I am new the the list and fairly new to wikidata.
Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask for help.

The following SPARQL query does not return Finland:

SELECT ?country ?countryLabel
{
  ?country wdt:P31 wd:Q6256 .
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en" }
}
ORDER BY ASC(?countryLabel)

This is despite Finland being an instance (P31) of country (Q6256): https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33

Have I got something wrong?

Many thanks,
AJP

p.s. this query gets a list of countries the exist on cities but not as entities being an instance of country.  Though actually most of them do have "instance of" country.

SELECT ?country ?countryLabel {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]" }
  {
    SELECT ?country WHERE {
      {
        ?city wdt:P31 wd:Q515 .
        ?city wdt:P17 ?country .
      }
      MINUS
      {
        ?country wdt:P31 wd:Q6256 .
      }
    } GROUP BY ?country
  }
} ORDER BY ?countryLabel