I have been persecuted by the government (army, police, prosecutors), the mass media, and an employer in my country starting on August 8, 2006, when the security police, the SUPO, visited my apartment, which I shared with my sister Natalija, and then my school, asking both her and me many questions and warning me to abandon my beliefs -- or else I would lose my prospects of ever being a security guard, and also be “unwelcome in Germany,” a country I intended to visit.
Then the Finnish police obviously notified all Finnish security companies that I should not be employed even as a security guard. I found no one would hire me, although I had graduated from the security guard school Osakk on August 25, 2006. The security company ISS had verbally promised me employment guarding University Hospital in Oulu, but at the end of October 2006 it suddenly had no record or file at all of my job application and two-hour interview on October 9, 2006. So I lost that career possibility.
For centuries, my family has honorably served Finland in military service, under Swedish, Russian and Finnish governments, and both my grandfathers fought against the Soviets in WWII; many of my father's cousins fell for Finland's freedom in the war. Both grandfathers suffered greatly in the war, and one never quite recovered from Soviet captivity, suffered severe depression and died in his forties. It was therefore extremely painful to me as an patriotic Finn to be in effect dishonorably discharged on September 6, 2007 from the Finnish Army Reserve solely because of my political views. My reservist duty was to be renewed in January 2008.
I had considered a full-time military career before that, and in fact had left high school to join the army out of love of military service; this career was now also destroyed.
The police came to my apartment on Tuesday, January 16, 2007, at 3:20 pm, and ransacked it, throwing things on the floor, and seized both my computers (returning them three days later.) They then went to my parents' home, where I was raised as a child, and the criminal police officer Sari Isometsa Tihinen (whose business card is enclosed with my application) threatened my mother that:
--I was “in big trouble,” that
--“Henrik might not come home for a long time,” and that
--if I pursued my beliefs, I “would not have any part in our society.”
I was in police custody for 24 hours at the Oulu police station that same day in a concrete cell with the lights burning day and night, on suspicion of sending a photograph or writing an article, both unprovable charges, and I was not allowed to make any phone calls. After the 24 hours I was told that I was now under arrest, and spent two more days in that cell with nothing to read or do, incommunicado, without visitors, and with no phone call to anyone. The police told my mother that I was under arrest. I was released without charges on the 19th.
When I emerged from jail, I discovered that the main newspaper in northern Finland, Kaleva, had violated on the day of my detention, January 16, the Finnish press custom of never reporting the name of a suspect, even a murder suspect, under the presumption of innocence, until he had been actually convicted at the end of a trial. However, the article mentioned me by my name in the very first paragraph, and stated falsely as a proven fact that I had written a certain article in December 2006.
It was an article denouncing gangs of African rapists of my countrywomen of whom many were and are still running around un-arrested in my city. The article highlighted the infamous “scissor rapists” -- Sudanese black Africans who clitorectomized a Finnish female rape victim with scissors in June 2005 in Oulu and were sentenced to three years in prison in January 2006. The author asked why Finland was bringing in such immigrants and why there were no subsequent arrests for the other African gang rapists still terrorizing my city. (Finland itself has no history of gang rape among the native Finns.)
The media article also stated as fact the unproven assertion that I had sent off a clipped newspaper photo to America – as a serious “copyright violation” -- and the lie that while living in Oulu as a young Finn without any website skills, I was “the webmaster” of an American website.
This was obviously a coordinated campaign by the Finnish government, police and media, all together, to make me a hated person to both leftist Finns and to the very Somali and Sudanese gang rapists who then, as now, are on the loose in the city of my birth. (There have been no prosecutions of African gang rapists there since the scissors rapists were convicted in January 2006, 33 months ago, although the problem continues and these immigrants stand out memorably by their appearance to both their victims and the public in my Scandinavian country.)
There are also many black immigrants, all Muslim Africans, in my apartment building, who live on my street and in my neighborhood, and they can know who I am, because the main newspaper in all of northern Finland, Kaleva, with a daily circulation of 300,000, used my name. They can afford this newspaper because they can get up to 3,000 euros a month in welfare for a family, while an unemployed Finn can get only 400 euros a month.
The security police, SUPO, could even remind the African Muslim communities of my name and address.
On May 11 or 12, 2008 I received a phone call while visiting neighboring Estonia from the same Sari Tihinen, asking me when I could come to the police station in Oulu. She further informed me over the telephone that the top prosecutor in Finland, Mika Illman, whose name suggests Jewish ancestry and thus animus toward me, had “dug up [my] case again.”
On Tuesday, May 20, 2008 this same policewoman further warned me, now at the Oulu police station, that I was to be indicted by the government of Finland on three serious charges so as to “make an example of me for other racists in Finland,” as follows:
1)two years imprisonment for “incitement of racial hatred” [sic];
2)two years behind bars for “defaming the honor of the African community of Finland” [sic]; and
3)six months imprisonment for “copyright violation.” (I had merely scanned a photo of “multiculturalism” from a Finnish newspaper, and sent it as a private email attachment to an American friend. He then, unbeknownst to me, posted it on an American website.)
I believe I was targeted because the Finnish authorities hate my views and see me as a young leader whose crushing would preclude any political movement I could start. (I have never started any movement; I only turned 23 in July.)
I am sure that the Finnish government would harm me on my return by arresting me and prosecuting me, and putting me in prison next to Somali and Turkish felons who might hate me and seek to beat, rape or kill me. The Finnish government would itself be my main persecutor, and might not protect me at all in prison. In fact, it might invite inmates to get a sentence reduction if they harmed me.
They might also put me, as an “extremely dangerous person” (the policewoman's words to me and to members of the True Finns political party of which I was once a member) in a maximum security prison where I would be shut up in a cell for 23 hours a day. This is a form of severe mental harm, especially for an innocent person who deserves no punishment.
The Finnish government is modern and controls all the territory of Finland, so there is no place in my country where I could hide for long. Furthermore, all other European Union countries have laws similar to Finland's and would arrest me on a European Union arrest warrant to extradite me back to Finland or to any other EU country that objects to my views.
Just one week ago, Dr. Fredrick Toeben, an Australian, was arrested by British detectives on the runway of Heathrow Airport near London on an EU arrest warrant issued in Mannheim, Germany. His plane from the USA to Dubai had merely landed there to refuel and discharge some passengers. The German prosecutor said he feared a German “could” read Toeben's English-language Australian website.
I left Finland by plane and flew via Iceland to the United States on July 11, 2008. I came here as a bona fide tourist, but decided toward the end of my tourist stay that I loved America, its people, its beauty and its freedom of speech and that I did not want to be imprisoned and possibly murdered in Finland.
On Monday March 23rd numerous activist took to the streets to bring the relatively unknown story of Henrik Holappa to the attention of the general public. Reports have been coming in from all across the east coast including Ohio, New Jersey, New York and all across the state of Pennsylvania. Everywhere from Libraries and Universities to High schools and Public Parks were utilized to distribute Freedom for Henrik Holappa fliers. And not without attention from the media of course. The actions of one activist based out of Pennsylvania managed to land Henrik's story and our blog address right in the pages of the local press.
