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FINLAND: Four total objectors sentenced to prison
Four Finnish total objectors were sentenced to unconditional prison
sentences by the Loviisa district court (Loviisan käräjäoikeus) on
Tuesday 11th of September. Each of them was charged of "alternative
service crime" and each of them got sentenced to prison for of the
substitute service time not yet served at the time of refusal.
Michael Laakasuo (FIN14929), a 24 years old Bachelor of Social
Sciences, refused to do any service because he is not willing to obey
the social elite which wants to maintain the monopoly of violence in
society. He was senteced to 197 days imprisonment.
Mika Kalliokoski (FIN14930), a 21 years old media-assistant from
Jyväskylä, does not want to perform a punitive substitute service and
does not consider protecting the state with violence as his legitimate
duty. He was sentenced to 197 days, too.
Joel Rautapuro (FIN14931), a 21 years old DJ from Kokkola, objected
also for ideological reasons and got 196 days.
Aki Greus (FIN14932), a 23 years old student from Helsinki, got 127
days. He had been illegally classified as "temporary unfit for
alternative service because of medical reasons" by the then manager of
the alternative service center and refused to continue his alternative
service after the original day of discharge as a protest against this
procedure.
The Finnish cabinet will soon pass a new alternative service act to the
parliament. The parties represented in the cabinet decided in August
that they will shorten the length of substitute service to 12 months.
While this is an improvement, it is not adequate (at the moment the
length of substitute service is 395 days, whereas the basic length of
military servive is 180 days). According to the ministry of labour´s
draft law, the imprisonment of total objectors will also continue.
The punitive length of substitute service and other shortcomings of the
Finnish legislation concerning conscientious objection have been
critised by the UN Human Rights Committee (November 2004) and Council
of Europe´s human rights bodies.
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War Resisters' International calls for letters of protest to Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, or Finnish embassies abroad. A protest email can be sent at http://wri-irg.org/co/alerts/20070914a.html. A list of Finnish embassies can be found at http://formin.finland.fi/doc/eng/missions/embcount.html.
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War Resisters' International calls for the immediate release of all imprisoned conscientious objectors.
Andreas Speck
War Resisters' International
wri-irg.org