Amnesty International's annual report and Finland 2017/2018: my take

On the 22nd of February 2018, Amnesty International released it's annual report on human rights. Since I live in Finland, I decided to take a look on what they said about my country. In this post, I will take what the report said and give my comments and some additional info on the topics discussed.

Refugees and asylum seekers

"Many changes in the law introduced in 2016, including restrictions of the right to free legal representation and reduced time frames for appeals, continued to affect refugees’ and asylum-seekers’ rights. The likelihood of asylum-seekers being forcibly returned to countries where they might be at risk of human rights violations (refoulement) was increased. The government had not evaluated the combined impact of these changes by the end of the year."

Short time ago, I actually made a post on this matter. After a a court in France was concerned about Finland's standards on returning asylum seekers and refused to return an Iraqi man whose asylum application was rejected to Finland and after another Iraqi man whose applications was also rejected was killed mere weeks after his return to Iraq, this has been a source of heavy discussion. There really isn't anything I can add on this, so read my post linked above for more details. All I can say is the changes made were a mistake and we have proof about that. Unfortunately, the current Finnish government has not had a good track record on listening to criticism.

"Family reunification remained difficult for most refugees due to both legislative and practical obstacles, including high income requirements. Despite international NGOs raising concern, Finland continued to forcibly return asylum seekers whose applications were rejected to Afghanistan."

One of the changes made to immigration policy was restrictions made to the possibility of family reunification. In case somebody doesn't know, the basic idea behind this is that a person who has residency in a specific country can sponsor their family members to move into said country. In Finland however, the minimum income needed to get your family members here was increased to a level which even most Finns can't afford. What this means is that a Finnish person working full time as a nurse couldn't afford to get their American spouse in to the country. To be fair, when this was pointed out, the government took action and... removed the income requirement from Finnish citizens. Yeah, you can probably see the problem here. 

Forcibly returning people to Afghanistan despite calls from NGOs to stop it just shows you the complete contempt the Sipilä government has towards critics. Afghanistan is not safe. Period. The government is one of the most corrupt in the world and it can't handle it's basic responsibilities towards their citizens. Large parts of the country are run by different armed groups, including the Taliban and ISIS. It's not surprising then that the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs encourages people to avoid any travel into the country. So, if Afghanistan is dangerous for Finnish citizens, then HOW THE FUCK IS IT SAFE FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS TO RETURN? Seriously, what the fuck are these people thinking? Btw, the same thing goes for Iraq. Ministry for Foreign Affairs encourages people not to travel into Iraq as well. How is a asylum seeker any different from a Finnish citizen?

"Contrary to international standards, the authorities continued to detain unaccompanied children, and families with children, based on their immigration status. There was no time limit on detaining families with children. In February, “directed residence” was introduced as a new form of deprivation of liberty for asylum-seekers and migrants. It meant that asylum-seekers had to report to a reception centre up to four times a day."

Finland is detaining children. I really don't know what to say here. Children do not belong in detention, especially if they haven't committed a crime. Children need to be taken care of in order for them to develop properly, detaining them can cause major psychological damage.

About this "directed residence", I don't know too much about this. I remember reading about something similar for those who are waiting to be returned to their country of origin, in an effort to prevent them from evading authorities in order to avoid deportation. This has become bit of a problem. On the other hand, since Finland is clearly not doing a great job protecting the rights of asylum seekers, I really don't blame them for running away. Maybe the government should fix the shitty system.

LGBT rights

"Legislation on legal gender recognition continued to violate the rights of transgender people. They could obtain legal gender recognition only if they agreed to sterilization, were diagnosed with a mental disorder, and were aged over 18. Despite an April decision by the European Court of Human Rights condemning sterilization, the government did not consider amending the law."

Yes, Finland treats transgender people so badly that the European Court of Human Rights has taken notice. Also, in the most recent Universal Periodic Review, the UN Human Rights Council also took notice on this. In order to to be recognized as your preferred gender, you need to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which, while widely considered as a mental disorder, does have some controversy over it's validity. Recognition is also tied in with the process of transitioning, meaning a trans person is forced to start hormone therapy in order to be recognized as their preferred gender. The requirement of being at least 18 forces a trans person to go through puberty, meaning they have to witness changes in their body they don't want to see, potentially making them develop serious mental health problems. Also, I assume I don't have to explain why forced sterilization is wrong.

There is also one more problem with this: the Finnish social security numbers. You see, Finnish social security number involves information about your gender at birth. Trans people are given new social security numbers, but the old one will stay for example, in their high school diplomas. The result is that when their looking for a job,  they might be forced to out themselves against their will. Now, this might change fairly soon. There have been some problems with the way the social security numbers are created (more specifically, there's a risk of running out of numbers to give), which has called for changes to be made and there have been calls to make the numbers gender neutral. Ultimately, I'm not too sure about how serious the discussion about changing the process is, so I can't really comment on that.

Violence against women 

"NGOs and state institutions working to combat violence against women and girls remained systematically under-resourced. Neither adequate and accessible walk-in services nor long-term support services for survivors of violence were in place. Existing legislation did not sufficiently protect institutionalized or hospitalized individuals from sexual violence. In May, the first Sexual Assault Support Centre was opened at the Women’s Hospital in the capital, Helsinki. Finland still lacked a nationwide, accessible service network for victims of all forms of sexual violence, which could also provide long-term support. In January, an Administrative Committee on Coordination on violence against women, as required by the Istanbul Convention, started its work to enhance the implementation of the Convention and facilitate work to prevent violence against women. However, neither women’s nor victims’ support organizations were represented in the Committee and it was also inadequately resourced."

Yes, believe or not, Finland, the first country in Europe to let women vote and the first in the world to let women run for office, has a problem with violence against women. I really don't have much to say here. The Finnish government has refused to act on this (on the other hand, this is the case with pretty much everything on this list), but the reasons why are some of the worst explanations I've ever heard. The previously mentioned UN Human Rights Committee suggested in their most recent review on Finland that the government should allocate more funds to safe houses for victims of domestic abuse. The government rejected this on the grounds that "the government already offers funding to safe houses". I really don't know what to say here. 

Right to privacy

"In April, draft civilian and military intelligence legislation was published. It enabled the acquisition of information on threats to national security by giving military and civilian intelligence agencies permission to conduct communications surveillance without any requirement for a link to a specific criminal offence."

I have to admit that I haven't followed the intelligence discussion as closely as I probably should. The basic thing here is that the parliament is currently having discussions about changes made into intelligence laws, which would give intelligence agencies wider rights to monitor your personal data. The problem here is that right to privacy is enshrined in the Finnish constitution on a similar level to gun ownership in the US. In other words, in order for these laws to pass, the parliament first has to make changes to the constitution. Under normal circumstances changes to the constitution have to first be accepted by a simple majority and after which they have to wait until after the next election when the newly elected parliament has to support them by a 2/3 majority.  However, the government wants to get the changes through before the next election. In order to do so, they need a 5/6 majority to declare the changes to as "urgent", after which they can be approved by a 2/3 majority during the current election cycle.

The thing is that the new intelligence laws will eventually pass. However, opposition parties have been raising the issue of privacy and this might prevent the constitutional changes to be declared as urgent. The reason is largely the Social Democrats. Their leader Antti Rinne recently said that the party would be willing to accept the changes, if supervision of the intelligence agencies was increased. The thing is, the Social Democrats are the third largest party currently in parliament and they have enough MP's to stop these changes from being handled urgently on their own. Let's just say, members of the government haven't been too pleased with this.

Conscientious objectors

"Conscientious objectors to military service continued to be punished for refusing to undertake alternative civilian service, which remained punitive and discriminatory in length. The duration of alternative civilian service was 347 days, more than double the shortest military service period of 165 days"

If you've read my previous posts, you were probably expecting this already. I've already made multiple posts on this matter, so there really isn't much to add here. Except for a little update on something a briefly mentioned in my first post on Finnish conscription.

If you remember, I've mentioned that Jehovah's Witnesses are exempt from service. In my first post on Finnish conscription, I mentioned about a court case, where the anti-discrimination ombudsman defended a conscientious objector in court, who had already been sentenced to jail. The person in question argued that the exemption given to Witnesses is discriminatory towards other conscientious objectors and since the Finnish constitution bans discrimination, he should be exempt as well. Similar arguments have been presented in past case as well, but they haven't been taken seriously. Until now.

Yes, on the 23rd of February 2018, the Helsinki court of appeals acquitted a conscientious objector from their charges. This is the first time a non-Jehovah's Witness has been exempt from service on the grounds of their views. Essentially this means that at least for now, these so called "total objectors" can't be sentenced to jail. Now, since this is a first time something like this happens, the prosecutor is trying to get this into the Supreme Court, which most likely will happen. You see, in Finland the Supreme Court is not a constitutional court unlike it's counter part in the US. Instead, the Finnish Supreme Court mostly takes cases where it can set precedent for the future.So yes, even though this is a landmark case, we might have to wait it's actual effect for some time. 

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