Finland must protect itself against hostile information campaigns by combatting misleading narratives. At the same time, it must also do so in a way that does not infringe on Finnish citizens’ legitimate right to freedom of expression. 

Hostile information campaigns and free expression

Hostile information activities, such as deliberate spreading of false information and conspiracy theories, aim to destabilize and weaken states. Campaigns target democratic institutions and processes through activities such as election interference and messages that aim to reduce trust in government.

The term “� describes deliberately shared false or misleading information, while misinformation is used to refer to false or misleading information that is shared without harmful intent. As explains, even technically true information can easily be presented in a way that conveys messages that are false and harmful.

The threat is well-known. The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service Russia and China as currently posing the most significant threat when it comes to state-sponsored influencing operations. are preparing themselves. The country hosts the European of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, created in 2017 by the European Union, NATO and nine states including the US and Finland.

The threat is greater now than ever. The growing capabilities and availability of have opened up new possibilities on an entirely new scale for hostile actors.

Responding to hostile information campaigns is challenging and includes the risk of response measures impacting freedom of expression. For example, the EU’s to stop Russia Today, Sputnik and later other Russian media outlets from distributing content within the EU raised about state censorship of media.

A new government in crisis creates more risks

¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s April 2023 elections led to the formation of a new government. It has been facing difficulties that could provide more opportunities for hostile influencing activities.

The new government includes the anti-immigrant Finns Party, which successfully captured of the vote. The Finns Party has been beset by racism scandals. The party’s leader, Minister of Finance Riikka Purra, has been embroiled in trying to explain why her blog contains extraordinarily statements. Economic Affairs Minister Vilhem Junnila following revelations about questionable “jokes� and his 2019 speech at a rally that included neo-Nazi organizations. Wille Rydman, his replacement, has had to defend his own extremely.

The situation has led to calls for resignations and criticism of the prime minister and the parties that were willing to join with the Finns Party as a partner. It has sparked much-needed debate about overt and covert racism in politics.

The Finns Party often presents itself as a defender of free speech. As a consequence, some voters have begun to think of free speech as a right-wing, anti-immigrant agenda, rather than a right that belongs equally to all Finns. The debacle may provide fertile ground for bad actors interested in deepening societal conflicts and undermining trust in democratic institutions.

The framing of debates about free expression

Public debates tend to be dominated by headline-grabbing media stories about and from extreme ends of the spectrum. Stories and debates focus on issues such as hateful speech, provocative statements, victims and villains. Strong disagreements feature heavily. This environment makes it easy for hostile actors, agents provocateurs and to drive disagreement and deepen divisions in society. Well-meaning ordinary citizens may end up playing along with a hostile influencing agenda that hides behind a debate about free expression.

What gets lost in the debate is that freedom of expression is itself an essential component of national security. We must not attack freedom of expression out of a desire to attack disinformation. Free speech is a democratic right and benefits all citizens, not just those on the extremes who tend to dominate public attention.

The right to freedom of expression is fundamental for democracy. It protects the public debates and expressions of diverse opinions that are essential for democracies to function. But it also provides opportunities for hostile actors to influence and distort societal debates.

Finland is party to the European on Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression. The convention allows states to restrict free expression only if certain conditions are met. The restrictions need to be based on law, and they must be for one of the purposes mentioned in the convention—for example, national security or protecting the rights of others. The restrictions must be “necessary in a democratic society� (Article 10).

In 1976 the European Court of Human Rights considered the right to freedom of expression in the of Handyside v. the United Kingdom. The court found that the “necessary in a democratic society� requirement implies that freedom of expression applies not only to expressions “regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.� The court added, “Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no ‘democratic society’.�

The case is a reminder of how essential freedom of expression is for democracy. Safeguarding freedom of expression is part of national security, not opposed to it.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

The post Hostile Information Campaigns, Democracy and Free Expression in Finland appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

In the context of the not-so-cold war between the US, NATO and Russia, any of these borders is a potentially dangerous flashpoint that could trigger a new crisis, or even a world war. But a key difference with the Finnish border is that it comes within about 100 miles of Severomorsk, where Russia’s and 13 of its 23 nuclear-armed submarines are based. This could well be where World War III will begin, if it has not already started in Ukraine.

In Europe today, only Switzerland, Austria, Ireland and a handful of other small countries remain outside NATO. For 75 years, Finland was a model of successful neutrality, but it is far from demilitarized. Like Switzerland, it has a large, and young Finns are required to perform at least six months of military training after they turn 18. Its active and reserve military forces make up over 4% of the population – compared with only 0.6% in the US and 83% of Finns say they would take part in armed resistance if Finland were invaded.

Russian invasion made Finland more pro-NATO

Only 20-30% of Finns have historically supported joining NATO, while the majority have consistently and proudly supported its policy of neutrality. In late 2021, a Finnish measured popular support for NATO membership at 26%. But after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that to 60% within weeks and, by November 2022, 78% of Finns said they joining NATO.

As in the US and other NATO countries, ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s political leaders have been more pro-NATO than the general public. Despite long-standing public support for neutrality, Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1997. Its government sent 200 troops to Afghanistan as part of the UN-authorized International Security Assistance Force after the 2001 US invasion, and they remained there after NATO took command of this force in 2003. Finnish troops did not leave Afghanistan until all Western forces withdrew in 2021, after a total of 2,500 Finnish troops and 140 civilian officials had been deployed there, and two Finns had been.

A December 2022 of ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s role in Afghanistan by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs found that the Finnish troops “repeatedly engaged in combat as part of the military operation that was now led by NATO and had become a party in the conflict,â€� and that ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s proclaimed objective, which was “to stabilize and support Afghanistan to enhance international peace and securityâ€� was outweighed by “its desire to maintain and strengthen its foreign and security policy relations with the US and other international partners, as well as its effort to deepen its collaboration with NATO.â€�

In other words, like other small NATO-allied countries, Finland was unable, in the midst of an escalating war, to uphold its own priorities and values, and instead allowed its desire “to deepen its collaboration� with the US and NATO to take precedence over its original aim of trying to help the people of Afghanistan to recover peace and stability. As a result of these confused and conflicting priorities, Finnish forces were drawn into the pattern of reflexive escalation and use of overwhelming destructive force that have characterized US military operations in all its recent wars.

As a small new NATO member, Finland will be just as impotent as it was in Afghanistan to affect the momentum of the NATO war machine’s rising conflict with Russia. Finland will find that its tragic choice to abandon a policy of neutrality that brought it 75 years of peace and look to NATO for protection will leave it, like Ukraine, dangerously exposed on the front lines of a war directed from Moscow, Washington and Brussels that it can neither win, nor independently resolve, nor prevent from escalating into World War III.

¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s success as a neutral and liberal democratic country during and since the Cold War has created a popular culture in which the public are more trusting of their leaders and representatives than people in most Western countries, and less likely to question the wisdom of their decisions. So the near unanimity of the political class to join NATO in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine faced little public opposition. In May 2022, ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s parliament joining NATO by an overwhelming 188 votes to eight.

The problematic nature of NATO membership

But why have ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s political leaders been so keen to “strengthen its foreign and security policy relations with the US and other international partners,â€� as the Finland in Afghanistan report said? As an independent, neutral, but strongly armed military nation, Finland already meets the NATO goal of spending 2% of its GDP on the military. It also has a substantial arms industry, which builds its own modern warships, artillery, assault rifles and other weapons. 

NATO membership will integrate ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s arms industry into NATO’s lucrative arms market, boosting sales of Finnish weapons, while also providing a context to buy more of the latest US and allied weaponry for its own military and to collaborate on joint weapons projects with firms in larger NATO countries. With NATO military budgets increasing, and likely to keep increasing, ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s government clearly faces pressures from the arms industry and other interests. In effect, its own small military-industrial complex doesn’t want to be left out.

Since it began its NATO accession, Finland has already $10 billion to buy American F-35 fighters to replace its three squadrons of F-18s. It has also been taking bids for new missile defense systems, and is reportedly trying to choose between the Indian-Israeli Barak 8 surface-to-air missile system and the US-Israeli David’s Sling system, built by Israel’s Raphael and the US’s Raytheon.

Finnish law prohibits the country from possessing nuclear weapons or allowing them in the country, unlike the five NATO countries that store of US nuclear weapons on their soil – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Turkey. But Finland submitted its NATO accession documents without the exceptions that Denmark and Norway have insisted on to allow them to prohibit nuclear weapons. This leaves ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s nuclear posture uniquely, despite President Sauli Niinistö’s that “Finland has no intention of bringing nuclear weapons onto our soil.â€�

The lack of discussion about the implications of Finland joining an explicitly nuclear military alliance is troubling, and has been to an overly hasty accession process in the context of the war in Ukraine, as well as to ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s tradition of unquestioning popular trust in its national government. 

Perhaps most regrettable is that ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s membership in NATO marks the end of the nation’s admirable tradition as a global peacemaker. Former Finnish President Urho Kekkonen, an of the policy of cooperation with the neighboring Soviet Union and a champion of world peace, helped craft the Helsinki Accords, a historic agreement signed in 1975 by the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada and every European nation (except Albania) to improve detente between the Soviet Union and the West. 

Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari continued the peacemaking tradition and was the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 for his critical efforts to resolve international conflicts from Namibia to Aceh in Indonesia to Kosovo (which was bombed by NATO). 

Speaking at the UN in September 2021, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö seemed anxious to follow this legacy. “A willingness of adversaries and competitors to engage in dialogue, to build trust, and to seek common denominators – that was the essence of the Helsinki Spirit. It is precisely that kind of a spirit that the entire world, and the United Nations, urgently needs,â€� he. “I am convinced that the more we speak about the Helsinki Spirit, the closer we get to rekindling it – and to making it come true.“ 

Of course, it was Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine that drove Finland to abandon the “Helsinki Spirit� in favor of joining NATO. But if Finland had resisted the pressures on it to rush into NATO membership, it could instead now be joining the “� being formed by Brazilian President Lula to revive negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Sadly for Finland and the world, it looks like the Helsinki Spirit will have to move forward without Helsinki.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

The post Peacemaker Finland Is Now Part of Nuclear NATO appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 changed the security context. As a consequence, in May 2022 Finlandapplied for , as did its Nordic neighbor Sweden.

In another historical change, Finland broke with its policy of not exporting weapons to countries at war and has repeatedly sent to Ukraine, including heavy artillery and munitions. Most recently, Finlandalso agreed to send to Ukraine.

It is against this background that parliament, in July 2022, adopted changes to the Emergency Powers Act and the Border Guard Act, and these actions should set warning bells ringing across Europe.

While Finland needed to respond to a radically changed security context, the hasty legislative changes hollowed out the constitution and raised questions about ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s commitment to the rule of law and its human rights obligations.

Hybrid threats among ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s top priorities

Hybrid threats are among ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s priorities relating to its.

The Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats hybrid threats as actions by state or non-state actors that aim to undermine or harm a country by influencing decision-making at the local, regional, state, or institutional level. These actions deliberately target democratic states’ and institutions’ vulnerabilities.

Hybrid threats can, for example, involve influencing campaigns, cyber attacks, various forms of sabotage, or instrumentalizing migrant and refugee flows, which is an egregious way of using people in often desperate situations.

In 2015 Finland received 32,476 asylum seekers,a record for the country. That year large numbers of refugees arrived in European countries, in particular from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Their arrival in Finlandsparked about multiculturalism, integration, and values perceived as non-Finnish.

Emergency Powers Act no longer protects constitutional or human rights

The legislative changes to the Emergency Powers Act adopted in July 2022 focus on these hybrid threats, in particular the possibility of large flows of asylum seekers or immigrants being directed to ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s border by Russia.

To be able to respond to such a situation, parliament chose in haste to amend the Emergency Powers Act instead of addressing the issue through the section of the constitution that deals with fundamental rights during states of emergency and that defines the circumstances in which exceptions can be made.

The changes to the Act were adopted in a hurried package deal that required a compromise with the opposition parties. This included controversial and legally questionable changes to the Border Security Act such as allowing the closing of border crossing points in unclearly defined circumstances.

Writing in leading constitutional and human rights expert Martin Scheinin argued persuasively that following the changes to the Emergency Powers Act the constitution no longer provides protection for constitutional rights or human rights against a supermajority in parliament.

In Scheinin’s words, section 23 of the constitution, which addresses rights during states of emergency, “… was in fact deconstitutionalized� because of the manner in which parliament chose to make changes to the Act.

Border Guard Act changes put in question international human rights obligations

As part of the package deal that allowed the government to obtain the majority required to push through its changes, the Border Guard Act was amended in a way that appeased the anti-immigration opposition.

These changes raise serious questions about ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s ability and willingness to comply with its international human rights obligations.

The amended Border Guard Act allows the government to centralize applications for international protection to one or more border crossing points. Expecting asylum seekers who arrive at ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s more than 800-mile-long border to make their way to one designated location to apply for international protection could easily make an application impossible.

The circumstances in which the government can decide to centralize applications for asylum are not clearly defined. Scheinin points out that according to the wording of section 16 of the Border Guard Act, the provision could be triggered by, for example, a large sporting event in Finland that attracts many foreign visitors just as it could be triggered, for another example, by a future genocide in Russia.

Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, several concerns about the changes in a to ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s Minister of the Interior, including concerns that the changes could prevent individuals from applying for asylum.

Mijatović also highlighted the situation of people fleeing Russia via the Finnish border, and this includes people who might be persecuted on grounds related to their opposition to the war in Ukraine, their sexual orientation or gender identity, or their work on human rights. She emphasized the need to pay specific attention to these groups, which she pointed out could be particularly affected.

New 2023 parliament should review the Emergency Powers Act

will take place in Finland in early April. The new parliament could choose to continue to review the entire Emergency Powers Act, currently under way and expected to conclude in 2025, to begin repairing the damage caused by the changes made in 2022. The new parliament should not allow the changes from 2022 to remain in their current form and should ensure that future changes comply fully with ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s international human rights obligations.

As Scheinin points out in his article for , part of the aim of the legislative changes in 2022 was to signal ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s determination to protect its population against external threats.

It could be argued that the way in which the changes were made sent another signal: It takes very little to weaken the rule of law in Finland. It will be up to the new parliament and government to decide if that is to be a lasting message.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

The post Finland’s New Laws to Boost Security Erode Rule of Law appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The theoretical foundations were pioneered by philosophers and psychologists, with major contributions from Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. They produced a philosophy of education generally referred to as “constructivism.� Its fundamental premise is that knowledge is holistic, meaning it is constructed non-linearly through the accumulation of varied and interconnected learning experiences. It opposes the standard linear approach practiced everywhere that breaks the process of learning down into the mechanical presentation and assimilation of formally defined facts, rules and principles.

sums up the major principles that underlie ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s vision for educational efficacy.

• Cooperation trumps competition.
• Teaching is a profession respected in the community.
• Research on learning trumps political reasoning.
• Experimentation and diversity of teaching styles are encouraged.
• Playtime is a valuable and necessary part of the learning experience.
• Homework is banned to avoid distorting the emergence of knowledge.
• High-quality pre-school focuses on the preconditions for active, cooperative learning.

Finland is of course a small country of 5.5 million people on the northern edge of Europe. Recently, reformers in many nations have made desultory attempts at applying ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s success story to their own educational environments. The quest has been elusive, for a number of cultural and political reasons. One American commentator, for example, that “Finland’s educational system was driven by a culture that supports a strong social contract,â€� something absent in US culture. An even stronger argument is that the educational systems of other nations, with much larger populations, are so entrenched politically and economically that reforming them is a challenge beyond the capacity of their governments.

reports an initiative in India with the potential to presage a massive cultural revolution. “Schools offering activity-based learning over textbook-based education,� the article affirms, “are emerging across India.� The article describes a process that represents “a sharp break from the doctrinaire approach that has long dominated Indian education.�

How is it then that India, with the largest student in the world (an estimated 315 million), appears to be moving towards adopting the Finnish philosophy? 

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European education was once organized around the humanistic principle of “the liberal arts.â€� With the advent of the industrial revolution that transformed European and ultimately the global economy, education moved its focus to the concept of mechanically acquired, compartmentalized knowledge definitively breaking with the more holistic notion of learning conceived as the mastery of multiple arts. 

In 1835, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, an Englishman intent on establishing order in his nation’s colony in South Asia, began his campaign to the idea of education in India in a way that would be consistent with the goals of the colony’s new masters. England’s imperial industrial economy had evolved into a tool of global domination. It was time for “civilizationâ€� to displace India’s culturally-rooted of “gurus and their shishyasâ€� who “lived together helping each other in day-to-day life.â€� 

Over the past two centuries, Indians have learned to accept and replicate an alien education system built by the British. The recent embrace of Finnish educational philosophy may signal a revolution for education but, paradoxically, also a return to at least the spirit of ancient Indian traditions.

All revolutions encounter resistance. Al Jazeera quotes Pia Jormanainen, a founder of the Finnish school now collaborating with the Indians: “We’ve had schools ask us to craft the syllabus for their teachers. That’s fundamentally against our approach.â€� Bad habits are always difficult to change. 

°Õ´Ç»å²¹²â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Syllabus:

A body of formalized knowledge presented as the sum of all useful information, specifically designed to impose a restricted view of the world consistent with the goals of a ruling elite

Contextual note

Collaboration as opposed to competition plays out even at the level of the composition of teaching staff for the Indian schools adopting the Finnish approach. “At Finland International School, every class will have two trained teachers — one Finnish, the other Indian — and an assistant. The aim is “to deliver the best of the Finnish model in an Indian context.�

The article emphasizes the obvious fact that, for the moment, the adoption and experimentation of Finnish principles of education is limited to private schools. This has led to concern “that Indian private schools — mostly catering to children from privileged backgrounds — will not be able to ensure equal access to quality education and teaching, a foundational principle of ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s public school-based model.â€� But institutions such as the Jain Heritage School and Nordic High International have not only adopted and successfully applied the Finnish approach, they have been investing in the teacher training required to make the system work and spread. An Indian company, Finland Education Hub provides this definition of its: “to create meaningful improvement in India’s school education system by embedding the best educational practices from Finland.â€� 

The real question is whether a significant portion of the population, with no access to expensive private schools, can eventually benefit from the effort now being made. “The education minister of Kerala, arguably home to India’s best government-run schools,â€� Al Jazeera reports, “announced earlier this month that the state would partner with Finland on teacher training, curriculum reforms and classroom technology.â€� The population of Kerala is 35 million, seven times larger than ¹ó¾±²Ô±ô²¹²Ô»å’s.

India’s educational needs are massive. Successful educational methods will be the key to India’s future geopolitical positioning, notably with regard to China. Kerala’s experimentation could provide a model for other states in India. The fact that many of the principles of Finnish education resonate with pre-colonial traditions of India provides some hope that India may finally break free from some of the remaining constraints imposed by a stultifying British administrative system that aimed at competitive domination and focused on stifling both personal and collective creativity as well as all forms of spontaneous collaboration (which the British tended to identify with “mutiny� and “revolt�).

Historical note

In 1835, as a member of Parliament, Lord Macaulay, after a visit to India, set himself the task of restructuring Indian education to bring it up to modern civilized standards. In his famous “Minuteâ€� he clearly his vision of the role of education as restructured by the British. “We must do our best,â€� he encouraged Parliament, “to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect.”

19^th century India inherited a caste system that established rigid hierarchies within Indian society. Macaulay believed that, under the British Empire, India, like England, deserved a class system. The British colonists tended to be respectful of collaborating local elites, routinely mobilizing their authority for their own economic and military ends. Macaulay was proposing the creation of a class of cultural go-betweens, who would populate an administration destined to govern the mass of laborers producing wealth for the empire. This educated elite would have the benefit of understanding the culture of the illiterate masses but personally identify with the superior European culture that sought to educate them and reward them for their docility.

Most reasonable people today would critique this as an unhealthy, inhuman approach to both education and government. But it represented the deepest logic of an economic empire. Nearly 200 years later, it has left deep traces in Indian society, whose wealthier classes even today identify strongly with Western models of education, despite the fact that education in the West has become crassly commercial and superficial.

One might critique the fascination with the Finnish model as just another case of India’s sense of inferiority that pushes it to seek solutions spawned in Europe. But in many ways this is just the opposite. The Finns have no interest in creating an empire, even a merely educational empire. Finland has produced a model of education that boldly contradicts the dominant philosophy and practices of the industrial West. One Finnish professor quoted in Al Jazeera’s article “worries that the commercialisation of his country’s schooling approach ‘can hurt the image of Finnish education.’� They appear to resemble Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Clerk of Oxenford� in the Canterbury Tales, about whom we learn that “gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche� (“gladly would he learn and gladly teach�). Learning can after all be fun rather than painful.

The Finnish constructivist approach to education, at its core, has many things in common with the oldest traditions in India. It is holistic and draws its energy from human contact and the spirit of seeking to understand rather than being forcefully taught what others consider it convenient to know. In the West, education has become dominated by the rule of managerial efficiency explicitly promulgated by institutions such as the Gates Foundation that had a powerful influence over US education policy under the presidency of Barack Obama. Its goal, widely accepted by the political elite in the US,  is standardized knowledge, standardized testing and homogenized but deeply competitive culture. It is a form of education designed to turn successful students into useful and malleable actors in the capitalist economy. It is Macaulay’s system for India perfected thanks to the discovery and elaboration of the rules of scientific management.

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The remaining question for India is a difficult one for a nation with a huge percentage of the population living in poverty. Can it afford to make the investment in something that truly bridges the best in both Indian and Western culture and may provide the ultimate key to general prosperity?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51³Ô¹Ï Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

The post India Looks to Finland for an Effective Educational Model appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The case concerns a series of investigative articles about a military intelligence research center operated by the Finnish defense forces. If found guilty, the journalists face up to four years in prison, with a minimum sentence of four months.

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Despite Finland’s status as a leading example for freedom of the press, it has not been , particularly with targeted of journalists. However, the case against Helsingin Sanomat’s journalists has opened up an entirely new front for defenders of press freedom. It has also raised uncomfortable issues from Finland’s past, which the country is still grappling with.

A Small Country With a Large Neighbor

Finland, with a population of 5.5 million, shares a border of more than 800 miles with Russia and its population of more than 144 million. For Finnish leaders, this has meant taking a realist approach to foreign policy. In particular, the  of 1939-40, when Finland resisted an attack by the Soviet Union, is one of the defining events in the country’s history.

The decades that followed World War II were challenging for Finland, a small country ravaged by war. Maintaining good relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was a necessity. Finland successfully avoided Soviet occupation and remained a democracy, but it paid the price in the form of “,â€� which meant strict political neutrality and not challenging the influence of the Soviet Union.

Finland’s national security is founded on conscription, a trained reserve, defense of the entire country and a willingness to defend it from attack. The aim is to make it an unappealing target for a would-be aggressor state.

A recent  to renew Finland’s aging fleet of Hornets with 64 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighter jets, popular with NATO countries, forms part of the strategy. Maintaining good international relations and participating in international military crisis management are other key elements. Finland is not a member of NATO, but it joined the European Union in 1995. Polls that support for NATO membership has grown significantly following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Prosecution Before Publication

The case against the three journalists was triggered by an article that Helsingin Sanomat published in 2017. Legislative changes that aimed to extend the information-gathering powers of the security services were underway at the time. The newspaper’s representatives have argued that there were strong public interest reasons for publishing the story.

The police investigation included a raid on one journalist’s home and left them stuck in limbo for four years. The decision to prosecute, announced in late October 2021, concerns the article published five years ago and material for a series of unpublished articles. The prosecution based on unpublished material has understandably raised concerns.

There are currently limited facts available about the basis for the prosecution or the details of the case, but more information is expected to become public at a later stage. Based on the available information, it appears likely that one of the central questions in the case will hinge on when an investigative journalist’s research potentially crosses the line into an attempt to disclose state secrets.

The Finnish Union of Journalists has strong concerns about the case, pointing out that it could set a precedent and mean that a journalist’s unpublished notes might result in a conviction. The union and the Council for Mass Media, the independent media regulator, have for openness in the legal proceedings.

While not taking a position on the case, the council has expressed concerns that it could result in restrictions on freedom of expression on grounds that may remain secret. The council has emphasized the need for clarity about the circumstances in which considering material for publication or finalizing material, without actually publishing it, could constitute a crime.

The issues raised by the Council for Mass Media include concerns about the risk of self-censorship. This is a sensitive historical issue, as the era of “Finlandizationâ€� included heavy self-censorship in the media and in publishing. Writing about the case for  academic scholars Anu Koivunen and Johanna Vuorelma warn against the risk of a return to a Cold War-era media environment, where every decision to publish was assessed from a security perspective.

Welcome to the Land of Free Press

In 2018, hundreds of commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat famously greeted Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on their visit to Helsinki with messages such as, “Mr. President, welcome to the land of free press.â€� The case against Helsingin Sanomat’s journalists may test whether Finland still is that land of a free press.

Whatever the outcome of the case, it has given Finland, the world’s country, cause for serious self-reflection.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

The post The State of Press Freedom in Finland appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.