Will Jones
Dr Will Jones is editor of the Daily Sceptic. He has a PhD in political philosophy, an MA in ethics, a BSc in mathematics and a diploma in theology. He lives in Leamington Spa with his wife and two children.
Argentina’s foreign minister called Falkland Islanders an “artificially implanted” population in an essay demanding Britain hand over the territory, which is rich coming from a country of European setters which massacred its indigenous population. The Telegraph has more.
Pablo Quirno said the 2013 referendum held on the archipelago, in which islanders chose to remain British, was illegitimate and called for negotiations over the Falklands’ future.
“Time does not transform an illegitimate occupation into sovereignty. Nor will it divide the territorial unity of the Argentine Republic,” Quirno argued in La Nacion, Argentina’s leading conservative paper.
He said that the 1982 war and the 2013 vote had failed to resolve the Falklands dispute, and added that sovereignty of the archipelago should not be decided by a “population artificially implanted by the occupying power”.
The essay, published ahead of a clash between the two countries in the World Cup on Wednesday, insists that the issue of the Falkland Islands will remain a priority of the Government.
It lays out Argentina’s legal claim over the Falklands, citing international law and regional bodies that have demanded peaceful negotiations to resolve the dispute.
“This commitment is coupled with an unwavering certainty: our claim will not be relinquished, resigned or abandoned,” Quirno writes.
“The Falkland Islands are history, territory, sea, memory and destiny. They are a promise between generations. They are the voice of a nation that knows how to wait without giving up and knows how to demand without surrendering.”
The essay represents the long-standing views of the Argentine Government. But it comes after the Falklands debate was reignited this year by reports that the Trump administration had discussed changing US policy on the islands.
The row over the islands was reinvigorated by members of the Argentine football team filmed singing last week that they would win the World Cup “for the Malvinas”.
In his essay, Quirno describes the Falkland Islands dispute as a “special and particular colonial situation, originating in the violation of Argentina’s territorial integrity”.
In 2013, 99.8 per cent of Falklanders voted in favour of remaining a British Overseas Territory in an independence referendum. Argentina views the vote as a sham.
Quirno disputed any future referendums, saying that none “organised unilaterally by the UK can have legal effect” and that only negotiations between Argentina and Britain can decide its future. “We must not fall into the referendum trap,” he wrote.
A leaked Pentagon memo in April suggested the US was reviewing its position on the UK’s claim of sovereignty in retaliation for Britain’s stance on the Iran war.
Javier Milei, the Argentine President and a close ally of Donald Trump, insisted then that the islands “were, are and will always be Argentine”.
His deputy, Victoria Villarruel, went further, to say all Britons living on the island should “go back to England”.
The memo and statements from Argentinian leaders were heavily criticised by Downing Street, while veterans of the 1982 Falklands War accused Trump of “bullying”.
Worth reading in full.
Argentina, of course, is a country that consists almost entirely of European colonists and settlers, with the indigenous population today just 2.4 per cent.
According to Genocide Watch:
Colonial Spain forced indigenous peoples off their lands to make way for Spanish settlers. After independence in 1816, successive governments continued this forced displacement of indigenous peoples. In the 1870s, President Julio Argentino Roca enacted the ‘Conquest of the Desert’, a military campaign that subjugated and enslaved Mapuche people living in the Pampas region and committed genocide against them. Some Argentines still view Roca as a ‘civilising figure’, and the government continues to deny the Mapuche access to their land and cultural rights.
In the late 19th century, during the Tierra del Fuego Gold Rush, European settlers, in concert with the Argentine and Chilean governments, systematically exterminated the Ona, Yaghan and Haush peoples. The decimation of these indigenous populations is known today as the Selk’nam Genocide.
Which means the Argentine Government doesn’t have a leg to stand on in accusing another population of being “artificially implanted”. The British claim to the Falkland Islands, meanwhile, dates back to 1690.
This article was originally published by the Daily Sceptic.
