Prisoners for Peace

The defence of the entire country is only possible if general conscription is maintained. The high educational standard of conscripts makes it possible, with the current periods of service, to provide conscript training in even the more demanding tasks, and to recruit high-quality personnel for international crisis management tasks and for the professional personnel posts in the Defence Forces.

Kaj Raninen

In its own way, Finland is a very militarised country, although it might not look like that at first sight. Finnish militarism does not mean that the military is strikingly visible in society or that it necessarily has more influence in the society than in other Western European countries. It is rather a state of mind, a historically constructed way of thinking, according to which Finland is always under military threat - even when no one has got any idea who might cause this threat or no one can imagine a situation where it might materialise.

Kaj Raninen

Finland still maintains a very extensive conscription system. About 80% of all male Finnish citizens perform military service, a bit more than 10 % are exempted from service and about 7 % apply for conscientious objection.

Welcome to the Prisoners for Peace special edition of The Broken Rifle. The focus of Prisoners for Peace Day 2004 is the imprisonment of conscientious objectors in Finland. Finland, a member state of the European Union, continues to imprison conscientious objectors who refuse to perform a substitute service which is punitive in length. And the number of imprisoned conscientious objectors is growing - now standing at about 70-80 annually.

1 December - Prisoners for Peace Day

This years focus: conscientious objection in Finland.

It is only one more month to Prisoners for Peace Day. The special edition of WRI's The Broken Rifle, incorporating the annual Prisoners for Peace Honour Roll, will be available in English online after 4 November, and in print from 15 November on. The German, French, and Spanish editions will be available soon after.

European Social Forum in London

War Resisters' International and many of its European affiliates are preparing for the European Social Forum, which will take place in London from 15-17 October 2004. You can find out more about WRI's presence at the ESF on WRI's website.

Prisoners for Peace Day 2004

1 December is Prisoners for Peace Day. The focus for this years is conscientious objection in Finland.

Friedrich-Siegmund-Schultze Award for WRI

On 28 September, War Resisters' International will receive the Friedrich- Siegmund- Schultze Award for nonviolent action from the Evangelische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Kriegsdienstverweigerung (Protestant Working Group for Conscientious Objection). The award will be given to WRI in a public event in Speyer in the southwest of Germany.

The Broken Rifle is the newsletter of War Resisters' International, and is published in English, Spanish, French and German. This is issue 59, November 2003. This issue of The Broken Rifle was produced by Andreas Speck and Yongwook Yeong, with help from Jung-min Choi and many others, who provided the information used in this issue.

If you want extra copies of this issue of The Broken Rifle, please contact the WRI office, or download/print a PDF or HTML version from this website.

Armenia | Belarus | Belgium | Britain | Finland | Germany | Ireland | Israel | Puerto Rico | South Korea | Turkmenistan | USA

Dong Hyuk Na

For 50 years, since the Korean War, about 10,000 COs have been imprisoned. Most of those COs were Jehovah's Witnesses. Not until the 21st century did COs who have ideological, political beliefs appear amid serious reflection on militarism and nationalism. The anti-war movement in Korea, which began after 11 September 2001, exerted a great influence on their conviction against war and for peace. I am one of those and the fourth objector for nonreligious reasons.

Sang Youl Sohn

Many people think that the crisis on the Korean peninsula started in the wake of North Korea's nuclear development. However, contrary to what is commonly known, it is right to think that the crisis initiated from the aggressive nuclear and military policies made by the US, and military approach to this by North Korea made the crisis more complicated.

Solidarity for Peace and Human Rights

5F., CISJD Bldg., #35 Chungjoengno 2(I)-ga, Seodaemun-gu Seoul 120-012 tel +82-2-393 9085 fax +82-2-363 9085 email peace@jinbo.net http://peace.jinbo.net

World Without War

2F., 242-73 Sangdo 4-dong, dongjak-gu Seoul 156-806 Tel: +82-2-815-4477 Email: admin@withoutwar.org

Korean House for International Solidarity

2F., 32 Wonseo-dong, Jongno-gu Seoul 110-280 Tel: +82-2-3675-5808 Fax: +82-2-3673-5627 Email: khis21@empal.com