Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

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...

I thought I could have let this topic be for a bit longer, but apparently no. Earlier today, news broke that Jussi Niinistö, Finland's minister of defense is worried about financial problems the military will see in the near future. His solution, among other things, included temporarily suspending, or at least limiting, the possibility for women to volunteer for military service. According to him, by not taking in volunteering women into service for a year, the military could save up to 4 million euros. Not surprisingly, this has led to a massive backlash against him. If you've read my blog before, you can probably see why this is a stupid idea. Finland still retains conscription for men. And I mean men. Women are not forced into service, meaning that every woman serving in the military is doing so of their own free will. On the other hand, the system has received a lot of criticism from international human rights bodies, most notable ones being the UN Human Rights Committee a...

You know, when I started this blog, I wasn't planning on conscription being this big of a topic. But, since it seems to be a gift that keeps on giving, I see no reason to stop talking about this. Especially after the recent court case where a conscientious objector had charges dropped against them, which I covered in my previous post , the discussion has reached new heights. While I'm happy that this seems to have fueled the discussion to another level, this has led to some questionable actions by the government. As I said, I've already covered this case in more detail in the post linked above, so I'm not going into detail here. In summary, while Finland still retains conscription, Jehovah's Witnesses have been exempt from service since 1987. This has caused some controversy and over the years, multiple total objectors, meaning people who refuse both military and the alternative service, have argued that the practice is discriminatory towards other convictions an...

On the 23rd of February 2018, the Helsinki Court of Appeals made a land mark decision. The court acquitted a total objector, meaning a person who refuses both military and the alternative civil service, from charges on "refusal of civil service", on which he had previously been sentenced to 173 days in prison. This is the first time this has happened, so the question is, what does this decision mean for the future? First some background information. In my first post on this matter , I mentioned that Jehovah's Witnesses have been exempt from conscription since 1987. This is because back in the day, Witnesses were practically the only group of total objectors in the country. Just like today, the system received a lot of criticism on human rights violations, not the least of which was directed towards the practice of imprisoning  total objectors. In an effort to end the criticism, the Finnish government at the time passed a law which allows Jehovah's Witnesses to avo...

I already had a post planned out and I even began writing it. But before I could finish it, something happened that I simply can't ignore. The thing is that in response to the 2015 refugee crisis, Finland's current government led by prime minister Juha Sipilä has made some questionable changes to our immigration policy, especially when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers. This has led to a massive increase in the percentage of rejected applications and recently news stories have revealed the dark consequences this has. The worst part is that the government was warned this would happen, but they chose to push through the changes to legislation anyway and has refused to scale back their changes despite heavy criticism from the opposition and groups like Amnesty International. What changes have they made? For one, they made restrictions to the access for legal help for asylum seekers. In court, asylum seekers can't be represented by private law firms, meaning they hav...