Two islanders told the UN why they don’t want to be Argentines

Representatives of the Falkland Islands appear each year before the United Nations Decolonization Committee to counter Argentina’s claim to the archipelago. The body usually approves, as it did on Thursday, a resolution that sparks the continent’s call to engage in a sovereignty dialogue with the United Kingdom.

This Thursday, Foreign Minister Felipe Solá was in New York, which rejected the self-determination of the Malvinas.

This year, however, there was something different in the speeches that brought to the campus of the so-called C24 (the decolonization committee) the Councilors Mark Pollard and Leona Roberts, to explain why they don’t want to be Argentines. If you look at it in perspective, it was a emotional impact speech, deep and very elaborate. It did not go unnoticed despite the virtuality of this meeting, which kept the delegations in separate rooms, without physical friction.

“I am here because our expansionist and aggressive neighbor wants to take my house, the house of my people, the house of my children and I just cannot accept that,” began Pollard, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. “When my daughters look me in the eye in the future and ask ‘Dad, why did you let these people take our house?’ I have to be able to look them in the eye and promise them that I have done everything to provide them with the most basic things. A safe home, to live and raise your own children. A future of your choice, “he said. declared.

“We are completely satisfied with our current political status, as demonstrated by our referendum in 2013, where 92% of the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands voted 99.8% in favor of maintaining our current political status as a territory of ‘UK overseas. ”he argued.

Then he said his story began 172 years ago with the arrival of John and Esther Smith in the Falklands, making them the sixth generation of islanders.

“Like the pioneers did here in America,” he told his audience from across the screen. “It was a year after the start of the California Gold Rush and 12 years before the start of the Civil War. My successive ancestors decided to continue carving out a life for themselves in what is a hilly but beautiful part of the world ”.

Pollard said he was born in 1979. “Three years before Argentina invaded my family home, a multinational heritage of Irish, English, Falkland Islands and Uruguayan blood.”

He then asked members of the decolonization committee to visit the islands to see in person how ‘happy’ the Kelpers are with their current political status as the UK’s Overseas Territory.

In turn, Leona Roberts, of Chilean and British origin, launched a harsh accusation: “Since the 1940s, the government of Argentina posed shifting narratives, twisted the story to fit its purpose of taking control of my country“He began by saying and accusing the mainland of creating” the mythology around the Falkland Islands “.

By mythology, he referred to the “propaganda” by which Argentina claims it had a sedentary population which was overthrown by Britain in 1833. “History shows that it just isn’t true “and told the British version of events.

“We have confidence in our British sovereignty,” he said, pointing to “Argentina’s colonialist aspirations”, including “the uncomfortable truth” and “that the Argentine government seeks to avoid”.

He said his maternal ancestors came to the Falklands 179 years ago and it was an ordinary family with no wealth or position and at that time with 4 small children they were just looking for a better life in a new country ”. He said they came from Margaret and James Biggs. And they’ve been in the Malvinas for “nine generations”.

“Throughout these nine generations”, his family has helped forge “a“ diversity ”of a country that continues to be“ small ”with a population of less than 3,500 inhabitants, with“ 60 nationalities ”, a- he said.

“There is no population established here as Argentina wants you to believe. Without indigenous peoples, we are a young country. Our cultural identity is British in many ways, but it is based on a variety of influences and is quite different. We are our own people, the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, the Kelpers, and we are deeply proud of that ”. she told and recalled times of the war, when she was a child.

“I vividly remember the terror of the night of the invasion: huddled under overturned furniture and a kitchen table, as projectiles and bullets flew around our house,” she recounted and said. then argued that the days that followed were “dark”. , with “war machines and thousands of armed invaders; when our houses were taken and machine gun poles were built in our gardens – and much more ”.

Roberts referred to the “Liberation” day of June 14, the date of the signing of Argentina’s surrender. And after complained that the current government wanted to include positive Covid de las Malvinas figures in its national statistics, seeking political advantage from a global crisis. He also criticized Argentina for withdrawing from cooperative fisheries work in the South Atlantic.

On the contrary, he considered generosity that the islands accepted the work of the Committee of the Red Cross in identifying the Argentines buried in Darwin’s cemetery.