Jaana Kavonius

Jaana Kavonius (born September 10, 1966) is a Finnish lawyer and due process activist. On October 31, 2021, she started a hunger strike for freedom of speech. On November 6, she attended a freedom of speech seminar in Oodi, the central library of Helsinki, and fainted at the end of the event. In a news story reporting about this fainting, the mainstream tabloid Iltalehti had censored (blurred) her name in the picture of the banner which had been fastened in the camping car she lived in during the strike. Iltalehti cited "protecting her privacy" as the reason not to publish her name, though that obviously was not the real reason as in reality she had wanted publicity and her name to be published. Iltalehti did not report on the reason of the hunger strike either, but did report that she will stop the hunger strike. Jaana's name was not mentioned anywhere in the article, she was just referred as "the woman", while the person who gave her first aid, Päivi Räsänen (member of parliament from the Christian Democrat party; also a physician) was mentioned by name.

During the seminar, she tried to get the attention of another attendee (and a speaker), Sebastian Tynkkynen, the third vice chairman of the Finns Party, who livestreamed the event on YouTube. At the start of the first pause Sebastian asked his viewers if he should leave the stream on, and at that time some viewers of the livestream also asked Sebastian to interview Jaana. The sound of the livestream was muted for a short period of time, and Sebastian fled Jaana and turned the sound back on when he had walked far away from the original room. Right before fainting, Jaana had tried again to get Sebastian's attention after a photograph of the event's key figures (one of which was Sebastian) had been taken. This time, Sebastian stopped his stream for a second or two, after which he ignored her again and left the scene.

On March 19, 2023 Jaana and her assistant Sanna did a livestream on Instagram where they told that Jaana is close to dying due to her heart problems, and corrupt Finnish officials still force her to write responses to criminal interrogations (despite Jaana has not committed any crimes). Jaana has medical records to support her lawful requirement to extra time to reply, but Finnish officials do not care. In the video, Jaana compares herself to Alexey Navalny - they have the same number of human rights in their home countries. This video was uploaded also to Odysee by Injektiopiikki.

Jaana's main focus has been to reveal the corruption of the Finnish police and justice systems. According to Jaana, the leaders of Finnish police departments are mostly corrupt while the police officers that one sees on the streets are mostly honest.

Media censorship

Given that Jaana's name was not mentioned by Iltalehti in the article that reported about her fainting and hunger strike despite Jaana wanting her name to be published, it seems apparent that someone with the ability to control Finnish media has banned all media outlets from mentioning Jaana's name. On April 11, 2023, which was the first working day after the required statements of support had been collected, news items appeared in the Finnish mainstream media that the Truth Party would be entered in the party register. However, Iltalehti and Yle did not mention the chairwoman's name in their news items, nor was it visible in on the websites of Uutissuomalainen, Iisalmen Sanomat and Karjalainen, at least not without paying and logging in.

In this article by Ilta-Sanomat, Jaana's name is mentioned, the purpose of which may be to make the ban less obvious. That might have been the only article freely available online anywhere in Finnish mainstream media where her name was mentioned before the political party that she founded was registered. At least searching her name in quotes using Google from the websites of Yle, Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti, and Aamulehti yielded no results on April 11, 2023, and on Ilta-Sanomat's website, the only article found was the one just mentioned.

Political party

Jaana is the leader of the registered association Totuuspuolue ("Truth Party"), which became a political party on April 26, 2023.

Registering the party

The Truth Party started collecting statements of support on April 13, 2022 and needed 5000 of them within a year to officially become a political party. Jaana also tried to become Finland's next president, but failed to get enough statements of support for that (for a presidential race, one needs 20000 statements of support on paper). The required limit of 5000 statements of support was reached on April 8, 2023 which meant that the association would be registered as an official political party. (To establish a political party, one needs 5000 statements of support, and unlike those for a presidential race, they can also be signed online).

On April 12, 2023, the deadline day for collecting the statements of support, Jaana, her assistant Sanna and two other people did a livestream on Instagram where they left for review the twenty statements of support on paper that the party had collected. This was not technically even necessary as there were enough electronic statements of support already, but they did that anyway to honour the people who had signed a statement of support on paper. In that video, the team had to visit three places in total. First, they were at the Ministry of Justice, but there was no one there to receive the papers. The janitor sent the team to the Registry of the Ministry of Justice at the same address where the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was located. At that address, they did not enter the door but someone answering the door phone sent the team to another door in the same block. That was not the right place either, from there the team was sent to the Registry of the Prime Minister's Office, which finally agreed to take in the statements of support on paper. In that livestream, it was also revealed that "Totuuspuoluerp" is the party's Twitter account. Since "rp" stands for "registered party" (rekisteröity puolue), the account had not been used much before as the party was not registered; instead they had reserved the account in advance to prevent someone else from registering it, as happened with their website. They would have liked to have the domain "totuuspuolue.fi" to be their party website, but someone had registered it before just to bully them, which is why they had to go with "totuuspuolue.net".

On April 26, 2023, Finland's Ministry of Justice announced that the party had been registered. Jaana announced this also herself on Instagram, linking to a YLE news item about the matter. That same day, a Wikipedia article about the party was created, and Helsingin Sanomat published an article where Jaana's name is mentioned.

Lack of criminal history

Jaana has never been convicted of any crime, but on May 30, 2023, Iltalehti reported that what she has been saying on her website, and also on her party's website, about the corruption of Finnish officials has now generated her charges of defamations. She denies the charges and claims that the things she has been saying are true (although not mentioned in Iltalehti's article, she has presented evidence for her claims). According to Iltalehti, the alleged crimes started in 2018. After that, Jaana wrote the following on Instagram (in Finnish), and also asked for likes and shares in the comments:

"Reformi Studio broadcast at 19:00 tomorrow 31 May 2023. To keep Jaana alive we have to do everything bigger and better than with Ilja Janitskin. The media attacked him as they are now attacking Jaana when she decided to take part in the presidential race. Now is the time to move, giving up is not an option. Go and sign the support card: www.totuuspuolue.net

Watch the Jaanalla on asiaa show on the same page and then rush to see the evidence www.virkamafia.fi how important a truth is being silenced by the accusations against Jaana."

Jaana's answer to the allegations on May 31, 2023

The next day, Jaana was a guest in Reformi Studio's livestream, responding to Iltalehti's allegations. In that livestream, Jaana says, among other things, the following:

• [1:52] The group trying to get Jaana convicted now is the same that got ex-police officer Jari Aarnio wrongfully convicted of murder and, also falsely, Anneli Auer and her ex-husband Jens Kukka wrongfully convicted of sex crimes.

  (Background: Anneli Auer is a woman who was convicted of sex crimes against her children who, being from 7 to 12 years old at the time, now of legal age, tell that they lied and were coerced to lie. Auer was also charged, but not convicted, for murdering her husband in 2006. For the sex crimes that never happened, Anneli got 7.5 years in prison and Jens got 10 years, both wrongfully.)

• [2:59] A requirement for five years in prison for speech is unheard of in Finland, even for obscene defamations.
• [3:45] Jaana got to know about her charges from Iltalehti's journalist. In Finland one does not get five years even for homicide or child rape.
• [4:44] In Finland, charges are legally secret until the charges have been read, yet Iltalehti published them before the date of the trial is known. The journalist's name has disappeared from Iltalehti's site, and the author of the article is given as "Iltalehti workgroup".
• [5:19 and 22:58] Finland's Deputy Prosecutor General decided that day that Jaana, as founder of the Truth party, must tolerate violence and defamations against herself and her family. Officials in Finland have decided that they will not investigate crimes against Jaana and blocked the hearing of Jaana's witnesses.
• [8:48] In December 2002, while Jaana's child was 12 years old, someone had placed a chair that looks the same as the other chairs in the classroom. The teacher claimed to have looked elsewhere while ordering Jaana's child to climb to the chair and fasten something to the wall with the help of the chair. The child fell on the concrete floor and got seriously disabled. When Jaana applied for compensation for her child, the City of Lohja published the child's medical data, medications, names of doctors and other confidential information on their website. The child was entitled to compensation for this breach of confidentiality and for the teacher's failure to supervise the child. In 2004, the district court judge ruled that since the child is a good pupil, there is no obligation to supervise that child. However, after revealing the criminal acts of the City of Lohja, Jaana got compensation for her child. She criticised the district court judge and sent a request to the district judge's superior to investigate the district judge's criminal behaviour. Instead of investigating, the district judge and the superior arranged €100,000 in court fees debt for the child who got disabled, even though there was no court hearing in the case.
• [42:02] Jaana had previously filed a plaintiff's case against the person who had tortured her now deceased friend years earlier. This torturer has also stalked Jaana. Investigations into these crimes were blocked.

  On June 2, 2023, the YouTuber Tontsa phoned Jaana. In that streamed call, Jaana told that the same judge was who was involved in arranging the wrongful sex crime convictions for Anneli Auer and Jens Kukka, is now arranging these charges for Jaana. Something like this was also told by Jaana in the Reformi Studio stream, but due to poorer audio quality, it was less clear then than in the Tontsa stream.

• [51:19] Finnish officials are trying to arrange Jaana a conviction of defamation with the aforementioned torturer of Jaana's deceased friend as a victim.
• [1:34:34] In a number of judgments handed down against Finland, the court of human rights has ruled, including in the case of a guest on Jaana's "Jaanalla on asiaa" programme (this guest had also exposed Finnish official misconduct), that the exercise of freedom of expression should in principle never be punished by imprisonment.
• [2:05:54] In a decision by Finland's Deputy Prosecutor General to not investigate crimes against Jaana, he writes: "Kavonius claims, among other things, that I lead these groups." This proves that the Deputy Prosecutor General in Finland can decide cases concerning himself when he is disqualified. Jaana has filed a police report against him.
• [3:01:16] Direct quote from Jaana: "And think about the country we live in: calling someone a whore, threatening to kill, running over and beating my children are not crimes, but the fact that I tell the truth about those crimes gets me a five-year sentence for allegedly lying."
• [3:02:08] On Monday May 29, 2023 Jaana phoned Oulu's prison to be able to help the brothers Marko and Mikko Vapa and give them legal advice. Someone from the prison told that only the federal police can give Jaana permission to come. Ten minutes later, someone from the federal police called and said that Jaana is not allowed to go and visit Marko and Mikko. That phone call also revealed that the messages that were sent to Marko and Mikko had not been delivered to them, even though there are instructions on the prison's website on how to contact a prisoner. Thus the federal police and the prison have prevented Marko and Mikko to even get to know the fact that Jaana wants to meet and help them. All of this happened on May 29; the next day on May 30 Jaana was contacted by a journalist who says that Jaana is being arranged a five year prison sentence, and on May 31 the Deputy Prosecutor General's decision to not investigate crimes against Jaana was delivered. These all on three consecutive days.

  (Background: Two brothers Marko Vapa, Mikko Vapa and Mikko's partner Anne Oikarinen were taken as political prisoners on April 14, 2023, twelve days after parliamentary elections and ten days after Finland had joined NATO. On April 28, Anne was released, but the brothers were still in prison at the time of this stream. All of them were candidates in the parliamentary election held on April 2, in parties that oppose both NATO and the COVID-19 vaccines. Later on June 6, Marko was released, but Mikko remains in prison as of June 10. A protest to release Mikko was held on June 9 in Oulu. Jaana, coming all the way from Lohja by train (that distance by car is more than seven hours) participated in that protest and gave a speech in it. At that time, Mikko had been in a hunger strike for 19 days. In the speech he gave during the demonstration, Marko told that Mikko had been moved from the Oulu prison to the Vaasa prison. The next day, Marko made a video where he told that Mikko had ended the hunger strike after as the reason for the hunger strike was that Mikko had wanted to be moved to a place closer to where his children live (and Vaasa is much closer to his children's home than Oulu). Mikko was finally released on June 13.)

The names of the officials and their protégés are not mentioned in this section even when they are mentioned in the video. In those cases, their title or some other background information is given instead. Victims of the mafia are mentioned by name also in this section, but the background information given in this article are, for the most part at least, more extensive than in the livestream.

External Links

• Twitter 1
• Twitter 2
• Tokentube
• Instagram
• Website
• Jaana's "Oikeusturvakeskus ry" association's website
• Party website
• Party Youtube channel
• Party Twitter
• Video in English