How are conscientious objectors treated around the world? pt.2

As I said in my previous post, I feel more motivated to write than ever before. So here you go, the second part on the treatment of conscientious objectors around the world.

First, let's stay in Europe and look at the situation in Turkey. Turkey does not recognize the right to conscientious objection. Because of this, the Turkish system has received heavy criticism from human rights organizations, which includes multiple conscientious objectors who took their case to the European Court of Human Rights and won.  Because of the decisions of the Human Rights Court, the Turkish government has promised to fix the perceived problems but has failed to do so. Weird thing about this is that the Turkish constitution technically would allow this "national service" to be completed as a form of non-military service, and leaves the specifics to legislators. However, despite this, the current law doesn't allow non-military service. This naturally means that conscientious objectors are sentenced to jail and just like with Israel, (read the part 1) having people serve multiple sentences for refusing to serve in the military is fairly common place. Apart from this, there are laws against "alienating people from the armed forces", which means that activists working in this field have actually been sentenced for their activism. 

Next, let's look at Finland's eastern neighbor, Russia. In Russia, conscientious objection was recognized under the constitution in 1993, but actual legislation on the matter came into force in 2004, allowing for substitute service outside the military. There are some major problems with the system. The applications for substitute service have to be made at least six months before the actual draft. While in practice almost every application is granted, the officials are not doing great work with informing conscripts about the possibility for alternative service. Also, the strict time limit means that there probably are a lot of people whose applications are rejected simply because they made them too late. Also, unlike in Finland, people who apply for substitute service can't choose the place they serve at. This means that servicemen are ordered to complete their service, usually in some government institutions. In length, it's also nearly twice that of military service. Russia also has a problem with draft evaders. This is simply because a lot of people, especially from those living in larger cities don't actually want to serve in the military. Because of this it's incredibly common for people to simply buy their way out of service, by for example bribing doctors to give them medical exemptions or simply buying fake documents claiming they've already completed their service. This has led the police to randomly detaining people around military age and taking them to bases to start their service if their paperwork isn't in order, as a way of combating the large numbers of draft evaders. The practice is in fact illegal, however this hasn't stopped them.

Last, let's look at Eritrea. It's a country in Africa, sometimes referred to as "North Korea of Africa" and for a good reason. The country has national service for all it's citizens both male and female. However, calling it "national service" doesn't really cut it as in practice it's simply slavery. There are multiple reasons for this, the biggest one being that the length is indefinite. Officially service is supposed to last 18 month but the government can simply decide to extend your service or simply order you to start over.  Apart from this, conscripts are routinely used as cheap labor. For example, there was a case of three Eritrean refugees who sued a Canadian mining company for using Eritrean conscripts as cheap labor at a copper mine. Apart from being used as cheap labor, female conscripts are routinely sexually assaulted by officers. It's also common for people under the legal recruitment age to be ordered into service

You can probably already guess that conscientious objection is no recognized in Eritrea. As a result, anybody who refuses to serve is sentenced to indefinite prison sentences, sometimes without a trial. Even if they get a trial, the court system is controlled by the government and as a result, trials are far from fair. There are people in prison at the moment, who have been locked for over 20 years. As you might guess, draft evasion is widespread. The government has responded to this by targeting the families of evaders, in order to get them into service, especially in cases where the evaders have escaped the country. Government forces also sometimes randomly round up people roughly around the right age, in order to catch evaders trying to hide from authorities. The treatment of evaders and people refusing to serve has led to Jehovah's Witnesses in the country to lose their citizens rights as they consistently refuse to serve. There really is no way around it. This is slavery. Despite this, there have been cases of European countries rejecting asylum applications from Eritrean refugees escaping "national service". 

I'm probably gonna write one more post about this topic, before changing subject to something else. I already have the next post about this planned out, at least when it comes to the countries I want to cover. I'm not sure if it will come out tomorrow, but expect it in the next couple of days. 

Link to my previous post on this topic:

http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/how-are-conscientious-objectors-treated.html

Third post on this topic:
http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/how-conscientious-objectors-are-treated.html

Link to the story about the Eritrean refugees:

http://hrc-eritrea.org/eritrea-canadian-appeal-court-affirms-eritreans-slavery-and-forced-labour-claims-can-proceed/