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Johan Bäckman

Erkki Johan Bäckman (born 18 May 1971) is a Finnish political activist, author, legal sociologist and human rights activist. He has been especially active defending Russian citizens' child custody rights abroad, and is frequently interviewed in the Russian media as a child custody expert. Bäckman has controversial views on Estonia and Latvia, and has been declared persona non grata and denied entry into Estonia, although an Estonian court has declared such a ban illegal.He received his training in sociology at the University of Helsinki, where he defended his Ph.D. in 2006, and has a title of a docent (not an indication of a teaching position or employment) of the sociology of law. He also has a title of a docent in criminology at the University of Turku and the University of Eastern Finland. He has previously taught courses on the sociology of law, criminology, and Russian studies in several Finnish universities.Bäckman has written books, some of which controversial, about Finnish-Soviet relations during the Cold War, war history of Finland and the Soviet Union, organized crime in Russia and Estonia, the Russian Mafia, terrorism, and the history of Estonia. As a spokesman for the Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee he is against the integration policies of Estonia and Latvia, claiming they are "apartheid policies". On the whole, he does not recognize them as states. In recent years Bäckman has frequently commented on Finnish-Russian child custody and grandmother cases in the Russian media. Bäckman also claims to represent the separatist Donetsk People's Republic in Finland.Bäckman has a background in music. According to Helsingin Sanomat he became a public figure in the late 1980s when playing the bassoon in the EBU Young Soloists Competition on national television. Bäckman also played the bassoon in the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.