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South Sudan v Kosovo: secession, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity : Comments
By Sam Vaknin, published 18/7/2011What are the borders between insurgent and state actor?
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Maybe decades-long campaigns of ethnic cleansing and mass murder against an 'insurgent' group might kick things along, plus a ninety per cent-plus support by the people for secession, plus major cultural and other differences between them and a dominating overlord, which assumes it has some divine right to do what it likes with the 'insurgent' people.
Barring a people's language from use in the bureaucracy and at universities might give the impression that they are not really part of the country. If the dominating group clearly doesn't want to recognise equal rights of 'insurgent' groups, then what are they to do ? Put up with situations " .... where a definable group is denied meaningful access to government to pursue their political, economic, social, and cultural development..." forever ?
So maybe the question could be turned around: how can you expect people who are so vilely mistreated (in Kosovo since 1929? In South Sudan, since the fifties, if not for untold centuries) and discriminated against in every way NOT to seek to go their own way ?
Sovereignty should come from the people, not the rulers (cf. democracy vs. the Chinese model). The people of Kosovo and of South Sudan were given the chance to exercise their free choice, and they chose to secede by votes of ninety seven and ninety eight per cent. Or should they have been dictated to by the two per cent who wanted to maintain the status quo ?
The imperialist impulse dies very hard. I'm sure there are still Indonesians who think that East Timor should be part of Indonesia, Russians who think that Georgia should remain part of a neo-Tsarist empire - even English who think that Ireland should have remained part of the British Empire. The days of such reactionary ideas are well and truly over and it is up to those believers to get used to it - it's not up to the 'insurgent' people to have toexplain equality, choice and democracy to them.
Joe