The finance minister of Finland, Riika Purra, has apologised for a number of racist posts allegedly made by her 15 years ago.
Purra is the leader of the right-wing Finns Party, which came second in the last Finnish election, held earlier this year. Her party won 20.1% of the vote, behind the National Coalition, led by Petteri Orpo, who is now Prime Minister.
The National Coalition and the Finns formed a coalition with two smaller parties to govern Finland.
Purra also serves as the country’s deputy Prime Minister.
A series of comments written on a Finns Party members’ blog have been uncovered. The user, calling themselves ‘rikka,’ called Turks ‘monkeys’ and also expressed a desire to kill immigrants.
Purra initially denied that she had made the comments but then backtracked, saying that the comments had been made years before and that she would not make comments such as those now.
She was quoted as saying: ‘I do not accept any kind of violence, racism or discrimination.’
Purra, Orpo, and the leaders of the other two parties in the coalition also jointly signed a statement saying that the cabinet was committed to non-discrimination and equality.
Earlier this year another member of the Finns Party, Vilhelm Junnila, was forced to resign his cabinet post after evidence emerged that he seemed to have links to neo-Nazis.
Image: Lauri Heikkinen, valtioneuvoston kanslia, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons