MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina categorically rejects students competition to visit the Falkland Islands

The Falkland Islands sponsored and financed program asks, “Why would I like to meet my neighbors from the Falkland Islands?” in English.

It's official. The Argentine government categorically rejects ”the competition organized by the British Embassy in Buenos Aires with the purpose of inviting university students to a paid trip to the Falklands/Malvinas Islands.

 The competition “under an incorrect slogan pretends to designate the Islands as a separate territory from Argentina, and under an illegitimate toponymy contradicts the country's position regarding the Malvinas Question, which is clearly reflected in the National Constitution”.

“It is clearly an activity with the sole purpose of reflecting the British occupation of the Malvinas Islands, an illegal situation which Argentina has protested permanently and indeclinably since 1833.

”The Argentine government again reaffirms its sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime spaces which are an integral part of Argentina, and invites the United Kingdom to comply with the United Nations mandate to resume negotiations for a peaceful and lasting solution to the sovereignty dispute“.

The truth is that it is the Falkland Islands government, with the help of the British Embassies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay which are inviting university students to participate. The regional competition offers winners the chance to visit the Falklands for a week with all the costs covered by the Falklands government. To participate, contestants should send a one minute video answering the question: “Why would I like to meet my neighbors from the Falkland Islands?” in English.

Winners will be staying with a local family, to experience first-hand the life in the Falkland Islands. The ideal winner should be active in social media and willing to share his/her experience about the Falkland Islands through these channels.

The contest is meant to promote the cultural exchange between the Falklands and the region, and to spread the knowledge about the Falkland Island and its people.

The invitation by the British Embassy in Buenos Aires was also rejected by the Secretary for Malvinas, Antarctica and the South Atlantic, Guillermo Carmona, who described it as “an absolutely unnecessary provocation,” and ”a situation that has a history”.

The official explained that this is a methodology that is “repeated and which has already been rejected by Argentina” and recalled that in other years “the same thing happened and on that occasion the councils of different universities spoke out against it”. , as did the Tierra del Fuego province.”

In September 2018, the British Embassy called for a similar competition under the same slogan, a fact that was justifiably denied by the country’s higher education institutions.

Carmona recalled that Argentina “in order to meet the interests of the Islanders, introduced scholarships so that they could come here to study in order to achieve effective integration, but this was later made impossible because there were no flights.”