We should listen to the Falkland Islanders

By James Dauris, British Ambassador to Peru

If you’ve been reading the papers in Peru yesterday and today you’ll have seen quite a bit about the Falkland Islands.  Yesterday ceremonies were held on the Islands, in Britain and in Argentina to remember the civilians and the many members of the armed forces of both countries who lost their lives in the fighting that followed Argentina’s invasion of the islands thirty years ago.

This week Argentina’s president, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, travelled to New York to speak to members of the UN Decolonisation Committee yesterday.  So too did representatives of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly.  They explained how they were speaking for the people who live on the Islands, some of whom have lived there for nine generations.  They mentioned the UN Charter and the principles enshrined in it of equal rights and self-determination.  The Islanders, whose families come and came from lots of countries, want to use the referendum they will be organising next year to tell the world clearly what they want to be.

Sra Fernandez is someone who says she wants to talk.  Yet after the meeting yesterday she refused to accept a letter from the Islanders’ representatives inviting the Argentine Government to meet and listen to the views of the Falkland Islands people.  She wouldn’t even shake their hands.  Hector Timmerman, Argentina’s Foreign Minister wouldn’t accept the letter either.  Why won’t she talk to them?  Why doesn’t she want to listen to them?

Perhaps you saw the half page advert taken out in yesterday’s “El Comercio” by President Fernandez.  Her carefully crafted piece finishes with the words, “We ask the United Kingdom to give peace a chance”.  How odd, I thought.  There’s nothing the people of the Falkland Islands want more than to be allowed to live in peace and to be allowed to get on with their lives.  It struck me that though the Argentinean President talks about peace, she and her government have been steadily harassing the islanders more and more: refusing to allow cruise ships into Ushuaia that have visited the Islands, stopping overflights, threatening companies that want to work in the Islands…

The people of the Falkland Islands want to talk to the government of Argentina.  They want to be friends with Argentina.  They want to work with Argentina.  And they also want to be allowed to be who and what they want to be.