Total Service Objectors Doubled During A Decade

During the 1990s, the number of total objectors was 15 - 20 a year. Since the start of this decade, their numbers have expanded to 40 - 76 annually.

The paper notes that the rise coincided with a reduction in active service time for military conscripts.

Some total objectors protest against conscription as a whole and would not carry out non-military service under any conditions, while others object primarily to the defects of the non-military service system. According to Kaj Raninen of the Union of Conscientious Objectors, AKL, there is no clear common denominator in the decision among young men to refuse all service.

Prison terms

In practice, total objectors are sentenced to approximately six months in prison for their refusal to serve. At the beginning of last month, there were 12 total objectors serving prison terms in Finland.

At present, the shortest period of military service for conscripts is six months, or 180 days. For conscientious objectors, the period of non-military service is 12 months, or 362 days.

In Finland, in theory all men between the ages of 18 and 60 are subject to military service. Approximately 82% of all young men do military service and around 7% do alternative non-military service. Members of the Jehovah Witnesses were exempted from both forms of service under legislation that came into force in 1987.

According to the newspaper Keskisuomalainen, the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations and the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe have called Finnish legislation discriminatory in this respect and said that the preferential treatment accorded to Jehovah's Witnesses should be extended to other groups of conscientious objectors.

Amnesty International has also been critical of the terms of Finland's non-military service and has acknowledged 61 Finnish total objectors as prisoners of conscience since November 1999, because it considers the length of civilian service as punitive.