Quote:
Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II
..I'm afraid you're missing the point here, nobody is arguing about the right of self-determination, it's about how did the Brits end up on such small islands on the other side of the world..
Again, there isn't much of a "blurred story", it was a case of British settlers taking territory and kicking out Argentinian communities, so one could also argue that the British sovereignty is based on an illegal occupation.
I wouldn't concentrate on what people there want, as much as understanding whether they actually have any rights to decide for the island's territoriality or whether they've been squatting there for generations.
To use an example similar to yours: imagine your neighbour has a bungalow adjacent to your property, he decides he doesn't need it and gives it to you. You put some tools in there, but don't really use it that much. Some people from another state come around and see the bungalow, they squat in it, you don't make much of it for years (maybe cos you don't care, maybe cos you want to be nice to the foreigners or simply don't have the means to evict them) and they gradually kick all your stuff out and claim it as theirs, so that when you have enough of it and decide to claim it back, you can't, cos the squatters say it's theirs.
Or in a nutshell, think of what happened in Dale Farm...
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As I said, legally, it doesn't matter how they got there, they have been there for long enough now for the self determination principle to apply. 200 years in a long time, for example there are many countries in Europe are only just over half that age, but no one would consider giving them back to former occupiers because it simply doesn't work that way. In the same way, the Falkland Islands are, legally, an established entity, but not a state, simply because they have chosen to remain the protectorate which is their right under self determination of peoples. The case for the Falklands remaining British has international law on its side and there is no higher law than that. My post was simply pointing out the legal argument, and that's all that is.
As for the issue not being blurred, check the wikipedia article for the 'Timeline of the history of the Falkland Islands' (for your convenience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...lkland_Islands) and note the amount of times the word 'dispute(d)' and variations there of are used prior to 1833. The pre-British 'ownership' of the islands is not clear as Spain, Britain, Argentina and to some extent France could in theory claim a stake in the islands. Actually, if you read that link, it also points out that Great Britain has repeatedly tried to refer the case to the ICJ and Argentina kept refusing.
Makes you wonder why they might not want to go to court, doesn't it.