-word]” in Helsinki as well as shooting teenage Somali immigrants on a commuter train. Apologising for her comments, she said that “taken out of context and evaluated in the present moment, some texts look even worse”.
“I apologise for my stupid social media comments 15 years ago and for the harm and resentment that they understandably caused. I’m not a perfect person, I’ve made mistakes,” she added. “I do not accept any kind of violence, racism or discrimination. Those who know my way of working and my values know that.”
She insisted that, as head of the second-largest party in Finland’s four-way centre right coalition she would emphasise the “the primacy and importance of human rights, non-discrimination and other basic values”.
Her apology came hours after she insisted on Monday evening she would neither apologise nor resign for the comments, conceding only that she would not write them now.
Since taking office last month, four of the Finns Party’s seven cabinet members have been called out over Hitler jokes and racist remarks. The country’s interior minister has indicated an interest in the “great replacement” conspiracy theory while the justice minister has dubbed EU policy a “new form of fascism”.
Last week Finland’s economics minister resigned after 10 days in the job and was replaced by a party colleague previously accused of sexually harassing women, though acquitted of a rape charge.
Ahead of Ms Purra’s apology, prime minister Petteri Orpo of the National Coalition Party (NCP) insisted all coalition partners were committed to an “egalitarian, safe society where no one needs to feel afraid”.
In an indication of the scale of the crisis, Finnish president Sauli Niinistö made a rare public intervention in day-to-day politics, telling the coalition government it “would be wise to adopt a clear zero-tolerance stance on racism”.
“I think that would also be a good signal to the [outside] world,” he added on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Vilnius. “We must keep in mind that racism and possible problems related to immigration are two completely separate issues.”
The last weeks have been a baptism of fire for Finland’s new coalition, with its narrow majority of just nine in the 200-seat Helsinki parliament. The Finns Party finished less than one per cent behind the NCP and, in coalition talks, pushed through 10 pages of immigration and integration measures. The government has vowed to cut new arrival numbers and allow for the imprisonment and deportation of illegal arrivals.
Ms Purra insisted on Tuesday that her party’s tough immigration policies were “not based on extremism, racism or discrimination, but on pursuing the interests of Finland and Finns”.
“Our immigration policy is legitimate and legal,” she said, “and there is nothing wrong or suspicious about it.”
