Working group on conscription immediately fails
As you can read from the title, it's once again time to talk about conscription. After the recent court case, where a conscientious objector was acquitted from charges caused by his total refusal to complete any form of service, it's clear that the current system is broken and needs fixing. Unfortunately, while not surprisingly, our minister of defense Jussi Niinistö sees conscription as something sacred and thus, is unable to admit that the system needs to be completely changed.
Now, the court case I mentioned was all about discrimination. As you might remember, Jehovah's Witnesses have been exempt from service since 1987. The CO in question argued that the exemption given to Witnesses is discriminatory towards other CO's, who are sentenced to jail because of their refusal to serve and since discrimination of all kinds is banned by the Finnish constitution, this practice is in fact, unconstitutional. This has been argued before, but this is the first time a court took the argument seriously, probably since the man was defended in court by the non-discrimination ombudsman. Also, as I've said in previous posts on this topic, the prosecutor has announced plans to appeal the case to the supreme court and thus, the decision is not yet lawful. Despite this, all cases involving these so called "total objectors" have been put on hold until the supreme court announces its decision, which can take until October 2019. This case could have a major effect on Finnish national defense, but unfortunately, it seems our government is too hung up on maintaining the status quo, to actually use this as an opportunity to solve the various problems the system has.
Right after the court gave its decision on this case, minister of defense Jussi Niinistö announced his plans to set up a working group to figure out how to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses in regards to conscription. The group was officially set up on the 6th of April and it's scheduled to give their suggestion on the matter before the 29th of June 2018. Now, as much as I dislike the man, I have to give him credit here. Minister Niinistö is being forward thinking here: even though it can take until late 2019 for the final verdict on this case to arrive, he's getting ready for it by looking into different possibilities. But, as the title suggests, the working group has already failed. You see, the working group was specifically instructed that whatever their suggestion for solving the problem is, it should not "pose a threat" to conscription.
As you might remember from my previous posts, the UN Human Rights Committee has specifically told Finland to expand the exemption given to Jehovah's Witnesses to include other groups of CO's as well. The problem, as pointed out by a ministry of defense official after the court decision came, is that expanding the exemption to include everybody would in practice mean the abolition of conscription. Since the working group is not permitted to suggest anything that would compromise conscription, the only possible outcome would be to abolish the exemption given to Witnesses. Even though the Jehovah's Witnesses governing body has officially permitted their members to take part in some form of non-military service, the groups national leadership in Finland sees the modern civil service as being too closely tied together with national defense, and as such, are against their members from taking part in it. In other words, if the exemption is taken away, the only way to avoid a massive increase in the numbers of total objectors would be to create a form of service Witnesses would allow their members to take part in. There really are two problems with this idea: an earlier working group on this topic did look into this possibility and deemed it too impractical to actually implement. On the other hand, our current minister of defense considers the current treatment of CO's as too lenient and has called for restrictions to the right of conscientious objection, despite the fact that international human rights bodies have demanded Finland to expand it.
This is just another example about the absurdity surrounding this discussion. Many people in Finland want to get every single person living here involved with national defense in some fashion, despite there being no need for that. I've already gone through the problems with the idea of so called "national service" The military has three times the amount of trained reservists as their war time needs call for. The civil service system has already faced problems with the number of reserve objectors growing. Basically, national service would mean the foundation of a separate entity just to handle the numbers, plus, the system would bring additional human rights problems. Ultimately, even if you don't care about human rights, you should be able to see that there is no need for this.
Honestly, this just pisses me off. The same problems have been pointed out by human rights organizations multiple times, but instead of fixing them, the government seems to want double down on them. It's especially frustrating considering that the criticism is based on human rights treaty's Finland has signed and ratified. For example, the UN Human Rights Committee is the official body set up to monitor the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and to make interpretations on the treaty. So basically, by refusing to adhere to the Committees recommendations, the Finnish government is really saying, "We don't care about our international commitments". There's also the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights monitoring it. The court is yet to make decisions regarding Finnish CO's but has made decision in favor of imprisoned CO's from Greece and Turkey. Finland has made commitments on the issue of human rights, but for some reason, there is this one issue where the government consistently refuses to do the right thing. While I'm not at all surprised, it is disappointing.
Follow me on Twitter.
My other posts on conscription.
Part one: General information
Part two: Discussion and some proposed alternatives
Part three: Recruitment
Part four: Reserve objectors
Conscription and the recent election
Butthurt responses to my comments
Right after the court gave its decision on this case, minister of defense Jussi Niinistö announced his plans to set up a working group to figure out how to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses in regards to conscription. The group was officially set up on the 6th of April and it's scheduled to give their suggestion on the matter before the 29th of June 2018. Now, as much as I dislike the man, I have to give him credit here. Minister Niinistö is being forward thinking here: even though it can take until late 2019 for the final verdict on this case to arrive, he's getting ready for it by looking into different possibilities. But, as the title suggests, the working group has already failed. You see, the working group was specifically instructed that whatever their suggestion for solving the problem is, it should not "pose a threat" to conscription.
As you might remember from my previous posts, the UN Human Rights Committee has specifically told Finland to expand the exemption given to Jehovah's Witnesses to include other groups of CO's as well. The problem, as pointed out by a ministry of defense official after the court decision came, is that expanding the exemption to include everybody would in practice mean the abolition of conscription. Since the working group is not permitted to suggest anything that would compromise conscription, the only possible outcome would be to abolish the exemption given to Witnesses. Even though the Jehovah's Witnesses governing body has officially permitted their members to take part in some form of non-military service, the groups national leadership in Finland sees the modern civil service as being too closely tied together with national defense, and as such, are against their members from taking part in it. In other words, if the exemption is taken away, the only way to avoid a massive increase in the numbers of total objectors would be to create a form of service Witnesses would allow their members to take part in. There really are two problems with this idea: an earlier working group on this topic did look into this possibility and deemed it too impractical to actually implement. On the other hand, our current minister of defense considers the current treatment of CO's as too lenient and has called for restrictions to the right of conscientious objection, despite the fact that international human rights bodies have demanded Finland to expand it.
This is just another example about the absurdity surrounding this discussion. Many people in Finland want to get every single person living here involved with national defense in some fashion, despite there being no need for that. I've already gone through the problems with the idea of so called "national service" The military has three times the amount of trained reservists as their war time needs call for. The civil service system has already faced problems with the number of reserve objectors growing. Basically, national service would mean the foundation of a separate entity just to handle the numbers, plus, the system would bring additional human rights problems. Ultimately, even if you don't care about human rights, you should be able to see that there is no need for this.
Honestly, this just pisses me off. The same problems have been pointed out by human rights organizations multiple times, but instead of fixing them, the government seems to want double down on them. It's especially frustrating considering that the criticism is based on human rights treaty's Finland has signed and ratified. For example, the UN Human Rights Committee is the official body set up to monitor the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and to make interpretations on the treaty. So basically, by refusing to adhere to the Committees recommendations, the Finnish government is really saying, "We don't care about our international commitments". There's also the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights monitoring it. The court is yet to make decisions regarding Finnish CO's but has made decision in favor of imprisoned CO's from Greece and Turkey. Finland has made commitments on the issue of human rights, but for some reason, there is this one issue where the government consistently refuses to do the right thing. While I'm not at all surprised, it is disappointing.
Follow me on Twitter.
My other posts on conscription.
Part one: General information
Part two: Discussion and some proposed alternatives
Part three: Recruitment
Part four: Reserve objectors
Conscription and the recent election
Butthurt responses to my comments
My two posts regarding the recent court case:
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