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...

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 objecto...