Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered outside the Finnish parliament to demand that Finland stop committing human rights violations against the Sámi people. Sámi rights belong to the Sámi people. Finland must pass the Sámi Parliament act reform! #Saamelaiskäräjälaki

Firstly, what is the Sámi Parliament Act? It is a piece of legislation which sets out how the Finnish government interacts with the Sámi Parliament on matters that affect Sámi people.

The current Sámi Parliament Act violates the human rights of the Sámi. The Act restricts and violates the Sámi people's right to self-determination, which includes the Sámi Parliament's decision-making powers in matters concerning the Sámi people, such as who is Sámi.

In 2015, Finland’s Supreme Administrative Court allowed non-Sámi persons into the parliament of the Sámi against the will of the Sámi Parliament. The Sámi Parliament considers that the court’s ruling violates the rights of the Sámi people.

The law would improve other things, such as the facilitation of Sámi's voting practices. In the current outdated law, voting in Sámi district elections takes place by mail, which means many people have to drive hundreds of kilometers in order to vote.

The Sámi region is subjected to many land use pressures, such as mining, tourism and deforestation without the consent of the Sámi people. The law reform would allow for democratic negotiations about plans that affect the Sámi people.

In the last years, the UN has criticised Finland multiple times for the ways in which it treats the Sámi people and this year a UN committee found that Finland violated the international human rights convention on racial discrimiation concerning the rights of the Sámi.

A draft to reform the Sámi Parliament Act to prevent future rights violations, adopted by the Sámi Parliament, was finished in 2021. The proposal would fundamentally reform the law, correcting the sections that have led to human rights violations.

The Centre Party is opposing this bill and calls for a ‘compromise’ that overrides the right of self-determination of the Sámi people in regard to Sámi identity and inclusion in the electoral roll. On top of this, the Centre party are spreading racist misinformation.

Finland must pass this reform, the world views Finland as a progressive country, but overlooks many negative aspects such as the human rights violations they commit. If Finland wants to be truer to this image, then the Sámi Parliament Act must be reformed.

If you would like to know more about this, I would recommend you listen to Sámi people themselves, I am unsure who to tag on Mastadon, but I have written about this topic on other social media platforms and have tagged people to follow on there for instance.

#HumanRights #Indigenous #Protest

Autistic burnout can be much more than simply being exhausted. It can include feeling overwhelmed or having constant anxiety.😞

You may find your special interests are no longer appealing or that you feel irritable all the time.😒

Have you experienced burnout?

#AskingAutistics #ActuallyAutistic

Automattic is one of the most important companies on the Internet.

They make Tumblr, WooCommerce, Akismet, LongReads, WordPress—among others.

WordPress alone powers ~44% of the world's websites.

More interesting: despite being such a large, dominant company, few people hate Automattic.

Why is this? 🧵

I see that @[email protected] has made it to Mastodon. I have suspended it from religion.masto.host, and will suspend any other content scraping bots I become aware of.

Thread readers scrape content without the consent of the creator, move it to a website outside of the creator's control, and sometimes monetise it, as discussed here:

https://twitter.com/erynnbrook/status/1099086911463800832