Argentina renewed its claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands by remembering this Sunday the fallen soldiers and veterans of the war that in 1982 pitted the South American country against the United Kingdom over that archipelago in the South Atlantic.
“The Malvinas were, are and will be Argentine. The fight we undertook made sense and has not ended: we are going to recover our islands by peaceful means. We are going to continue raising our voice until the world listens to us,” the Argentine president asserted. Alberto Fernández, in an act in the Buenos Aires town of Malvinas Argentinas, to commemorate the 41st anniversary of the start of the Malvinas War.
On this day, in which Argentina has commemorated Veteran’s Day since 2000 and the Fallen in the Malvinas War, Fernández said that those who “fought and died” in the war are “great men” who went to “defend the homeland and sovereignty” and for whom one must feel “pride.”
Argentina and the United Kingdom clashed over the Malvinas in a war that began on April 2, 1982, with the landing of Argentine troops in the archipelago and ended in June of that year with its surrender to British forces. In the war conflict, 255 British, three islanders and 649 Argentines died.
Falkland Islands
Fernández recalled that last June, at the last G7 meeting in Germany, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, greeted him “with great sympathy” and began to talk to him about all the “businesses that Englishmen and Argentines” in mining and energy.
“I listened to him patiently and told him that everything was fine but first we have to talk about the Malvinas. He replied that this was a finished issue. I told him no, that those lands were being usurped. In the 21st century, we do not accept colonialist logic. If you want to talk to me about Argentina, let’s start by talking about how the islands are returned to us. The meeting ended immediately, “said Fernández.
He also vindicated his recent decision to terminate a 2016 pact that, without forcing the parties to negotiate on sovereignty, committed Argentina to remove the obstacles it had imposed on the exploitation of oil and fishing resources in the waters surrounding the Malvinas and flights between the islands and the Argentine mainland.
Fernández affirmed that “the English have no right to fly” to Argentine continental territory “whenever they want or to exploit Argentine waters however they want.”
