Strike The Root

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Freedom Finnished

by Harri Soinila

I realize the things I'm about to tell you don't have much to do with America, but I thought someone might be interested in hearing an international voice. The last thing I want is Bush declaring war on Finland over my case. We don't have weapons of mass destruction, I promise.

Finland, like many other countries, has a compulsory service system to maintain the army. The most common length for the armed service is 180 days. A democratic country such as Finland has a right to have one, I suppose. But citizens should also have a right to refuse from carrying arms based on their own ethical or religious reasons. As a Finn, I'm ashamed (not to mention pissed off) to say this right is being violated.

The army is formed using a compulsory draft of all men at the age of 17. Boys, at the age of 17, to be more exact. Those who are unwilling to participate in the armed service have the option of serving their compulsory service peacefully in civil service. So far so good.

The problem is that the possibility of civil service in Finland doesn't really live up to the principles of freedom of thought or of religion. The civil service in Finland is nowhere near an equal option to armed service. The length of the civil service is 395 days, next to the 180 days of armed service. Civil servicemen spend the first month of the 13 in a schooling center to learn . . . how to make their beds properly? How to slack off efficiently? You could learn all that in the army! And getting bored out of their minds. Some people like it, but many find such unneeded institutionalization not to their fancy. During the first month, a civil serviceman is supposed to find a place to serve the rest of the time (pun intended) in an accepted service post. Not unlike a regular job, but with unimaginably lousy pay.

In the call-up occasions, civil service is often not offered as an option at all. If I hadn't known there was such a thing, I still wouldn't know. They did tell me, when I asked, but according to the law, civil service should be introduced as an equal opportunity of serving the beloved country. The call-ups are, of course, orchestrated by military professionals, and you can guess what kind of an opinion they have about the lame, probably homosexual, pacifist scum. So just going to the alternative service takes guts.

The growing number of civil servicemen is not matched by the possible service posts. And the places that do employ civil servicemen are not really educated in what a civil serviceman's rights and duties are exactly, and neither are the civil servicemen. So they're used as slave labor, basically. Oh, I take that back. Slaves get free housing. The servicemen should, too, but many of the employers can't, won't or just don't grant that.

Also, the civil servicemen are not free from armed service in wartime. Since they don't know what to do with a firearm, they'd probably be used as human mine detectors or something, as some have joked. Needless to say, I suppose, that the jokesters have been to the armed service. (Why are people so hot over defending this freezer?)

The bottom line is, the Finnish government is punishing individuals who refuse to learn how to kill people. The punishment is 13 months of civil service without the possibility of parole.

The option left, if you still wish, for one reason or another, not to be taught in the ways of killing people for any reason, is another punishment--jail. That's "only" six and a half months, though. These people, conscientious objectors, are ready, if need be, to go to jail for their anti-militaristic principles. You'd think that'd be a powerful tool to changing things, but it's not working. Amnesty International has adopted so far 31 conscientious objectors as prisoners of conscience, and have stated they will continue to do so, until things are changed.

I know the term “conscientious objector” can, in English, also mean the same thing as civil serviceman, but here I mean absolute refusal to service of any kind, whether the refusal is because of principle (objecting to serve the country) or criticizing the current legislation. Also, there are probably some people who go to jail just to annoy their parents. In Finnish, there are separate words for the two.

The government has voted twice on the subject and decided not to change the unfair length of civil service. Even the president, Tarja Halonen, didn't see any need for that. And she's been dubbed “the human rights president” by the media. Well, seems like the human rights in her own country aren't all that important.

Halonen is a woman, and in this case, it might be affecting her judgment, because to make things even less equal, women are not drafted. Neither are residents of the self-administrated Åland Islands. Nor the members of the Jehova's Witnesses.

The United Nations' Human Rights Committee has stated that the Finnish military legislation discriminates against conscientious objectors other than the Jehova's witnesses. The government didn't listen.

The European Parliament has stated that the alternative service should not be longer than the armed service on average. The government didn't listen.

The government doesn't seem to mind the fact that Finland has the "honor" of being the only country in the European Union listed in the annual reports of Amnesty International for human rights violations.

What is the difference between the religion of the Jehova's Witnesses and the ideology of a conscientious objector? A conviction is a conviction, whether it's organized religion or not. In the spirit of the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights, signed, among others, by Finland, either nobody should be drafted or everybody, regardless of sex, habitation or religion, if one considers the system of compulsory enrollments acceptable at all.

I think it's more than fair to say that Finland is violating the constitutional rights to freedom of thought and of conscience of its own citizens. But only some of them. You have to fulfill the irrational requirements of being male, non-Jehovan and from outside the Province of Åland to get violated. Oh, I feel so privileged.

As much as I respect the efforts and sacrifices of our war heroes, thanks to whom Finland never was a Soviet state, I think a decision not to carry arms should be equally respected. Especially in a society with these kinds of values, it's a bold decision. It really doesn't make sense to treat pacifists as criminals, next to the likes of murderers and rapists. A conscientious objector's whole point, after all, is not to harm anyone. It seems ethically grotesque that a person refusing to kill people is doing a greater crime than a soldier who does kill, even for a "good" reason.

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll go to jail, maybe I'll cause a scene, like Jussi Hermaja is doing. Hermaja lives in exile in Belgium, as a political refugee, but Belgium has not granted him asylum. The case is still open. Belgium recognizes EU-citizens as possible asylum seekers, but it seems taking that kind of action "against" another EU-country is too touchy an issue.

I have already been wanted by the police, when my postponement application was delayed, and will be again, unless I play nice or get a medical excuse, like mental problems or a physical handicap. Mental problems might not be that far-fetched, come to think of it . . . . So far I've been postponing the service, trying to figure out what to do.

I know my case isn't as harsh as many other human rights violations going on in the world, but I don't think anybody's rights should be violated at all. There is no such thing as a little violation, just like there should be no such thing as "mild rape."

I don't see why anybody should die over a geographical area or colorful fabric. Or kill. And most definitely nobody should be forced to do either. Not by their own government or another country's. The only way to win a war, after all, is not taking part in it. Sometimes a nation just doesn't have a choice when another country orders their people to kill them. Then it's nice to have an army, but why should the attacking country have an army in the first place, either?

Even though it might, in the current time, be very smart to learn how to operate a firearm, that doesn't make it right. If nobody knew how to kill others, we wouldn't have wars, to over-simplify. I'm just starting with the guy in the mirror.

Besides, what good does knowing how to fire a projectile in the direction of someone do, when George W. finally has an excuse to push one of those 27,000 pretty red buttons?