Finland, violator of human rights?
Wow! From YLE…
Finland has received more judgments handed down by the European Court of Human Rights than the rest of the Nordic countries together over the past 15 years.
According to the newspaper Turun Sanomat, Finland has received a total of 75 binding decisions, of which all but one have been made over the past 15 years.
Sweden, for example, has received a total of 22 court judgments, Norway 19, Denmark 9 and Iceland just one.
In April, the European Court of Human Rights reprimanded Finland over the eight-year long case of a Helsinki man. The court intends to hear nine Finnish cases concerning questions of freedom of speech.
Finland has, so far, lost three-quarters of its cases before the court.
Well we know that basic freedom of speech is often lacking in this country. Here’s some other human rights concerns in Finland, from Wikipedia…
1. Conscientious objectors to both military and civilian service are jailed for six months. There are about 10-20[citation needed] conscientious objectors every year. Most are in minimum security, open facilities, and objecting is not entered on criminal records.
2. Charges of racist/xenophobic treatment of ethnic minorities by officials, and that refugees are hand-picked by the Ministry of the Interior on basis of country of origin citing “security reasons”.[citation needed]
3. A case in which agitated asylum seekers were drugged, for deportation.[citation needed]
4. Unfair court action in the light of the verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights.[citation needed]* Handling time has been unacceptably long particularly in civil cases or criminal court cases relating to bankruptcy, e.g. eight years in the court of first instance and 12 years in total
