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Tussling over islands

19th August 2016

By: Riaan de Lange

  

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One of my first memories of when I first came to Pretoria many years ago is that of Fook Island. I recall that my cousin’s boyfriend stayed in a commune just off Atterbury road and, just up the road from the commune, at the corner of Mackenzie street and 20th street, was a house with extracts of the language of Fook Island scribbled on its garden wall. If I am correct, the house is now the Battiss guesthouse. Unfortunately, the Fook Island extracts have long been painted over. What a shame!

So, have you ever heard of Fook Island? Well, Fook Island is an ‘island of the imagination’. It is a figment of the imagination of a certain Walter Whall Battiss, a South African artist who was considered by many to be the country’s foremost abstract painter. But his endeavours were not a fleeting flight of fancy – he created a map of this fictitious island as well as imaginary people, plants, animals, a history, a set of postage stamps, a currency, passports and even driver’s licences. He also created a Fookian language with a full alphabet. Battiss himself said: “It is something that does not exist. I thought that I would take an island – the island that is inside all of us. I would turn this island into a real thing. . . I would give it a name.”

He created Fook Island in opposition to the Conceptualist Art movement of the 60s and 70s in Europe and the US, whose proponents believed that the construction of art was confined to the ‘moment’ in which it was created. Battiss held the contrary belief that all art exists in the now, and this he sought to represent with Fook Island, which “was always in the now and always an essential part of reality”. Several other prominent South Africans embraced the philosophy of Fook Island and became its honorary ‘residents’.

A last word on Fook Island – apparently, Battiss’s Fookian driver’s licence was accepted in the US, the colourful pages of his Fookian passport have official stamps from Australia, Great Britain and Germany, and a Fookian banknote was exchanged in Italy for $10.

In recent weeks, two islands were in the news for quite different reasons. One of the islands is called Senkaku or Diaoyu, depending on whether you are of Japanese or Chinese origin, while the other is called Hans.

Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam and Taiwan have all, wholly or in part, laid claim to Senkaku/Diaoyu, which, technically, is a collection of two island chains in the East China Sea, also known as the Paracels and the Spratlys. It is understood that, alongside these islands, there are dozens of rocky outcrops, atolls, sandbanks and reefs, such as the Scarborough Shoal. Even though these islands are largely uninhabited, they might well be endowed with substantial natural resources. In addition, the sea is also a major shipping route and its fishing grounds account for the livelihoods of many people across the region.

According to The Japan Times of July 15, in a case brought by the Philippines against China’s aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea, including massive land reclamation in this disputed territory, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which is based in The Hague, ruled overwhelmingly in favour of Manila. China has been actively erecting military installations on the islands. As could be expected, China has reacted angrily against the decision, declaring that it “will not accept the ruling.”

The ruling, which was based on the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea and is legally binding but does not carry penalties, is final and cannot be appealed. According to the ruling of July 13, “there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line’”.

Global television channel CNN reported on July 21 that a group of Taiwanese lawmakers had visited a disputed region of the South China Sea just a week after an international court declared it simply a ‘rock’. The group visited military facilities and other installations. Taipei’s interest in the matter is that it wanted the PCA to declare the territory an ‘island’ under international law, granting Taiwan a 200 m economic exclusive zone, which would have given Taipei control over all resources within the area. However, the court instead declared it legally a ‘rock’, which provides no economic benefits and has led Taipei to declare the ruling void, a rare point of agreement with Beijing.

The dispute regarding Hans Island could not be more different to the dispute regarding the Paracels and the Spratlys. Similar to these islands, Hans Island is uninhabited. It is half a square mile in area and, bizarrely, seemingly does not boast any apparent natural resources.

So, who would want title to such an island? Well, since the early 1930s, an ongoing disagreement has been raging between Canada and Denmark. It is understood that Hans Island is located in the middle of the 22-mile-wide Nares Strait, which separates Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, from Canada. According to international law, all countries have the right to claim territory within 12 miles of their shore. So, Hans Island is technically located in both Danish and Canadian waters. However, in 1933, the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations ruled that Hans Island was a territory of Denmark. As you would no doubt recall, the League of Nations fell apart in the 1930s and was replaced by the UN. So, the ruling on the status of Hans Island carries little to no weight.

Having faded from memory owing to the World War II and then the Cold War, the tussle resumed in 1984, when Denmark’s Minister of Greenland Affairs visited Hans Island and planted a Danish flag. At the base of the flag, he left a note stating: ‘Welcome to the Danish island’, along with a bottle of Danish brandy. This sparked the not-quite-serious ‘whiskey war’ over Hans Island. It is said that, when the Canadians subsequently visited Hans Island, they replaced the Danish brandy with Canadian Club whisky and a sign stating: ‘Welcome to Canada’. The practice of the exchange of whisky continues to this day. This is an example of ‘countries fighting nicely’. Apparently, a plan is afoot that could turn Hans Island into a shared territory that would be jointly managed by the Canadian and Danish municipalities bordering it.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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