Falkland Islands and the right to self-determination

[Rolfe]

Whether or not they have a right to assistance when threatened is a different question than whether the UK has a rightful claim on the territory or whether 4 generations of living there gives you ownership.

Although I am tempted to say 'live by the sword, die by the sword' I don't think that would be fair to the current inhabitants.

The question has always been whether the population should be defended from a foreign invader.

 

[3point14]

The question has always been whether the population should be defended from a foreign invader.

Yes, they should (but only if one is in a precarious position with regard to the next election and one needs a rousing victory to get reelected and so have slowly reduced the defence cover in the area over a few years to attempt to induce an invasion in the hopes of remaining PM)

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, they should (but only if one is in a precarious position with regard to the next election and one needs a rousing victory to get reelected and so have slowly reduced the defence cover in the area over a few years to attempt to induce an invasion in the hopes of remaining PM)

I did cover that in a previous post. I think the islanders were lucky that Argentina moved when it did. Another ten or twenty years and the outcome might have been very different.

The precarious nature of their existence was something that struck me while I was there. (By the way, I mistook the population by a factor of ten. It's about 3,400, not 30,000 as I typed.) If Argentina wasn't a threat they'd be fine. It's a small population but they work together (and they have a tremendous work ethic) and their economy washes its face. They can afford stuff, including £50,000 to fly someone to Santiago in a medical emergency that their own hospital can't cope with.

But Argentina is the wolf at the door. The islanders need a knight in shining armour. Archie thinks that they shouldn't get that because he suspects the motives of the knight in shining armour. I see Argentina, and then a few days later I pitch up at Port Stanley, and my sympathies are with the islanders.

But the knight in shining armour is busy cutting its own throat. It's downgrading its economy and its status in the world. It may easily come to the point when it decides that whatever advantage there might have been to keeping the Falklands as a protectorate is no longer worth the expense. In which case, poor islanders.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

They've never been either.

You are correct. I mis-spoke there and stand corrected. I had googled something earlier that said Overseas Territories were part of the EU but I see on further digging that they are not.

I think the UK thing is a bit more of a fudge. Technically they are not part of the UK but the territory is under the sovereignty of the UK.

Further confusing is added by the fact that the people are UK citizens (and therefore by extension EU citizens for the time being)

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Somewhat ironically, the Chagossians have been mentioned in this thread as a group whose rights need defending/reasserting, even though they were just as much a transplanted population as the Falklands Islanders, just about 50 years earlier. If we believe - as I think most here would - that the Chagossians should be allowed to return and reclaim Diego Garcia, then the same applies to the Falklanders in situ.

I mentioned them earlier, did you disagree with my characterising them as a different case?

 

[Rolfe]

Somewhat ironically, the Chagossians have been mentioned in this thread as a group whose rights need defending/reasserting, even though they were just as much a transplanted population as the Falklands Islanders, just about 50 years earlier. If we believe - as I think most here would - that the Chagossians should be allowed to return and reclaim Diego Garcia, then the same applies to the Falklanders in situ.

That's been in my mind all through this. The Chagossians are an extremely similar case to the Falkland Islanders, in that they were a small but self-sustaining population on a group of previously uninhabited islands who had been there for at least four generations.

Instead of defending their right to their land and property the British drove them out and eventually forced them out, killing their pets in front of their eyes in a bid to demonstrate how ruthless and determined they were.

Main difference? Skin colour.

I think it's disgusting and one of the most appalling episodes in an admittedly strong field of British Empire atrocities. The more so since it happened in the 1960s, some time after we were all being told about how the benevolent British were voluntarily withdrawing from their empire and handing the land back to the indigenous inhabitants.

I don't think the Falkland Islanders should be treated like the Chagossians though. I think the Chagossians should have been (and still could be) afforded the same rights as the Falkland Islanders.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

The question has always been whether the population should be defended from a foreign invader.

No, the question I raised to you was whether being somewhere for 4 generations made you legitimate owners of the territory. And we have spent the last 3 or 4 pages discussing the legitimacy of the claim of the UK on the territory.

 

[Rolfe]

(and therefore by extension EU citizens for the time being)

No, I really don't think they are. No more than the citizens of the Channel Isles or the Isle of Man. I may be wrong, but that was my understanding.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Archie thinks that they shouldn't get that

Gonnae no dae that? Jist gonnae no.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

No, I really don't think they are. No more than the citizens of the Channel Isles or the Isle of Man. I may be wrong, but that was my understanding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories_Act_2002

This Act as far as I can tell made them full UK citizens and as such they automatically become EU nationals.

Guernsey and Jersey citizens appear to be EU citizens as well incidentally although not via this act and also with restrictions on FoM

 

[Rolfe]

It's the "as far as I can tell" part that gets me. I couldn't actually follow from that whether they had right of abode in the UK.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

It's the "as far as I can tell" part that gets me. I couldn't actually follow from that whether they had right of abode in the UK.

From the Wiki...

This has allowed residents of British Overseas Territories to apply for and travel on a separate British passport describing them as a British citizen, to reside in the UK permanently without being subject to UK immigration control, to join the British armed forces and police forces, and to exercise rights under the Human Rights Act. Although not explicitly stated, the act also granted them EU citizenship through UK's membership in the European Union, which (until UK's withdrawal from the EU is finalized) means that BOTCs with British citizen passports are afforded all rights accorded to EU citizens in any EU country.

 

[Information Analyst]

I mentioned them earlier, did you disagree with my characterising them as a different case?

Rolfe actually mentioned them first. I don't see their claims to be fundamentally different from the Falkland Islanders, which are primarily about the length of occupation. Originally the islands were found by the Portuguese, and later claimed by the French, then the British. France gave them up after Napoleon's defeat in 1814. Although some of the original inhabitants were slaves brought from Mauritius by the French, by 1840 they were all free, and there were subsequent free arrivals from both Africa and South Asia.

 

[Rolfe]

From the Wiki...

Thanks. I think that is possibly a different article from the one I was reading. I remember that Falkland Islanders didn't have the right of abode in 1982.

 

[Information Analyst]

Thanks. I think that is possibly a different article from the one I was reading. I remember that Falkland Islanders didn't have the right of abode in 1982.

Yes, I recall a line in the BBC drama An Ungentlemanly Act, when the Argentine Air Force representative on the Islands before the invasion pointed out that the Islanders had been locked out by changing UK nationality laws, the same as most other Commonwealth citizens.

 

[Rolfe]

Ironically the Argentine government has handed them (unwanted) full Argentine citizenship, so they (the Argentinians) can claim that the islands are inhabited entirely by Argentinian nationals!

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Plenty penguins still there mate. The colonialist bastards positively encourage them to come up and pose nicely with the tourists.

Uncle Pingus every one.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Rolfe actually mentioned them first. I don't see their claims to be fundamentally different from the Falkland Islanders, which are primarily about the length of occupation. Originally the islands were found by the Portuguese, and later claimed by the French, then the British. France gave them up after Napoleon's defeat in 1814. Although some of the original inhabitants were slaves brought from Mauritius by the French, by 1840 they were all free, and there were subsequent free arrivals from both Africa and South Asia.

I don't know if the 'claims' are different as I haven't examined either set in detail. But the cases are different.

The Chagossians are primarily the descendants of African slaves brought there against their will. They didn't colonise the islands. If they were the descendants of the French or Portuguese there might be better parallels.

Also note that they don't seem to claim that the Chagos Islands are the territory of either France, Portugal or any of their home African nations nor that they are personally French/Portuguese/Mauritian or anything similar.

The Chagossians are people who ended up on the islands through no fault or volition of their own and made it home. I'm not sure I would class them as totally indigenous but they are certainly closer to it than Falklanders are.

The Falklanders are the equivalents of if the French/Portuguese continued to inhabit the islands. Continued to call themselves French/Portuguese had French/Portuguese citizenship and a French/Portuguese military presence there for defence.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Thanks. I think that is possibly a different article from the one I was reading. I remember that Falkland Islanders didn't have the right of abode in 1982.

It seems things have changed - although it seems that historically they could get UK citizenship if they wanted it, they now have it as automatic right.

It's all bollocks. Some rocks in the middle of the south atlantic aren't British. A rock off the Spanish coast isn't British. Some rocks in the middle of the Indian Ocean aren't British.

Let's face it, if Brazil or China sailed a boat up to one of the uninhabited Scottish islands you wouldn't be OK with them establishing a colony there just because nobody else is living there and I doubt you would be saying 50 years later it's now Brazil or China because people have lived there for 50 years speaking Portuguese/Chinese.

 

[Information Analyst]

The Chagossians are people who ended up on the islands through no fault or volition of their own and made it home. I'm not sure I would class them as totally indigenous but they are certainly closer to it than Falklanders are.

That's clearly not true, any more than saying that all Australians are descended from convicts, because a lot of the early inhabitants were. The population of the Chagos Islands were augmented by later incomers the same way the Falklands were.