By Professor Peter Willetts - In March, 1,513 people in the Falklands voted Yes to remaining a British Overseas Territory and only three people voted No. The Yes vote was a remarkable 99.8% of the voters on an exceptionally high turnout of 92.0%. The orthodox view that British voters chose to remain British is not enough to explain the result.
By Mike Summers (*)
Published in The Washington Times
In 1776, a group of American patriots wrote a letter to their king informing him they were unhappy with their political status and had plans to change it. Americans know this story well. That letter, the Declaration of Independence, formed the United States' profound belief that we all have certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
PHD student James Muirhead, based in Bristol’s Brunel Institute, is preparing for a trip to the Falkland Islands where he hopes to collect memories of the SS Great Britain which was abandoned there at Sparrow Cove in 1937.
Sierra Leone, member of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization maintained that the rights of the Islanders, present in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands for 180 years, should be paramount to any settlement and that self determination was the guiding principle of any resolution to the question. “There is no dispute that the people are the holders of the right to self-determination”.
Foreign minister Hector Timerman once again anticipated Argentina’s willingness to overcome the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands sovereignty conflict through dialogue, but unfortunately a resolution of the dispute was ‘hostage in London’ and of UK’s ‘imperial disdain’.
A top Falkland Islands’ politician and Britain's UN envoy shrugged off the idea of the Pope intervening in the long-running sovereignty dispute over the Falklands/Malvinas and South Atlantic islands, as was suggested at one point by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez.
The Decolonization Committee is no longer relevant and to describe the relation of British Overseas Territories with the UK as colonial is insulting both for the BOT and London, said a Foreign Office spokeswoman following Thursday session when the Falklands/Malvinas case was debated at the UN C24.
Falkland Islands representatives told the Special Decolonization Committee that under UN resolutions non self governing territories are entitled to exercise self determination and self government and C24 does not have the responsibility to judge on that right. Likewise the Falklands’ representatives again invited C24 to visit the Islands (seventh time) but with no reply.
Argentina and the Falkland Islands meet on Thursday at the UN Decolonization Committee, C24 to discuss the South Atlantic Islands sovereignty dispute, and contrary to last year when the big show was the attendance of President Cristina Fernandez, this time it will be the Falklands’ turn with the indisputable fresh results of the March referendum and their right to self-determination.
Maria Angelica Vernet and Falklands’ born Alejandro Betts will be Argentina’s petitioners at Thursday’s June 20 United Nations Decolonization Committee session in New York when the Falklands/Malvinas Islands sovereignty dispute will be addressed.