Finland: Woman Tries to Stop Plane to Prevent Migrant's Deportation, Gets Swiftly Arrested

"She thought she was going to achieve social media fame and be the next Elin Ersson, instead she was arrested immediately and managed to delay the plane for only ten minutes."
Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Jul. 31, 2018

Finnish Greens party legal officer Aino Pennanen tried to copy Swedish activist Elin Ersson's recent stunt and stop a plane from departing to prevent a migrant's deportation on Tuesday but she received no support from other passengers and instead got swiftly arrested.

WATCH:

From Yle.fi:

On Tuesday police at Helsinki Airport removed Aino Pennanen, the legal officer of Finland's Greens party, from a plane for refusing to be seated. Pennanen said she was protesting the deportation of a fellow passenger.

Police cited Pennanen for causing an aviation misdemeanour but she is not suspected of having committed a crime.

Pennanen broadcast live video of her protest on Facebook as it unfolded on Tuesday. The plane's departure was delayed by about ten minutes.

She thought she was going to achieve social media fame and be the next Elin Ersson, instead she was arrested immediately and managed to delay the plane for only ten minutes.

In the video, the Greens' legal officer announced that she was refusing to follow the instructions of flight attendants after she noticed that another passenger was being forcibly repatriated.

Pennanen told Helsingin Sanomat that she had not planned the airplane protest in advance, and that she did not know to which country the deportee was being taken.

"We have deep-rooted problems in our system. That is why I wanted to stand up and help that person. It was not about a flight it is a problem in our justice system," she told the paper.

Just like Ersson, who stopped the deportation of a violent migrant convicted of assault, she couldn't care less if she was preventing the deportation of a violent criminal or a terrorist.

Tuesday's incident was similar to one which took place in Sweden last week, when an activist named Elin Ersson protested the deportation of an Afghan citizen who was on the plane, according to the Guardian.

However, in that case, Ersson received the support of several passengers on the plane and the Afghan deportee was eventually removed from the plane before it took off. Ersson also live-streamed last week's incident on Facebook.

Yeah, there was no hostile foreigners on the plane to speak out in her favor as with Ersson.

The Finns actually have a backbone.

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