Staff from the Provinssi music festival in Seinäjoki, western Finland, escorted a Finns Party MP out of the event on Saturday night due to an item published in a local newspaper in which he had criticised gender education.
MP Juha Mäenpää had been invited to the festival as a VIP guest, a courtesy which is usually extended to local MPs, but festival CEO Marko Kivelä said that his letter to the editor published a day earlier violated the event's policy on diversity and equality.
In the letter published by Ilkka-Pohjalainen, Mäenpää had criticised the National Board of Education's guidelines on gender education. The piece was entitled "The poisoning of children's minds must be stopped".
Mäenpää, 51, is a second-term MP representing the Vaasa district and a former municipal councillor in Ilmajoki, near Seinäjoki. He has been a member of the far-right group Suomen Sisu, which says that it opposes "multiculturalist and globalist tendencies". Mäenpää has described himself as a "patriotic, nationalist, Christian-socialist right-wing conservative".
Kivelä said that the MP had attended the festival on Friday but had been informed by email earlier on Saturday that he would no longer be welcome at the event. Mäenpää told the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat that he had not seen the message because he did not have his parliamentary phone with him.
Fellow Finns Party MPs under fire
A day earlier, another Finns Party MP, Vilhelm Junnila, stepped down as economic affairs minister due to an uproar over his long-running ties to far-right groups including Suomen Sisu. Meanwhile Interior Minister Mari Rantanen (Finns) also came under fire over the weekend regarding social media posts alluding to a far-right conspiracy theory, which she denounced on Sunday.
Kivelä noted that all invited guests must confirm that they agree with the festival's non-discrimination policy.
"When responding to the invitation, representatives commit to complying with our values of equality and diversity. We want to offer everyone a discrimination-free and safe festival environment," said Kivelä. "The fact that this [publication] happened during our festival and during Pride week brings special weight to this. Mäenpää may participate in our event in the future, but his invitation was cancelled for this year," he added.
This year's 44th annual festival, which began on Thursday, featured mostly domestic pop and rock acts along with international headliners such as the Chemical Brothers and Ghost.
On Monday, Kivelä told Yle that he had received a large volume of comments about the incident after another Finns Party politician from Ilmajoki urged Mäenpää's supporters to do so. The festival director suggested that some of the messages may have crossed the line into unlawful threats.
"I have received a huge number of comments, and am considering further measures regarding some of them. On the other hand, there has been a lot of positive feedback, which has been a pleasure to see," Kivelä said.
Newly appointed Justice Minister Leena Meri (Finns) decried Mäenpää's removal in a tweet on Sunday, saying that he had been kicked out for having "the wrong opinions".
Mäenpää has a long history of inflammatory comments about minorities. In 2015, he gloated about a fire at a nearby reception centre for asylum seekers.
In 2019, state prosecutor Raija Toiviainen asked Parliament for permission to charge Mäenpää with incitement against an ethnic group after he compared immigrants with harmful insects in a parliamentary speech.
A vote to remove his parliamentary immunity from prosecution gained support from 121 MPs but did not reach the necessary five-sixths majority to pass. The legislature's judiciary committee had voted by a wide margin to lift his immunity.