The Election Commission left more than 80 of the people unaccepted in the electoral roll. Now the members are suspected of discrimination.
Police suspects the members of the Sámi Assembly election board of discrimination and breach of duty, says Lapland's police in a press release.
The suspicion is related to the fact that the election board did not accept more than 80 people on the electoral roll even though the Supreme Administrative Court (KHO) had previously ordered them to be accepted.
The Sámi district elections were held in September–October in 2023. In October the dispute could also be felt at the Sámi Cultural Center in Sajos, Inari, when a group of about 20 people who were not approved for the electoral roll marched there and caused a police operation.
Thence, who gets on the electoral roll and thus gets to vote in Sámi assemblies, has been twisted for years. The dispute is significant, because the right to vote in the Sámi district elections is often equated with being Sámi.
From the point of view of the majority of the Sámi parliament, it is a matter of the fact that the Finnish government has defined as Sámi people who the Sámi community does not recognize as Sámi. The fear is that decision-making will flow in a direction that does not promote the interests of the Sámi people.
KHO already ruled in 2015 that these approximately 80 people have the right to vote. Also according to the UN Human Rights Committee, the Supreme Court's decision in 2015 violated the Sami people's right to self-determination.
Now the police have started a preliminary investigation into the activities of the election board. The police urges those left out of the election list to file a criminal report by April 21. A few criminal reports have already been filed.
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