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Cake day: June 26th, 2023

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  • For me, I also served my full time in the Finnish army because I was a coward. Back then, in the year 2000, they still put you in actual prison. (Well, minimum security one where convicts are allowed to work and study outside the facility on weekdays, but still prison). But even bigger deterrent than that was the lie that future employer would not hire you if you did not go through military service. That was a complete lie, it is actually illegal for them to ask about your service, and I haven’t included my military service record voluntarily either in my CV since the early 2000s and nobody has cared. And there is also a law which dictates that if you are sentenced as conscientious objector (“totaalikieltäytyminen”), that does not go to your criminal record, so that stays clean as well.

    But why I was contemplating refusing military service, and civilian service too, was and is completely ideological. I do wish to protect and fight for the good things in this country (democracy, civil liberties, equality) against outside invader (which would obviously be Russia, and they have none of those things), but the fact that conscription is forced labour without pay just doesn’t fit right with me. It’s basically slavery, and that should be opposed, always, everywhere.


  • Well at least here in Finland, where we also have conscription, you go to a normal prison and serve six months (or at least it used to be 6months, the same as the shortest conscription time).

    That hasn’t been the case for ages in Finland. These days you get 6 months of “house arrest” if you refuse conscription. Electronic tagging that is. You are allowed to leave your house to go to the grocery store, to work or to study etc at predetermined and agreed upon times.