Tensions still linger over Falklands’ ownership
Postmedia columnist Daphne Bramham crosses the notoriously rough Drake Passage from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia — known as the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean — to Antarctica. Her daily reports from the 18-day expedition will cover issues from climate change and micro plastics in the ocean to Japan’s continuing whale hunt, the antics of penguins and the world’s wild race to tour, and exploit, this last frontier.
With STANLEY, FALKLAND ISLANDS all the troubles in the world, it’s easy to forget that for a few weeks in 1982 a squabble over whether it’s Britain or Argentina that owns a small cluster of islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean was headline news.
Of course, it’s far from forgotten here. There are still landmines. The hope is that by 2020, they will all be located and destroyed. But it’s painstaking and expensive work.
Margaret Thatcher casts a steely gaze out to the sea just off the main street here. The Falkland Islands flag flies behind. Nearby is a memorial to the 255 Brits who died here along with three Falkland Islanders.
On the memorial is Thatcher’s quote from April 3, 1982: “They are few in number but they have the right to live in peace, to choose their own way of life and to determine their own allegiance.”
The Argentines, who lost 649 soldiers in the fighting, haven’t forgotten that Britain won that skirmish either. Nor is the Argentine government unaware that in the 2013 referendum that drew 92 per cent of the islands’ voters resulted in 99.8 per cent of them saying that they wanted to remain as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. It simply chooses to ignore that.
For years now, Argentina’s economic sanctions have included a ban on flights between the country and the islands, which is why it makes it so difficult to get to the Falkland Islands or the Malvinas as they call them.
Getting to Stanley and the harbour where our Antarcticabound ship, Akademik Ioffe, is moored, we’ve had to fly first to Chile. We landed at a British military base, one of only a few international flights, on an unusually warm and sunny day.
Last June, one of the members of the Falklands’ legislative assembly addressed the United Nations special committee on decolonization. There, Ian Hansen stressed that the islands are self-supporting and self-governing. They receive no aid from Britain other than to rely on it for defence and foreign affairs.
“If the Argentine government were to respect our undoubted right to self-determination, we would not need the presence of British troops at all,” Hansen said.
“This presence is minimal and maintained at the smallest possible force to deter — certainly not to be aggressive. Argentine claims of a massive military buildup in the South Atlantic are pure fiction.”
Signs posted in a shop window along the Main Street suggest that the islanders want to be left alone. Many of the 3,000 or so residents have deep roots on these treeless islands going back three, four or more generations.
It is the only home they’ve known. Their children are educated up until high school here and then — at the government’s expense — continue their education in Britain.
They use the Falklands’ pound, which is tied to the British one. And, up until Brexit, they accessed the European Union market as a British overseas territory. What the breakup means for the islanders is unclear because part of their economy is based on exporting agricultural goods (lamb, mutton, wool) to the EU as well as fish.
“Peace can only be achieved if Argentina — cease all hostilities against us; apologize for invading our country; recognize our rights to self-determination; drop your sovereignty claim,” says one of the hand-lettered signs.
Economics aside, the ties to the motherland are obvious everywhere. There are red post boxes and the iconic, red telephone booths. There’s even a double-decker bus for tourists. Because of the unusually fair weather, locals sit outside their ‘locals’ because unsurprisingly, there are a good number of pubs here. Some of them advertise that a particular football (a.k.a. soccer) game will be shown live that night.
The older homes — both the great stone houses of the wealthy and the row houses of the working stiffs — would fit into almost any small British town. The Anglican cathedral looms over it all with a very striking difference. Beside it is an arch constructed using four jawbones from whales.
Charles Darwin visited here twice and although the islands are rich with birds and other wildlife, it was the “rock rivers” that interested him, left behind by melting glaciers.
It is a unique outpost with its own particular culture forged out of the blending of people from 53 different countries. Some have Scottish whalers as
ancestors. Others have English explorers and, more recently, there are some who have come from other former British colonies in Africa, which is perhaps most fitting since these islands themselves are believed to have broken off from that continent as well.
This is not Britain and it appears that many islanders don’t wish it to be either. Daphne Bramham is travelling as a guest of One Ocean Expeditions, which has neither approved nor reviewed her stories.