Yesterday I responded on Twitter to Guy Verhofstadt leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and since September 2016, Verhofstadt was named the European Parliament's representative on matters relating to rexit
Am I on my own in thinking.What of Catalonia? Is Self-Determination from a brutal regime only valid in one case 50 years ago? Or is it a right of all to seek it?
- There's no need to criticise anyone, what we were talking about was if it is illegal in Spain to seek to separate from the country, which it is, contrary to international law. So how are the Catalans supposed to have a referendum when the Spanish ban a vote? @CataloniaHelp2
- The argument that the Catalonia Referendum was never going to be legitimate is one those of us who backed and (still do) face all the time
- This from Wikepedia explains why under International law Catalonia has a right to seek Independence,
The right of a people to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (commonly regarded as a jus cogens rule), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms.[1][2] It states that a people, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference.[3]The concept was first expressed in the 1860s, and spread rapidly thereafter.[4][5] During and after World War I, the principle was encouraged by both Vladimir Lenin and United States President Woodrow Wilson.[4][5] Having announced his Fourteen Points on 8 January 1918, on 11 February 1918 Wilson stated: "National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. 'Self determination' is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action."[6]During World War II, the principle was included in the Atlantic Charter, signed on 14 August 1941, by Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who pledged The Eight Principal points of the Charter.[7] It was recognised as an international legal right after it was explicitly listed as a right in the UN Charter.[8]The principle does not state how the decision is to be made, nor what the outcome should be, whether it be independence, federation, protection, some form of autonomy or full assimilation.[9] Neither does it state what the delimitation between peoples should be—nor what constitutes a people. There are conflicting definitions and legal criteria for determining which groups may legitimately claim the right to self-determination.
Spain is therefore breaking International Law in denying Catalonia this right,to seek Self-determination through a referendum.
- There are those like former Labour Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary under Blair Jack Straw who after the Scottish Referendum argued that ...
Now that Scotland has decisively spoken, after a campaign whose terms were set by the SNP for itself, we should follow the example of stable federated countries (the US and India, for example) and say: “This Union is now indissoluble.”
How diffrent is the views of Straw and Spanish counterparts to those On 3 August 1968 representatives from the "Warsaw Five" and Czechoslovakia Who met met in Bratislava and signed the Bratislava Declaration. The declaration affirmed unshakable fidelity to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and declared an implacable struggle against "bourgeois" ideology and all "anti-socialist" forces. The Soviet Union expressed its intention to intervene in a Warsaw Pact country if a "bourgeois" system—a pluralist system of several political parties representing different factions of the capitalist class
It is perhaps Ironic that it was in the former Czechoslovakia that the Velvet Divorce was the unofficial name given to the separation of Czechoslovakia into Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the early 1990s, earned because of the peaceful manner in which it was achieved.- 1968 saw a dark legality based on the power of Tanks and Guns which saw one of the most disgraceful attacks on the right of self-determination and in Czechoslovakia and in 1993 with the Velvet divorce on how to resolve the issue peacefully.
- Lets hope that we can copy 1993 and not either 1968 or last years events in Catalonia and when it comes for Scotland and eventually Wales to leave the Union then it will done recognising Internal law.
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