The Constitutional Law Commission has approved the government’s proposal to block asylum seekers at the Finnish border. A decision that Anna Liisa Kontula and Fatim Diarra vigorously contest. For them, this cannot be accepted as an exceptional law. These two Finnish politicians believe that the government’s proposal is in blatant contradiction with the absolute ban on refoulement, the right to life, the ban on torture, the ban on mass expulsions, legal protection and the right to legal recourse effective, as well as the right to asylum.
Left Alliance MP Anna Kontula and Fatim Diarra from the Greens parliamentary group believe that the Constitutional Law Commission’s opinion is historic in many respects.
“It is unprecedented for the government to suggest that Finland is knowingly violating human rights treaties. The Constitutional Law Commission, for its part, approves a law with its opinion which, on the basis of expert opinions it heard, should not be acceptable”, the Finnish Green Party Vihreät – De Gröna wrote on its website.
This proposal violates, according to them, these human rights obligations, from which derogations are under no circumstances authorized. The emergency law procedure does not resolve the conflict with human rights treaties.
“Based on expert consultations, there is no ambiguity or room for interpretation as to the extent to which the proposal conflicts with human rights treaties. The message from many experts was particularly clear and coherent to the extent that such a proposal should not be accepted in a rule of law,” they said in their press release.
Kontula and Diarra ask that among other things, the proposal which violates the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) and the United Nations Refugee Convention (1951) also be considered in a historical perspective. Because the modern human rights system was created after World War II in a situation where the horrors of war, unprecedented displacement and treatment of refugees were still fresh in people’s minds.
“Those who lived through war understood that the judgment of politicians can be seriously flawed and that it is necessary to set limits beyond which national decision-making must not be crossed. At the same time, the system of human rights is the most important message of past generations to the decision-makers of our time. Now let’s move on to the oldest and most established part of this system,” they concluded.
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