Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

This is a translation of a speech I gave at the 2023 convention of the Finnish Green Party. The original is available here. Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine has concretely highlighted what excessive dependence on authoritarian states leads to. In a short time, both Finland and the EU had to completely rebuild their Russia policy, and admit to their their previous naive approach towards Russia. Considering how quickly that message seems to have gotten across, at least one question arises for me: Why are we deliberately repeating the same mistakes regarding China? One example of this quite literally hits close to home: there are plans to built a major concentration of battery manufacturing plants in my hometown of Kotka and its surrounding areas, largely to be built with Chinese money. Despite criticism, local decision-makers have mainly focused on the economic effects of the project, while simultaneously downplaying the risks related to China. However, after Russia started its ...

Translation of a Finnish blog post. Original one available here. UN day was was observed on the 24th of October. Through out the day I saw multiple posts made on the topic which got me thinking about my own, somewhat contradictory views on the UN.  The stated goal of the UN is to uphold international peace, security, justice and human rights. These are all goals that I fully support. We're talking about an ambitious project and all of us should be on board with it. That being said, has the UN actually delivered? Let's answer the question with an example: my home country of Finland was recently elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council. In short, the Council's job is to promote human rights via, what's effectively a form of peer review, meaning countries monitor each other and give recommendations of how to improve their human rights situation. On its own a fantastic idea, until you remember that the council also includes China and Russia as members. At this mom...

Translation of my speech at the Finnish Green Party's convention on the 12th of September 2021. Finnish version available here Hong Kong is a former British colony, which in 1997 was handed over to China. Before the handover, the countries agreed on a special arrangement which was meant to secure civil liberties for Hongkongers for at least 50 years. In the Summer of 2020, China betrayed those promises by legislating the so called "National security law". For Hong Kong's democracy movement, effects of the national security law have been catastrophic: since the law was enacted, every single democrat has been kicked out, or pressured to resign from the regional legislature. Around 30 organizations, which includes political parties and trade unions. have shut down operations. At the moment of writing this 146 people have been arrested and 84 people prosecuted under the national security law. Apart from this, the Hong Kong police has issued arrest warrants on at least 10...

This is a translations of a blog post from my Finnish blog. Link here . A diplomatic dispute between China and Lithuania seems to be brewing. Lithuania recently announced plans to open a representative office in Taiwan, while Taiwan is opening it's own office in Lithuania. For those who don't know, these offices act as de facto embassies due to Taiwan's interesting place in international politics. On it's own this is nothing special. After all, Finland and Taiwan have a similar arrangement between them. It's the name of this representative office that is the problem: while Taiwan's representative office in Finland uses the name ”Taipei Representative Office”, the name for the office that is about to be opened in Lithuania uses the name "Taiwan". And since China considers Taiwan as it's own territory, even the name "Taiwan" in any official capacity is treated as a threat.  Now China has actually recalled their ambassador to Lithuania and ...

The European Parliament recently adopted a resolution about Hong Kong which among other things called for sanctions against Chinese officials. The resolution was adopted with quite a clear margin, with 578 in favor, 29 against and 73 abstentions. The interesting part is that the abstentions and against votes largely came from two political groups on the opposite sides of the political spectrum: ID and GUE/NGL Far rights and the far left agreeing on something? Seems like the horseshoe theory is on to something.  This same divide can be seen in Finnish politics as well. I previously posted about the case of two right wing MP's getting exposed with questionable China ties . However, questionable China ties can be seen on the Finnish left as well, especially in minor parties, namely the Communist Party of Finland (SKP) and the Communist Workers Party (KTP).   The SKP is generally described as more moderate than the KTP but I don't think this is the case. An example of this is...

Translation of an article by Yle, published on the 16th on October 2020. Link below. Käännös Ylen 16.10.2020 julkaistusta artikkelista. Linkki alla. https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11599142?origin=rss Many Western countries have suspended extradition to the region after China changed the status of Hong Kong with a new law. Finland will suspend it's extradition treaty with Hong Kong. According to the proposal by the government the judicial situation in Hong Kong has become unclear, after China introduced a national security law on the region which limits the regions autonomy. President Sauli Niinistö has approved the suspension of the extradition treaty today. Finland has decided that in order to clarify the situation, a separate decision is needed about the viability of the extradition treaty. Extradition treaty's allow Finland to extradite suspected criminals at the requests of other countries, based on specific criteria. The treaty between Finland and Hong Kong has never been applie...

https://www.talouselama.fi/uutiset/te/16d1b8f4-6b49-402e-af13-5e1cac163578?ref=ampparit:a1ad Translation of an article published in Talouselämä on the 22nd of July 2020. Link below. Käännös Talouselämä-lehdessä 22.7.2020 julkaistusta artikkelista. Linkki alla. From the MEP's five supported both economic and human rights based sanctions. According to Uutissuomalainen, ten from Finland's 14 MEP's support EU-level sanctions against China due to the late June enactment of a national security law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. From the MEP's Ville Niinistö (Greens), Alviina Alametsä (Greens), Elsi Katainen (Center), Miapetra Kumpula-Natri (Social Democrats) and Silvia Modig (Left Alliance) support sanction based on both economical and human rights based sanctions. Alametsä points out that the EU is currently negotiating with China about a massive investment deal. "The deal should include legally binding clauses to protect sustainable de...

Translation of an article by YLE, published on the 15th of July 2020. Käännös Ylen 15.7.2020 julkaistusta artikkelista. https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11449622 According to Minister of Justice Anna-Maja Henriksson (Swedish Peoples's Party) Finland's extradition treaty with Hong Kong has been in practice suspended. The treaty signed in 2005 had to be reviewed after China tightened it's grip on the Special Administrative Region. A new national security law took effect in Hong Kong at the beginning of July. (Little correction: the treaty was signed in 2013, while negotiations on the treaty started in 2005.) Henriksson said that because of the national security law, Finland considers Hong Kong's legal status as being unclear. "We can say that in practice the extradition treaty has been suspended, because of Hong Kong's unclear legal status. As far as Finland is concerned, at the moment and based on the information we have, all extraditions are out of the...

16th of January 2020, Finnish news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti reported that Mika Niikko and Ville Vähämäki, two members of parliament for the right wing populist Finns Party, had possible ties with the Chinese government that they had not disclosed. Niikko especially has been under scrutiny because of his role as the head of parliaments foreign affairs committee. Despite new developments in the story making the situation worse for the two men, the story has not received enough attention nor has it brought any consequences towards them. This is why I feel responsibility to try and do my part in keeping this story alive. I will apologize in advance about the lack of English language sources. Quite simply, Finnish politics in general do not attract that much international attention. Additionally, most of the reporting by Suomen Kuvalehti, who originally broke the story is behind a paywall. I'll link the English stories some of the Finnish articles here but you have been warned. Li...

Finland has gotten crazy over pandas. Yes, pandas. Those cuddly little creatures that have become a symbol of conservation work as the logo of the World Wildlife Fund. Ever since the Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a stop in Finland in the spring of 2017 and talked about Finland getting pandas as a gift for our 100th independence day, the country has gone crazy. This has been especially true in the last few days, as the two pandas started their journey to Finland. They landed earlier today in Helsinki and as I'm writing this, they're making their way towards their new home in Ähtäri zoo. Others were exited about the fact, as only a handful of countries outside of China actually have pandas and as such it's a rare honor, while others were a bit... let's just say reserved about it. As you already might have guessed from the title, I fall into the latter category, but before we can take a closer look on why, we have to take a more general look at the matter. Now, as I sai...