The Case of Anton

Paavo Salonen

Anton is a five-year-old kid who disappeared from his home in the beginning of April 2008. From the beginning his dad suspected that Anton’s mom, who is Estonian-Russian, took him and transported Anton to Russia. Two months later Anton’s dad found his son from Nizhny Novgorod and was hopeful that he would get Anton back to Finland. However, it took over 12 months before Anton’s dad Paavo Salonen finally got him back.

Probably you are wondering what this has to do with politics? Before Thursday 14th of May 2009 it created some arguments between Russia and Finland but from the point of view of politics yesterday the case raised to a new spheres.

In this morning newspapers like Helsingin Sanomat, Iltalehti and Iltasanomat released news about Anton’s transport back to Finland. First the information was that Anton’s dad travelled over the Russian border with Anton but few hours later the newspapers got new information and that changed the nature of the case for good; It wasn’t Paavo Salonen who travelled over the boarder with Anton, it was a employee of Finland’s headconsulate in St.Petersburg.

Anton Salonen

This information started a political game with this case. Alexander Stubb, The Foreign Minister of Finland, announced the following thing for Helsingin Sanomat: ”The Finnish dad had a right to retrieve his son back from Russia.” Few hours later the Foreign Ministry of Finland confirmed to Iltalehti that an employee of Finland’s head consulate in St.Petersburg brought Anton to Finland. Russia had its own opinion about this case and Sergei Lavrov, the Prime Minister of Russia, discussed with Stubb yesterday on a phone. Lavrov said that the action of the employee of Finland’s head consulate was against Russian law and this makes him/her a criminal in Russia.

Alexander Stubb

Also webpage RussiaToday published news about the conclusion of the case;
”Moscow has filed a formal complaint to Helsinki after Finland's consulate general in St. Petersburg helped a Finnish citizen take his son out of Russia against both the will of his Russian mother and the law. The Finnish Embassy in Russia has confirmed that the incident took place.”

So the heat is still on with this thing but probably Anton will stay in Finland, since his mother is warranted in EU countries on child kidnapping. During this day there has been a lot of talk in Finland that did the Finnish Embassy the right decision with this episode. My opinion is that they absolutely made the right decision, since we are talking about kidnapping and because Russia haven’t accepted the Haag treaty against child kidnapping this was the only choice. Finland also announced that the employee would be transferred to other tasks, since it is impossible to continue his/her employment contract after this episode. Like I said the heat is still on and it’s interesting to see if this case will create discussion among candidates of the European Parliament, since it's only two and a half weeks before election date.

Finnish Government Built a Brothel to Afghanistan?

On March I wrote how our President Tarja Halonen wants to increase the aid help for the undeveloped countries and especially concentrate the aid help on women’s rights and equality issues.

The Finnish government built a new prison to Afghanistan for women, where they could learn some new skills and practice a small business by selling handicrafts to outside of prison. Since most of the women were convicted for adultery (including rape victims) the intention of this prison was good: to educate them and give them a new start in life.

Unfortunately there have been rumors that the prison guards misused their power and prison have been working as a brothel. This has been in media for two days now and according to the latest information the prison staff has been expelled, but the government of Afghanistan refuses to comment about this issue.

“This is a very deplorable case” said Foreign Minister Stubb. He told to Helsingin Sanomat that Finland tries to fix the situation in that prison, but other projects in Afghanistan are now finished and the aid money will go somewhere else.

The Latest Survey About The European Parliament Candidates In Finland

In my last post I wrote about The European Parliament elections in Finland and how people sees that. Today Helsingin Sanomat, which is probably the most appreciated daily newspaper in Finland, published the results of a survey about the popularity of different candidates. The newspaper interviewed a thousand Finnish people and the results weren't very surprising; the first place went to Timo Soini and he has publicly announced that if he gets elected he will go to the European Parliament, because he wants to criticize EU. Second and third place went to experienced politicians Heidi Hautala and Ville Itälä. Hautala is best known from her critical attitude towards Russia and Itälä is currently a Member Of European Parliament.

                                                           Heidi Hautala

What comes to the celebrity candidates in Finland it looks like no one is going to get a place in the European Parliament. The only exception is pastor Mitro Repo but he has got into troubles with church, because the opinion of Orthodox Church is that a member of the priesthood can't take part to politics. Other celebrity candidates like journalist Johanna Korhonen, former running star Johanna Manninen and former swimming star Jani Sievinen would get only a few percentages of votes.

                                                                                  Johanna Manninen

So it’s about one month before the election date in Finland and the final candidate lists are ready.  The final number of candidates in Finland is 241 and only 13 of those get elected. Like the survey indicates people who have experience in the field of politics have much better chances to get elected than the celebrity candidates who just decided that it would be great to be a MEP. It will be interesting to see the final results.