MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Malvinas seminar in Argentina to teach education staff how to isolate the war from the sovereignty claim

Minister Sileoni: “more people at the seminar than those voting at the illegitimate referendum”

An estimated 1.600 teachers and education students from all over Argentina are participating in a Malvinas seminar organized by the country’s Education ministry with the main purpose of “setting aside the war issue” from the main sovereignty claim.

“It is our duty, our obligation to teach Malvinas” said Education minister Alberto Sileoni on opening the seminar and pointing out that staff and students congregated at the event “were more than those that voted at the illegitimate referendum” in the Islands.

The two-day seminar “Teaching Malvinas: memory, sovereignty and democracy” experience is planned to be presented in other cities and towns of Argentina.

“The seminar is in the framework of the 180th anniversary of the Islands usurpation and a look on these last few years which are becoming more independent from the Malvinas war issue, which takes the 1982 events as just one moment in the 180 years struggle, and which takes that chapter and separates it from the dictatorship”, said Minister Sileoni.

He added that the new perspective invites to reflect and think about the oil and fisheries resources “which belong to our children and grandchildren and are being infringed by the United Kingdom”.

“The 4.500 schools, a million teachers and 12 million students are always a vehicle and a tool to expose the truth and justice regarding Malvinas”, continued Sileoni.

He emphasized that one of the main arguments to support the decision to teach the Malvinas issue in schools is the recovery of the Islands through diplomacy and “this means making the new generations to love the Malvinas, and for this first they must know and be taught about the issue”.

Sileoni recalled that according to the Article 92 of the National Education bill the Malvinas issue is one of the three points that can’t be left out of the school teaching programs. “Malvinas clearly constitutes our national identity”.

Human Rights Secretary Martin Fresneda, also present at the ceremony said that “we must assume that talking about human rights is part of Malvinas” should “we forget the atrocities committed against soldiers” and the problem of the identification of the remains of former combatants.

“Let us not forget that in 1982 the Argentine society decided to recover the Islands sovereignty echoing a deep demand from the soul, but that feeling was also used to commit atrocities against our own soldiers”, he added.