Falklands to hold sovereignty referendum

[SpaceMarine93]

After much dispute between UK and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, the islanders had finally decided enough and enough, and are holding a referendum to show to the world once and for all where their loyalty lies. From BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18412195

Falkland Islands to hold referendum on sovereignty

COMMENTS (97)

Gavin Short announced the referendum, which visiting UK minister Jeremy Browne welcomedContinue reading the main story
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The Falkland Islands will hold a referendum on its "political status" in a bid to end the dispute with Argentina over the archipelago's sovereignty.

The islands' government made the announcement ahead of the anniversary on marking 30 years since the end of Argentina's 74-day occupation in 1982.

It said it wanted to send a firm message to Argentina that islanders want to remain British.

The UK prime minister said Britain would support the result of the vote.

The referendum will be organised by the Falkland Islands government and will take place in the first half of next year.

'Economic blockade'
The announcement comes amid growing tensions between the UK and Argentina surrounding the anniversary commemorations marking the islands' liberation by British forces on 14 June, 1982.

Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Brown is currently there on an official trip.

Argentina claims sovereignty over the islands it calls the Malvinas, and wants the UK to negotiate over their rule.

Recently, UK ministers have accused Argentina of trying to impose an "economic blockade" on the islands.

The South American country has been turning away cruise ships carrying the British flag and is taking legal action against five British oil firms exploring the coast of the islands.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

We certainly have no desire to be ruled by the government in Buenos Aires”

Gavin Short
Falklands legislative assembly
Gavin Short, chairman of the islands' legislative assembly, said they were holding the referendum "to show the world just how certain we are about it [our future]".

"I have no doubt that the people of the Falklands wish for the islands to remain a self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom.

"We certainly have no desire to be ruled by the government in Buenos Aires, a fact that is immediately obvious to anyone who has visited the islands and heard our views.

"But we are aware that not everybody is able to come to these beautiful islands and to see this reality for themselves.

"And the Argentine government deploys misleading rhetoric that wrongly implies that we have no strong views or even that we are being held hostage by the UK military. This is simply absurd."

'Resolute support'
Prime Minister David Cameron said it was "absolutely right" that the islanders set out how they intended to "make their voices heard once more".

"And Britain will be resolute in supporting their choice," he said.

"Next year's referendum will determine beyond doubt the views of the people of the Falklands. Britain will respect and defend their choice.

"We look to all UN members to live up to their responsibilities under the UN charter and accept the islanders' decision about how they want to live."

Foreign Secretary William Hague said: "I hope very much that Argentina, and indeed the whole of the international community, joins the UK in listening carefully to what they have to say."

The prime minister's official spokesman later confirmed the UK government had been aware of the plans and had been in discussions with the Falklands government before the announcement, but said "it was their decision and we fully support it".

Argentinian president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is due to attend a meeting of the UN's decolonisation committee on Thursday.

The Falkland Islands, a rocky archipelago in the South Atlantic, are 7,780 miles from the UK and 1,140 miles from Buenos Aires.

With the exception of the 1982 occupation by Argentina - which sparked the Falklands War - they have been under British control since 1833.

I wonder how would the Argentinean government going to spin this so they could continue their sovereignty claims?

[Guardsman Bass]

They'll just say that the Falklanders are illegitimate occupiers of Argentine territory, despite having been there for 180+ years (longer than anything west of the Mississippi has been part of the US).

[KlavoHunter]

Didn't they JUST get done doing this the other year? And they all agreed they were British?

[Captain Seafort]

Didn't they JUST get done doing this the other year? And they all agreed they were British?

You might be thinking of Gib - they've had a couple of referenda recently, and the result on both occasions was an emphatic "fuck off" to the Spanish. Unfortunately, neither they nor their South American cousins give a shit about the opinions of the inhabitants of the rocks they want.

[Zaune]

What I want to know is, what will the British government do if a non-trivial percentage of the Falklanders (who we treated pretty shabbily in the run-up to the war, I might add) decide to vote for Argentine sovereignty?

[Irbis]

You know, I'm all for self-determination, but what is (mildly) amusing here is the amount of sheer British hypocrisy. Take the Hong Kong, or offers of giving various bits of the Empire in 1940 - UK offered Northern Ireland to Ireland, Gibraltar to Spain, and a few other places to other countries if only they would join the Allies. All above cases with no referendums whatsoever. Lesson here? UK will hand its territory to a brutal dictatorship without giving two shits about self determination, but goddess forbid actual peaceful democracies negotiating a deal that would suit all concerned, you just can't be British government without showing finger into someone's face

My friend once said 'if UK simply used funds spend on Falklands war to relocate their colonist off Falklands, they could afford to buy each family from there nice château in UK or France, avoid massive bloodshed and remove one hot spot from global map, but sadly keeping obsolete remnant of gone Empire and dick waving is more important' and I sort of agree with him.

[Tiriol]

You know, I'm all for self-determination, but what is (mildly) amusing here is the amount of sheer British hypocrisy. Take the Hong Kong, or offers of giving various bits of the Empire in 1940 - UK offered Northern Ireland to Ireland, Gibraltar to Spain, and a few other places to other countries if only they would join the Allies. All above cases with no referendums whatsoever. Lesson here? UK will hand its territory to a brutal dictatorship without giving two shits about self determination, but goddess forbid actual peaceful democracies negotiating a deal that would suit all concerned, you just can't be British government without showing finger into someone's face

My friend once said 'if UK simply used funds spend on Falklands war to relocate their colonist off Falklands, they could afford to buy each family from there nice château in UK or France, avoid massive bloodshed and remove one hot spot from global map, but sadly keeping obsolete remnant of gone Empire and dick waving is more important' and I sort of agree with him.

The fact that Britain was facing Germany alone and was in a very dire situation doesn't merit any consideration? Or the possibility that people and governments change over the years?

[Simon_Jester]

My friend once said 'if UK simply used funds spend on Falklands war to relocate their colonist off Falklands, they could afford to buy each family from there nice château in UK or France, avoid massive bloodshed and remove one hot spot from global map, but sadly keeping obsolete remnant of gone Empire and dick waving is more important' and I sort of agree with him.

The fundamental question here is: how much money is it worth to spend to keep a place when the people living on it want it kept? How much is territorial integriy worth, if you've actually got it and people want it?

If the answer is "not much," then that opens up a lot of precedents for land grabs, and not just at the expense of former colonial powers.

[Akhlut]

They'll just say that the Falklanders are illegitimate occupiers of Argentine territory, despite having been there for 180+ years (longer than anything west of the Mississippi has been part of the US).

One could make a very decent claim that the grand majority of territory the US is sitting on has been acquired illegitimately, as it was gained through disregarding treaties with sovereign nations, wars of aggression against sovereign nations, and acts of genocide against sovereign nations. It was basically what Hitler did, only slower and against non-European people.

[Alkaloid]

What I want to know is, what will the British government do if a non-trivial percentage of the Falklanders (who we treated pretty shabbily in the run-up to the war, I might add) decide to vote for Argentine sovereignty?

Well, yeah, it's not impossible, but from everything I've ever read it just isn't going to happen. The people living on the Falklands consider themselves British, and want to stay that way. And frankly that doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

My friend once said 'if UK simply used funds spend on Falklands war to relocate their colonist off Falklands, they could afford to buy each family from there nice château in UK or France, avoid massive bloodshed and remove one hot spot from global map, but sadly keeping obsolete remnant of gone Empire and dick waving is more important' and I sort of agree with him.

Yeah. And then the people forcibly removed from their homes, the livelihoods, the communities they have lived in for their entire lives (unless you think you can fit all the people you remove into a job in England that is comparable in terms of salary and skill, all in one roughly Falklands sized area) and the security they feel they are supposed to get from having a government are just going to be perfectly happy.

Stopping things like this happening are one of the reasons governments formed in the first place. They are sometimes onerous, but generally advantageous, and one of the advantages is that if a guy turns up with an army, says he likes where you are living and decides to take it the army you helped pay for will stop it from happening. As soon as a government voluntarily gives away chunks of its country, especially parts inhabited by people who still want to be governed by them not because it can't maintain it or hold it but because it just doesn't want to it looses a lot of its legitimacy. If the Falklands, why not Wales. Or Cheshire. Or London. Maybe someone will offer to buy York one day and you will be out of a home. Good incentive to pay taxes that, or to follow laws or generally play by the rules of being a citizen.

One could make a very decent claim that the grand majority of territory the US is sitting on has been acquired illegitimately, as it was gained through disregarding treaties with sovereign nations, wars of aggression against sovereign nations, and acts of genocide against sovereign nations. It was basically what Hitler did, only slower and against non-European people.

You could make that argument for almost any country in Africa, Australasia, North America, South America (less so) and Asia if you want to talk about invasions, colonialism, and handing back power to people who the rest of the country may or may not consider legitimate governments. Depending on where you want to draw the line there could be people in England who consider themselves citizens of Mercia living under occupation. Frankly what we have now is about as workable as things are ever likely to get given we at least had maps of the whole world when the lines were drawn, so we have something to negotiate from.

[Zaune]

As soon as a government voluntarily gives away chunks of its country, especially parts inhabited by people who still want to be governed by them not because it can't maintain it or hold it but because it just doesn't want to it looses a lot of its legitimacy.

More legitimacy than we lost getting two hundred and sixty of our people killed and seven ships destroyed over a tiny scrap of land that nobody, not even the regime that invaded them, really cared about all that much? National pride... No, that's the wrong word, call it national self-respect, that's all very well, but there has to be a limit.
I don't say we shouldn't have fought to keep the islands in 1982, because that would have entailed handing two thousand people over to a pack of murderous thugs. But now? Well, Argentina's a long way short of perfect democratic representation, but then we've got little enough to brag about in that respect. Certainly they're unlikely to actively mistreat the Falklanders.

[Alkaloid]

Yes, more legitimacy than that. Those people there, they paid taxes, didn't commit treason and participated in elections according to the law on the assumption that their government would, if necessary, fight to defend them, their homes and their property and not just give it to Argentina because it is easier. As soon as the government stops keeping its side of the bargain, the incentive to the citizenry to play their role in the running of the country vanishes. Should the people of the Falklands, through a referendum, choose to leave the UK and join Argentina then fine, there is enough dispute in this case that I can see that flying, but until the the British government has a duty to support those people against foreign aggressors, Argentine, American, Belgian or from Pluto.

[Thanas]

I don't disagree with your overall point but keep in mind that Britain has given away territory with British settlers before (Hong Kong, most of the colonies) and it did not seem to have destroyed the faith of the citizenry.

I think a far better point to argue would be that the situation has been settled by both treaty (between Spain and England) and force and that Argentina lacks a valid claim to the island under both past and current international law.

[Alkaloid]

Yes, but generally when they gave up holdings like that it was because they had to, either because they were trying to wheedle something they really really needed out of the people they were giving things to or because they simply lacked the power or influence to hold them, not just because it was convenient.

I do agree that's the better legal argument to make your side 'right' but it isn't necessarily a good reason why Britain should hold onto the Falklands.

[CJvR]

I wonder how would the Argentinean government going to spin this so they could continue their sovereignty claims?

Same way as before...

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/06/13/fal ... s-position

“This has no value at all since Argentina rejects the possibility of self-determination for an implanted population, such is the implanted British population in the Malvinas”, said Guillermo Carmona, chair of Argentina’s Lower House Foreign Affairs Committee.

[Simon_Jester]

They'll just say that the Falklanders are illegitimate occupiers of Argentine territory, despite having been there for 180+ years (longer than anything west of the Mississippi has been part of the US).

One could make a very decent claim that the grand majority of territory the US is sitting on has been acquired illegitimately, as it was gained through disregarding treaties with sovereign nations, wars of aggression against sovereign nations, and acts of genocide against sovereign nations. It was basically what Hitler did, only slower and against non-European people.

Just to clarify- are you referring to the ownership European powers recognize among themselves, or to the massive violent dispossession of the Native Americans?

As soon as a government voluntarily gives away chunks of its country, especially parts inhabited by people who still want to be governed by them not because it can't maintain it or hold it but because it just doesn't want to it looses a lot of its legitimacy.

More legitimacy than we lost getting two hundred and sixty of our people killed and seven ships destroyed over a tiny scrap of land that nobody, not even the regime that invaded them, really cared about all that much? National pride... No, that's the wrong word, call it national self-respect, that's all very well, but there has to be a limit.

I don't think the British lost that in the Falklands War, for an obvious reason: aggression is not morally equivalent to defense. If the British had started the Falklands War, or prosecuted it against the clear wishes of the people of the Falklands, then I think it would be a discrediting thing. But as it is... honestly, it strikes me as a knee-jerk response, not a thought-out one, to treat it on the same terms we'd treat a British war of aggression.

If a similarly destructive war had been fought between, say, Argentina and Brazil over some scrap of land Brazil had long owned but Argentina coveted, would we even be having this conversation? Or would we take it as a matter of course that the Brazilians have a right to defend their territory against a brute-force invasion attempt, even if the territory in question is a little blob of land on the wrong side of a river or something?

Come to think of it, if the Falklands had been a legally independent (tiny) Commonwealth nation, would we be having this conversation? If they were formally their own (tiny) country, if the Argentines had invaded and conquered the place, and the British had driven them out?

I don't say we shouldn't have fought to keep the islands in 1982, because that would have entailed handing two thousand people over to a pack of murderous thugs. But now? Well, Argentina's a long way short of perfect democratic representation, but then we've got little enough to brag about in that respect. Certainly they're unlikely to actively mistreat the Falklanders.

They're also unlikely to try and seize the islands by force. The main thing Argentina does now is pound on the table and demand that the territory be handed over to them by right of first dibs.

Should their desire be rewarded, whether or not the islanders want to be handed over? If so, how many other countries out there have "pounded table, demanded land" and not gotten what they rightly deserve yet?

Yes, but generally when they gave up holdings like that it was because they had to, either because they were trying to wheedle something they really really needed out of the people they were giving things to or because they simply lacked the power or influence to hold them, not just because it was convenient.

I do agree that's the better legal argument to make your side 'right' but it isn't necessarily a good reason why Britain should hold onto the Falklands.

In Hong Kong, actually, their lease had run out, so the British left. Seems fair to me. Although it's kind of a pity that the successor government in position to take back the property was a pretty unpleasant one.

Also, Hong Kong is pretty much territorially contiguous with mainland China; it makes very little sense for a country half way around the world to own an island just off your coast, any more than it makes sense for China to own the Isle of Wight.

The Falklands is in the high seas surrounded by international waters; its ownership can reasonably be considered as a more complicated problem than "hand over to whoever owns the nearest coastline." There's a reason Palau doesn't belong to Indonesia or Australia, after all.

[cosmicalstorm]

I seem to recall that Argentina have some dire economic problems at home. Nice to talk about something else and whip up some nationalistic fever then I guess.

[General Mung Beans]

As soon as a government voluntarily gives away chunks of its country, especially parts inhabited by people who still want to be governed by them not because it can't maintain it or hold it but because it just doesn't want to it looses a lot of its legitimacy.

More legitimacy than we lost getting two hundred and sixty of our people killed and seven ships destroyed over a tiny scrap of land that nobody, not even the regime that invaded them, really cared about all that much? National pride... No, that's the wrong word, call it national self-respect, that's all very well, but there has to be a limit.
I don't say we shouldn't have fought to keep the islands in 1982, because that would have entailed handing two thousand people over to a pack of murderous thugs. But now? Well, Argentina's a long way short of perfect democratic representation, but then we've got little enough to brag about in that respect. Certainly they're unlikely to actively mistreat the Falklanders.

Besides geographical proximity there is no current reason to give the Falklands to Argentina: the people there don't want it and plenty of other territories have been transferred with dubious legality (ie the loss of the eastern half of Poland after WWII but you don't see the Polish demands, if there any, being taken seriously)

[CJvR]

I seem to recall that Argentina have some dire economic problems at home. Nice to talk about something else and whip up some nationalistic fever then I guess.

Fortunately KFC is restricted to whining unlike Galtieri who had the option of a short victorious war. With popularity down and inflation up and her allies calling people who actually do what the government suggest for "stupid" all she got left is hysterical flag waving.

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/06/11/opi ... nificantly

According to the latest opinion poll survey released over the weekend, disapproval of the government’s performance climbed from 29% to 50.4%, while the positive image dropped from 63% to 39%, according to Management&Fit.

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/06/01/arg ... -sell-them

“And second of all, please do not ask me to do things that only a stupid person would do. I’m not stupid. I’m just a regular guy who made some money. I will neither sell my dollars at the official exchange rate nor at the black market price. Leave them [dollars] where they are as they are well kept.”

The very same Senator, warned two days ago that Argentina “should forget about the dollar and better start thinking in Pesos”, after explaining that “only 11% of the population have their savings in dollars. Plus, the dollar is only printed in the US: we don’t have the green-maker.”

[Akhlut]

They'll just say that the Falklanders are illegitimate occupiers of Argentine territory, despite having been there for 180+ years (longer than anything west of the Mississippi has been part of the US).

One could make a very decent claim that the grand majority of territory the US is sitting on has been acquired illegitimately, as it was gained through disregarding treaties with sovereign nations, wars of aggression against sovereign nations, and acts of genocide against sovereign nations. It was basically what Hitler did, only slower and against non-European people.

Just to clarify- are you referring to the ownership European powers recognize among themselves, or to the massive violent dispossession of the Native Americans?

The one where the US broke treaties and killed as many Indians as they could and kicking them off any land that had any value at all.

I just find it kind of funny that the UK, of all nations, is bitching about someone trying to take their land and possibly doing some economic harm to the citizens of an area that would formerly have been owned by them (if Argentina were to hypothetically magically possess Las Malvinas).

[Akhlut]

You could make that argument for almost any country in Africa, Australasia, North America, South America (less so) and Asia if you want to talk about invasions, colonialism, and handing back power to people who the rest of the country may or may not consider legitimate governments. Depending on where you want to draw the line there could be people in England who consider themselves citizens of Mercia living under occupation. Frankly what we have now is about as workable as things are ever likely to get given we at least had maps of the whole world when the lines were drawn, so we have something to negotiate from.

The only way most African nations currently are illegitimate, vis a vis colonialism, is that their borders are completely nonsensical if we ascribe to the idea that each ethnic group should have its own national territory, in which case there are way too few nations in Africa and Asia. The US is different because it was a colonizing nation, not a nation of former colonies (insofar as the people who governed the United States were white Europeans who oppressed non-Europeans with extreme prejudice; in effect, the US was a transplant from Europe rather than a "proper" colony).

[Simon_Jester]

OK, so, the massive violent dispossession of the Native Americans. Right.

Just checking that that was what you meant.



As for the Falklands, it's funny, but it's one of those weird cases where the overall narrative of decolonization doesn't work very well. For several reasons:

1) Argentina is a nation carved out of other people's homelands by force just as much as the British Empire was. If the US is a colonial transplant, so is Argentina.
2) There never were any "native Falkand Islanders" in the sense of permanent inhabitants who lived there before European chronicles began. If there were, we could safely say the island belongs to them, not to the Argentines or the British.
3) If there were such inhabitants but they'd been massacred (as both the Argentines and the British did in other times and places to natives they didn't like), then we could reasonably say that the current claim to the islands is built on genocide and therefore invalid and that someone else's claim is just as good if not better. But this is not the case, see (2).
4) The early history of settlement of the islands (in the 1700s) is so confused that there's at least two mutually exclusive claims to the islands, both made in good faith: British and Spanish. But both settlements were totally abandoned and the islands were uninhabited again by 1820.
5) The Argentine claim descends from the fact that an Argentine privateer arbitrarily decided to claim the islands for Argentina during their war of independence, regardless of the existing British and Spanish claims.

Now, I can kind of get how the Argentines would ignore the Spanish claims, since they were already in the business of taking control for themselves of a bunch of land Spain thought was rightfully Spanish- war of independence and all. But we run into two problems. One is that the Argentine claim to formerly-Spanish land doesn't mean just any formerly-Spanish land. It has limits; Argentina's war of national liberation from Spain did not entitle it to claim the lands that made up, say, Peru, or other former Spanish possessions.

Plus, the British were kind of on the sidelines in all this, having never abandoned their own claim to the islands, which was made in at least as good a faith as that of the Argentines and several decades earlier to boot.

So in this case, I don't think the overall paradigm of decolonization really applies. This isn't like India or Kenya (where a native population is throwing off British rule), or a place which Britain conquered in a war that had indisputably been integral to someone else's land earlier (like Gibraltar).

[Ziggy Stardust]

I don't particularly want to wade into this debate, but for reference of those that have, Wikipedia actually has a very good article about the history of the sovereignty dispute over the islands.

[mr friendly guy]

I don't disagree with your overall point but keep in mind that Britain has given away territory with British settlers before (Hong Kong, most of the colonies) and it did not seem to have destroyed the faith of the citizenry.

I think a far better point to argue would be that the situation has been settled by both treaty (between Spain and England) and force and that Argentina lacks a valid claim to the island under both past and current international law.

Didn't Britain give up Hong Kong because its lease had expired? In which case there wasn't much legality to hold onto it, unless you start getting into funny business and arguing that the modern day PRC isn't the successor state to the Qing who signed the original lease to the British. Thankfully the Brits didn't try that line and negotiated a deal with the Chinese leadership.

[Captain Seafort]

Didn't Britain give up Hong Kong because its lease had expired? In which case there wasn't much legality to hold onto it, unless you start getting into funny business and arguing that the modern day PRC isn't the successor state to the Qing who signed the original lease to the British. Thankfully the Brits didn't try that line and negotiated a deal with the Chinese leadership.

The lease only applied to the New Territories - AFAIK we would have been completely within our rights to hang on to HK Island itself. Instead we agreed to hand over the whole place to China, presumably on the grounds that it would have been a net drain to try and sustain the reduced territory, but I'm not 100% certain on that point.