Absurdity of the Finnish conscription debate pt.2

Please read part one before reading this. Link here. http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/absurdity-of-finnish-conscription.html

Now as I mentioned in part one, the current system has received consistent criticism from human rights organizations for years, but despite this, there is no real will to change the current system. Actually, most of our politicians are simply trying to find new ways to keep the current system alive, which mostly means ideas to include women into the system in some way and/or to increase the number of people serving outside the military.This is because even though there have been calls to go the Israel route and simply expand the draft to include women, this idea is incredibly unpopular among the public as recent polls show that only around 25% of men and an even smaller percentage of women support this. Not only that, but this idea is actually opposed by the military, as they claim there is no need to increase the number of conscripts and that it would be economically unsustainable. This leaves increasing the number of people serving outside the military the only option for politicians to pursue. The problem is that pretty much all of the ideas thrown around to achieve this would only cause additional human rights violations, not truly solve the problems they claim to do or in some cases do both.

One idea I've read about is to have some of the people who get medical exemptions to be order into civil service instead, as it, admittedly, is a lot easier physically and therefore, some of the people currently exempt could in fact manage it. There are really two reasons why this idea has been presented. The percentage of people getting exemptions has increased in recent years as nowadays  around 1/4 of conscripts are exempt either before their service starts or are forced to quit while in service. On the other hand studies on the motivations for choosing civil service show that for around 60% on servicemen, their main motivation for their choice was something other than conviction. This is because while legally, civil service is meant for those with convictions that prevent them from serving in the military, unlike some countries, Finland doesn't have a special committee where conscientious objectors have to testify about holding such conviction. This was abolished for times of peace during the 80s, after a few high profile cases of people rejected from civil service continuing their refusal to serve in the military. As a result, the only thing you need to get into civil service is to fill the application form. The idea is that since a high number of civil servicemen already don't necessarily hold a conviction, the law regarding it could be changed, removing the requirement for one. Thus, you could have some of those currently getting exemptions to be ordered into civil service and have a higher percentage of conscripts taking some part in the system.

This idea has multiple problems. For one, the Finnish constitution bans discrimination and as a result the requirements for eligibility for both forms of service are supposed to be the same. This basically means that if you're eligible for one, you should be able to complete both forms of service. This means that lowering the requirements for one form of service and not the other would be unconstitutional. Apart from this, it would create additional human rights violations as forcing somebody into civil service instead of them applying for it, would be considered forced labor. This is because you're only allowed to organize civil service for conscientious objectors.

Okay, this is admittedly kinda weird, but let me explain. While conscription pretty clearly fits the definition of forced labor, the UN and many other human rights organizations actually consider it as an exception to it. In other words, conscription and as extension civil service is not considered forced labor and is permitted for a country to have. Instead, the right to conscientious objection is guaranteed under freedom of conscience and religion. In other words, the criticism about the treatment of conscientious objectors is really criticism about violations towards freedom of thought. This means that while you are allowed to organize alternative forms of service for conscientious objectors, you are not allowed to force anybody into it. In other words, since I personally applied for civil service that itself is okay and the only source of criticism would be the punitive length (read the first part to learn more). But if I instead was ordered into it against my will, it would be considered forced labor as it wouldn't be an alternative for military service anymore. 

Even without the problems with human rights and the Finnish constitution, this idea would not work. In order to explain why, we have to talk about another group on conscientious objectors, called reserve objectors. These are people who after finishing their military service and becoming part of the reserves, (again, read the first part) come to the conclusion that maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all and decide to leave the reserves. In order to do this they have to take part in an additional service, after which they are officially considered conscientious objectors and are exempt from military service under all circumstances. This additional service is organized by the Civil Service Center, which also handles everything to do with civil service and can legally last anywhere from 0-40 days, but is currently set at 5 days. Why is it so important to talk about these people? Well, in recent years their numbers have increased pretty dramatically, which has caused some major problems for the Civil Service Center. In 2014 296 people left the reserves, while in 2015 the number was 985. In 2016 the number was a bit over 700 and looking at the most recent numbers for this year (485 on 30 of September), it looks like the numbers are going to be somewhat similar. Now, while the increase definitely was dramatic, numerically it's only a couple hundred more people, yet this forced the Civil Service Center to find new locations organize this additional service, as their current facilities simply can't handle the numbers. I will probably at some point make another posts going into more detail about this, but this is enough for now.

Now let's look at actual civil service. Annually around 7% of conscripts or around 2000 people choose civil service, meanwhile about one quarter are exempt from service. This means that somewhere between 6000-8000 people are exempt every year. How many of those would be ordered into civil service if this idea was put into use? You can probably see, why this is not a great idea. If the Civil Service Center can't handle an increase of couple of hundred more people without using additional locations, how the hell can they handle a four digit increase? Not only that, but even currently servicemen have problems with finding suitable places for service, so imagine if you suddenly doubled their numbers. This is simply put a horrible idea and the people suggesting it clearly have no clue of reality.

One problem with the current system is that it only affects men and as I mentioned earlier, there have been calls to include women into the current system in some fashion. But since simply expanding the draft to include women is out of the question, this is mostly discussion about some form of national service for women. Because of the reasons mentioned earlier, you can already probably guess that this would also cause additional human rights problems and also the numerical increase in conscripts would pretty much make this, if not impossible, at the very least a costly change. Not only that, this is one of those ideas that really wouldn't solve the actual problems it claims to.

The most popular idea regarding this national service is to simply have some kind of a training period similar to the one at the beginning of civil service, where the people taking part would learn some useful skills. The proposed length of this period varies from couple of days to around a month. The most important question about this is who can actually take part in it. There are multiple ideas about that. Some say this would only be for women since men already have the current system. Well, if this is the case, it really doesn't solve the actual problem about the system only affecting men, since a month long training period isn't really equivalent to spending anywhere from six months to a year in service. Also, this idea doesn't seem to be completely thought out. For example, what happens to those who refuse to take part in this? I haven't seen anybody talk about that. Some have also proposed that this "national service" would replace the current civil service, but I'm not really getting into that because I really don't know how seriously people are pushing that idea. Generally this whole idea about national service doesn't seem that well thought out. One obvious question is, whether or not it actually is necessary and does it solve any actual problems. I'd say it isn't and it doesn't and I'm not alone with that.

Now, since ideas like this are thrown around, you can probably see the problem with the discussion about this. Ideas like the national service for women are aimed towards one goal: to keep conscription alive. The current system enjoys high levels of support among the public and as a result there is no real will to abolish it. This also results in another absurd aspect of this discussion: simply stating the fact that the current system violates human rights, is considered highly offensive. If you actually have the nerve to point this out you will receive personal attacks, most commonly directed at your manliness or sexuality. Another fairly common response is accusations of treason. You might even get blocked by the minister of defense on social media

How do I know the last part? Because that actually happened to me! Just two days ago, I noticed that our minister of defense Jussi Niinistö, had blocked me on Twitter because I dared to question his idiotic comments on this topic. I've tweeted at him twice and this thin-skinned little bitch apparently blocked me after the first one.Why do I think that? Well, right after my last tweet towards him, I checked the username just to make sure I sent it to the right person, and was met with a notifications stating that I was blocked. In his most recent comment he basically said that the biggest problem with the current system is the fact that the rights of conscientious objectors are being protected to the level they currently are. For one, he thinks that guaranteeing the right for conscientious objection during times of conflict is problematic, even though it's pretty much the time matters the most. He also wants to limit the places of service for civil service to institution that aid national safety, which would probably end up increasing the number of total objectors as civil service wouldn't necessarily guarantee the protection of one's conviction anymore. Also, he wants to increase the length of additional service for the previously mentioned reserve objectors, has referred to them as deserters and has previously talked about removing the exemption given to Jehovah's witnesses. These comments are especially weird considering that the ministry of defense has no jurisdiction over matters involving civil service, meaning he's basically sticking his nose into other peoples business.

Now, after going on this long tirade on how the Finnish system sucks and how politicians don't seem to get anything done to fix it, you might wonder what I'm proposing to replace the current model. Well, I would look to our neighbors in Sweden and Norway for example. Both of these countries officially still retain conscription for both men and women, however in practice, both countries have voluntary systems. While they both organize the draft, train a small percentage of conscripts, so they go their way to make sure they only get the most motivated ones, meaning in practice, anybody holding an anti-militaristic or pacifistic conviction will be eliminated from consideration in the very beginning. As it seems that a lot of Finns are not ready to go for a full voluntary system, this would at the very least be a good compromise solution for the problems with the current system.

Now, many Finns would raise the question, whether or not a voluntary system would attract enough new recruits. I'd say yes. For one, you don't need the current number of conscripts a year to fill the military's war time strength. In fact, you could drop the number in half and still have enough raw recruits to fill it. Training a smaller number of troops would also help with other problems. For example, as I briefly mentioned in part one, a significant percentage of conscripts end up in financial hardship during their service, as the wages given to them are not that great. By training a smaller number of troops, you would save money on training costs and use that money to increase soldiers wages, thus potentially using that as a way of attracting recruits.There's also the problems with refreshment training. While any reservist can be called to refreshment training, fairly large percentage of them never will, because of the large number of conscripts. By training less troops, it would be easier for you to keep your soldiers knowledge up to date with the latest developments in technology.

While in the long run this would lead to a smaller reserve, the people in them would be better trained and since they weren't forced into service, they would also be more motivated. Also, since you wouldn't be forcing anybody into service all the criticism from human rights organizations regarding this topic would end.

Finland is one of the most democratic countries in the world and the fact we still have this kind of system in effect is quite frankly disgusting. This is nothing more than a remnant of the past, a relic of a bygone era. There really is no reason to keep the current system going as it really doesn't answer the threats of the modern world. This system is a prime example of militarism at it's finest.  Finland is no means the only country dealing with militarism and the problems it causes. This is a topic I'm definitely revisiting, but maybe for now I'll leave it alone for a while. There are both international and Finnish topics I'd like to talk about here. There are also some more personal topics like my views on religion for example.

If you want to help fighting the current system or militarism in general, here are a couple of links to do say. Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter.

Part three: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/finnish-conscription-pt3-militarization.html
Part four: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/12/finnish-conscription-pt4-how-reserve.html

Link to the petition about ending conscription:   https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Alexander_Stubb_Prime_Minister_of_Finland_End_Finnish_Conscription_and_Imprisonment_of_Conscientious_Objectors/

War Resister's International website:
https://www.wri-irg.org/en

And my Twitter:
https://twitter.com/HelvetinPastori