HELSINKI — Finland's finance minister deleted an Instagram post and issued an apology on Friday after criticism by a human rights group that embarrassed the new, women-led government days after it took office. Katri Kulmuni, who became finance minister only this week, had posted an informal poll on whether the government should allow Finnish women with links to Islamic State to return from Syria, or just their children. The poll asked her Instagram followers whether they backed repatriating "children only" or "children and mothers" from the al-Hol camp in a part of Syria held by Kurds. Kulmuni's Centre Party opposes letting the mothers return to Finland. This is awful, if true," Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director of international watchdog Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

Source: International New York Times December 13, 2019 12:33 UTC