Image: Yle

The Finns Party was plunged into scandal on Tuesday when a reserve councillor in Helsinki suggested on Facebook that African men should be sterilised. Olli Sademies made the comments in a post where he suggested that African immigrants have too many children.

The outburst comes as an embarrassment for the party, which is about to enter government for the first time as coalition formation talks enter the final stages.

Seppo Kanerva, who leads the group of Finns Party councilors on the Helsinki council, condemned the remarks.

"What he’s written is completely mad," Kanerva told Yle’s Swedish language service. "It’s fascism. Hitler thought in the same way. I don’t understand why he wrote that. It’s not the party’s view."

Party secretary Riikka Sjunga-Poutsalo said on Twitter that Sademies’s comments are his own views and not the party’s.

Sademies was a Finns Party candidate in this year’s parliamentary election, but received just 462 votes and was not elected to parliament.