Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The attribution of the Malvinas Islands, also known as the Falkland Islands, is a historical problem left over by Western colonists. The US, France, Britain and Spain have all controlled the archipelago in the past. Britain has occupied the territory, which is claimed by Argentina, since 1833. In March 2016, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf issued a ruling that confirms the extension of Argentina's maritime territory to include the archipelago.

On April 16, 2012, The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, reiterated his well-established and unconditional support for a peaceful resolution to the demand by Argentina for sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, as was also expressed unanimously by the General Assembly of the OAS. Both the US and Canada are members of the OAS. 

Nonetheless, the UK has refused to negotiate with Argentina over the islands' sovereignty dispute. London is trying to preserve the unjust interests it gained in the colonial era through continuous occupation.

As is known to all, the colonial powers suppressed weak countries by force, plundered local resources and forced these weaker countries to become their own colonies. Today, no matter how hard the colonists are trying to tamper with the history and gloss over the role of colonization in the modernization drive, they cannot change the facts. The European colonists never cared about the most basic rights - not the survival and development - of the oppressed nations. Instead, they only looted and plundered of wealth and also forced labor. 

The colonial history is the darkest, most savage and most brutal page in modern world history. In the vast areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the period of colonial rule by the West is the darkest chapter in their individual national and collective continental histories. 

With the collective awakening of the colonized people, the old international system was challenged. Besides, dragged down by two world wars, Britain was unable to maintain a huge colonial empire. After WWII, the UK took the opportunity to hold moral high ground and claimed it operated with "freedom and justice." This gives it the veneer of legitimacy to make rules for the world.  

Under such a guise of moral superiority, colonists, including the UK, have continued their colonial plunder through globalization, using their old colonies as origins of cheap labor and raw materials. Britain has cultivated some proxies in its colonies in a bid to create space for it to continue to interfere in the internal affairs of those colonies. Today, in many hot spots of international politics, the continuous social unrest and the suffering of local people are a scourge that was deliberately planted by the British colonists when they left - poisoning the well in retreat. 

Britain's consistent behavior regarding the Malvinas Islands reminds the world that this power is in decline. Yet it arrogantly prides itself on "defending world order" and "assuming international responsibility." It remains as brazen as ever. 

The UK then continued to hijack the norm of UN's decolonization mechanisms. This is why it has kept the archipelago on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1946 by making a parallel reservation - and in so doing not recognizing Argentine sovereignty in these islands during the General Assembly. 

But the UK has been reluctant to push forward the solution of this sovereignty dispute through peaceful negotiations. In 2013, the UK even carried out a "farcical" referendum that, according to a Guardian column article, "fools no body [as] it amounts to a rigged ballot," trying to show UK's legitimacy in occupying the islands. 

Similarly, the UK in 2019 ignored a deadline to return control of an overseas territory - the Chagos Archipelago - to Mauritius, and has thus been called an illegal colonial occupier by the island nation. However, two years passed and the UK still hasn't let Chagos islanders return home; even though international courts say the archipelago belongs to Mauritius, not the UK.

Moreover, the UK that has been blaming other countries for violating rule of law and breaking orders. Such a double standard is quite absurd. 

Whatever the UK's claims over the Malvinas Islands are, they cannot change Argentina's sovereignty over the archipelago. Nor the fact that Britain is the vicious colonist.

Nonetheless, even the evidence is crystal-clear: Argentina's legitimate rights are yet to be protected. This shows a reality that a colonial mentality is still haunting the world even though the colonial system collapsed a long time ago. Worse still, the offspring of many colonists still have an illusion that they can do whatever they want for their own selfish desires just like their ancestors did. This is done even at the expense of other countries' sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is also done by bringing grave disasters to the world, regardless of the costs. 

Today, more and more countries that were once oppressed by colonialism have come to Argentina's side and supported its territorial sovereignty. This is an insistence for justice and occasion completely eradicating colonialism from the world as soon as possible.

The author is executive director of the Ibero-America Law Center of China University of Political Science and Law. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn