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BOSSANO ADDRESSES UN ON 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF FRONTIER CLOSURE
*The following is the text of the address by the Leader of the Opposition Joe Bossano to the United Nations Committee of 24 in New York:
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Your Excellencies,
The very successful seminar generously hosted by the Government of St Kitts is the backdrop this year to your consideration of the state of progress towards decolonisation in each of the 16 remaining non-self governing territories with only 1 year left of the second International Decade.
Participants were informed that the successful conclusion of the internal constitutional modernisation exercise in the British Virgin Islands might entitle that territory to achieve decolonisation, the necessary precondition for ?de-listing?.
There has been much talk during both international decades of the need to explore new and innovative means, in addition to the 3 traditional decolonisation options, for the remaining territories.
Clearly when it comes to Gibraltar?s decolonisation what we have witnesses instead, again this year, is an attitude on the part of Spain which shows it is stuck in a time warp. It expects us Gibraltarians to accept that our rights as a people should be measured by the yardstick of the Europe of 1713, instead of the Human Rights values of 2009.
This inspired His Excellency Alberto Virella Gomez to tell the seminar that Spain regretted not being able to report ?good news?. The ?good news?, Your Excellencies will note, would have been to have reported that we had been handed over to a foreign government, contrary to our wishes to comply with Utrecht. Of course to fully comply with those obsolete 1713 Treaty requirements there are other failures that he could have mentioned. We have not, as required by the Treaty, stopped Moors and Jews living in Gibraltar, we continue to trade with North Africa, and no use is being made of the treaty rights to transfer slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean. There was an absence of ?good news? on all these fronts, for a Spain that still lives in 1713.
The other foundation stone of Spain?s attempts to deprive us of this most fundamental of human rights, our right to self determination, is the spurious claim that there is some Territorial Dispute Doctrine, purportedly invented by this Committee, which overrides the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenants on Political and Social Rights and the long established international jurisprudence on decolonisation and self determination now universally accepted as ?jus cojens? namely, principles of law which cannot be overridden. Jurisprudence which Spain denies exists but is afraid to test in Court.
Allow me Mr Chairman to debunk the Spanish argument once and for all.
Senor Virella told the Seminar that since 1964 the UN Mandate of this Committee has been that Gibraltar has to be decolonised on whatever terms the administering power and Spain agree between themselves. On 16th October 1964 His Excellency Alberto Virella was 4 months old, if he had been a Gibraltarian, he would probably have been affectionately known as Albertito. His present understanding of what you said then, is therefore based, entirely, on hearsay.
I was 25 years old and became politically involved in the movement for Gibraltar?s decolonisation, inspired to do so by the positive conclusion you reached in 1964.
This Committee affirmed that the Decolonization Declaration applied fully to our country but merely noted the existence of a disagreement between UK and Spain.
This is the so called 1964 mandate. Not the Spanish version repeated for 45 years, on the well known premise that if you repeat a lie often enough it gets accepted as the truth.
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