Why weren’t these miscreants and malcontents removed and arrested by by the police?
Oh, but there students, one of the protected species by the government. This kind of stupidity has a long tradition here (unfortunately), the former Finnish FM, Erkki Tuomioja cut his political teeth in the same kind of stunt.
NOTE: No mention by YLE of the illegality of a “takeover”, and you can rest assured that the university staff were all apart of it as well.
Record University of Helsinki building takeover ends
Organisers who occupied the Porthania building say the occupation was the longest university takeover in Finnish history at nine days. Occupiers left the building at 6 pm on Saturday.
Students occupied the Porthania building of the University of Helsinki on September 18 and stayed until 6 pm on Saturday night. The building’s superintendent says the occupation went smoothly throughout.
Organisers say their nine-day stretch, which began after the thousands-strong labour demonstration in and around the Railway Square, is the longest academic occupation in the history of Finland. During their stay – in itself a demonstration against the government’s proposed university cuts – the occupiers organised musical performances and panel discussions.
The organisers say they would support an education system-wide strike as well as extending it to a general strike.
Philosopher Ayn Rand:
Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience may be justifiable, in some cases, when and if an individual disobeys a law in order to bring an issue to court, as a test case. Such an action involves respect for legality and a protest directed only at a particular law which the individual seeks an opportunity to prove to be unjust. The same is true of a group of individuals when and if the risks involved are their own.
But there is no justification, in a civilized society, for the kind of mass civil disobedience that involves the violation of the rights of others—regardless of whether the demonstrators’ goal is good or evil. The end does not justify the means. No one’s rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others. Mass disobedience is an assault on the concept of rights: it is a mob’s defiance of legality as such.
The forcible occupation of another man’s property or the obstruction of a public thoroughfare is so blatant a violation of rights that an attempt to justify it becomes an abrogation of morality. An individual has no right to do a “sit-in” in the home or office of a person he disagrees with—and he does not acquire such a right by joining a gang. Rights are not a matter of numbers—and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
The only power of a mob, as against an individual, is greater muscular strength—i.e., plain, brute physical force. The attempt to solve social problems by means of physical force is what a civilized society is established to prevent. The advocates of mass civil disobedience admit that their purpose is intimidation. A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes—the physical intimidation of some men or groups by others—loses its moral right to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow.
Politically, mass civil disobedience is appropriate only as a prelude to civil war—as the declaration of a total break with a country’s political institutions.
