UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
So according to the linked article, no: .io names give nothing to Britain.
"In a second conversation with Kane, he reiterated that “we do remit money to the Crown bank in accordance with our agreement. We pay X amount per name.” Kane did not say what “X amount” was, due to confidentiality."
Meanwhile it seems that in 2017 Affilias has bought the .io domain for 70 millions dollars...
Is the idea here that this deal was unfair?
The natives are not allowed to return to the archipelago because of the US military base in Diego Garcia,
Mauritius argued that it leased the land to the UK and the UK sub-leased it to the US. On the other hand, UK said the archipelago is a British territory and it has sovereignty over the islands.
can £4m compensate for the human rights violations on that scale ?
>The UK recently set aside £40m for exiled Chagossians who live mainly in the UK, Seychelles and Mauritius. Relatively little has been spent so far because programmes are being developed.
Not to say that automatically resolves anything of course.
Certainly seems unlikely they would close the military base unless they were forced to so do by some military or substantial economic action.
This type of thing is what makes me worried about the long term sustainability of US security. The paradigm is not really rule of law when it comes right down to it, it's might makes right. This is an inherently insecure paradigm.
Whether there can actually ever be a different paradigm seems difficult though.
https://politicsfirst.co.uk/editorials/britains-shame-the-et...
UK evicted them forcefully in the 70's or 80's I think.
This does not mean I disagree with the expelling being cruel and unwarranted. I do think it shouldn't belong to the UK, just don't think that "natives" is meaningful here or explains the reasons.
The equivalent is expelling everyone from Australia because US/UK wants to build military base there.
Edit - and will people stop buying .io domains. They might look cool but it is straight up theft.
https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-...
https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-ac...
Regardless of the ancestry of the people living in any territory, they deserve to have sovereignty over their lives.
And what connection do the "natives" have, they weren't native to it. They'd lived there less than 200 years and were French speakers.
It's not an indigenous population.
It's more complicated than you claim.
I'm pretty strongly anti-colonial, but this ain't that and it takes the piss to frame it like it is.
In this case we're talking what 4-5 generations, depending on how you count it, that sounds fairly native to me.
The UK acted poorly here and the pressure that this vote applies to them is good, as if anyone has a right to the islands it's the people who lived there for hundreds of years.
They've been there well over 100 years now, settlement by the Israelis started in the 1870s. Are they now native?
It's never going to be an easy thing to resolve. Ultimately, if you settle someone else's sovereign land, don't be surprised if you don't get to just claim it unless you've got the guns, tanks and bombers to back it up.
Here the UK government acted unethically and (according to the UN) illegally in displacing people who had been resident on these islands for a long time.
That pressure is being brought to bear on them for this, seems like a good thing.
You can't see the connection? At all?
I don't see what the point is in discussing this with you, some how you've decided that land bought and paid for should be given back to a people that didn't even come from there past a handful of generations.
And somehow this is 'ethical'.
What a load of nonsense.
I would point out that there were a huge number of abstentions. So don't think the UN were unanimous on this.
It's relatively clear from the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty...) that the government of Mauritius were under the impression that their being granted independence from the UK depended on their agreeing to hand over the Chagos Islands
the key quote from British records being
"in theory, there were a number of possibilities. The Premier and his colleagues could return to Mauritius either with Independence or without it. On the Defence point, Diego Garcia could either be detached by order in Council or with the agreement of the Premier and his colleagues. The best solution of all might be Independence and detachment by agreement, although he could not of course commit the Colonial Secretary at this point."
To quote the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48371388) "Mauritius says it was forced to give up the Indian Ocean group"
The UK has a long history of gunboat diplomacy, this is just one example I would suggest.
As to the "huge number of abstentions", the vote was 116-6 of those that voted, not exactly a close outcome...
Without unanimity in the security council, there doesn't tend to be much action they can take. Even with the SC, the track record of reaching resolutions isn't great.
In principle, it makes sense for there to be a formalized "community of nations" to express a decision. But, in terms of having a practical role that leads to resolving these kinds of issues... would it be better if they now aimed for a reperations/compromise solution?
I can't see british sovereignty or US occupancy changing. Is the right thing now to leave chagosians with a recognized moral right, with no hope of exercising it in practice or to go for compromise?
Just curious what people think.
It's not quite reached League of Nations irrelevancy, but it isn't far off.
It would be criminal to just dump them now.
There has literally never been any sizable independence sentiment and it's unlikely to appear in the foreseeable future.
EU election polling may suggest otherwise. There's something slightly weird in UK politics where the media predominantly takes one side of a debate and then it seems to become socially unacceptable to be on the other side.
The brand new Brexit Party look to be getting double the vote of any other party, yet other than of parents and in laws no one I know has offered up that they were on the leave side. Yet I could name maybe 100 people who have talked about being on the remain side.
I've been brought up not to talk openly about politics anyway, but it seems a shame to me that there's a relatively silent majority.
Anyway, fully agree with your post otherwise. It looks worse than Eurovision!
At this point the best game is not to play.
For Germany, I do not know as they do not have overseas territories as far as I know. However, they are pretty keen on the UK staying in the EU, so that might be the reason.
It just so happens that 1) the UK, thanks to Brexit, has basically lost all influence it had on other EU countries. EU members are more interested in gathering support on key votes in Bruxelles and Strasbourg; but the UK now cannot “trade” anything of that sort. 2) Again because of more and more stuff being cleared at EU level, the US has less and less to “sell” to individual member states. This goes double when the current administration is unabashedly isolationist, protectionist, and downright warmongering on trade issues, giving a first-line position to the likes of John Bolton who actively despise the UN and everything it stands for.
UK and US are currently isolated at the diplomatic level in ways unseen since WWII. The best they can expect from European countries, even when they share actual interests (like on decolonisation) is the occasional abstention. I expect we will see more and more similar votes coming to pass, in the next two years.
I haven't noticed any will of the Spanish government to punish the UK for Brexit. That might be an opinion of laypeople, but not of the government as far as I know. In fact, I think Spain was the first country to sign an agreement so that the British can keep entering the country without a visa after Brexit, as long as there is reciprocity.
I can't talk for everyone here, but most people I know couldn't care less about sovereignty. The huge problem with Gibraltar is smuggling and money laundering.
Edit: also, there's a common belief that we haven't pressured about the Gibraltar status because it could trigger that Morocco will do the same with Ceuta and Melilla. I can't really know, but it's really strange that after twenty years in the EU nothing has changed.
It's Self Determination. In Gibraltar and Falklands the people living there have families stretching back centuries (over 300 years in Gibraltar's case, 150 in Falklands). Nobody is telling these people they can't become independent, or join another country. They quite simply don't want to.
When things are close in opion, like Scotland and Northern Ireland, then things are more delicate -- you can't please everyone, so you have to do what's the least danger.
In 2013, 92% of the Falklands voted, and 99.8% of those that voted, voted to stay British. In 2002, 88% of Gibraltar voted, and 99% voted to stay British.
First, consider that nobody can be deprived of their nationality. They would still be UK citizens no matter what country owns the place.
Now Gibraltar lives mostly on smuggling and money laundering, with a little tourism and the military. The military facilities are no longer very useful for the British.
So what would they do there? There are more companies than inhabitants. Once the tax haven status disappears, all this income goes elsewhere. No more turning a blind eye for smuggling. Real state would suffer a big hit too.
No wonder they want their town to stay British. But they don't have a say really. Not because we say so, but the UK government. Taking that kind of referenda seriously would be so silly as voting if... oh, wait!
To be honest, I'm not a patriot by any means and I do think that Ceuta and Melilla will probably need to be handed to Morocco at some point, as enclaves in general don't make much sense. But the situation is not even remotely comparable from a legal and historical standpoint. I don't think the differences can even be called "subtle".
“the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications, and forts thereunto belonging ... for ever, without any exception or impediment whatsoever.”
This is why regardless of how much Spain wants to push the UK to secede Gibraltar they can’t push too hard.
The Netherlands have the same problem they also have remote territories under their control so again they can only abstain.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/australias-cocos-islands-can...
Diego Garcia is a very strategic location. It will always be controlled by one of the great powers. Who would benefit most if the US were to leave? Who has the most to gain? Countries like China and Iran.
Just because it would possibly help other powers, doesn't exclude the idea that the native islanders can legitimately want their homes back
But China isn’t having dissatisfaction focused on it for their permanent seat? That’s rich. When China gives back Tibet, then perhaps we can talk about dissatisfaction about the U.K. on the Council.