Ms Xue is a former Chinese Communist Party official, serving as director general of the department of treaty and law in China’s foreign ministry. She became China’s ambassador to the Netherlands and then to the Association of South-east Asian Nations.
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One of the international judges who ruled against Britain over the Chagos Islands is a former Chinese government official who backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.In 2019, as vice-president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Xue Hanqin ruled that the UK should give the islands to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible”.
Hermer, Starmer etc are acting as if international law is as independent – ahem, ahem – as our own High Court.
Is that a useful assumption?
To misquote the left’s favourite mass-murdering dictator, “How many divisions does ‘international law’ have?”
Now the Left has lost the EU as an unelected enforcer, they need “international law” even more 🙁
They’re acting like the Chagos Islands are some sort of ticking bomb that they have to get rid of at all costs this very second. Nobody quite knows why but I’m not inclined to give TTK the benefit of the doubt.
Our own judiciary is hardly independent. It’s stuffed full of activist judges, like Hugo Norton-Taylor ruling that Gazans can come to the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme.
International law is what international lawyers determine it to be. It exists and is real, but only in their arguments. The more international law we have, the richer they become.
As if we don’t already have enough trouble from the ropers, the PLO / Hamas / Hizbollah will soon be setting up shop and doing to the UK what they have done to Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait. Oh, and ‘palestine’.
Yet there are still people who wonder why the other arab states want nothing to do with them…..
Isn’t the Chagos deal rather transparently TTK and his mate Phil securing the world’s biggest pension scheme? £18,000,000,000 goes a long way. Perhaps there’s a bit of rivalry between TTK and Sir Anthony Charles Lynton as to whose got the most pocket money…
The majority verdict she supported effectively forced the UK to begin negotiations over the archipelago, which hosts a joint US-UK military base.
“Forced”.
International law’s a joke isn’t it? Nations only abide by it if it suits them or they’re so weak it can be enforced on them by the powerful. It has as much legitimacy as the Mafia Code.
BiS – it’s the twat kids from the debating club, trying to take over the world with their effeminate word games. Gulliver wept.
Easily stopped with an actual club, made of stout oak or lacquered bone.
I thought you favoured a bible on a stick.
Not sure how TTK benefits from this deal directly, it’s not like he’s going to retire there. I can see how it damages Britain, which is probably enough for him to like it.
The speed it’s being done at is very strange. Weird how fast they move when it’s something they want compared to something we want.
So long as it has sufficient mass it’ll do the job. It’s the thought that counts.
Do you think we might be approaching peak Boomer legal progressivism? After all, the class of ’68 all have to die out like the rest of us.
Martin, it’s like the TSR-2s and their jigs being destroyed the day it was decided to stop the programme. Same for the Nimrod MR4. Same with demolishing power stations. It’s to make sure the decision can’t be reversed.
The speed is still all about beating Trump.
Norman – Do you think we might be approaching peak Boomer legal progressivism? After all, the class of ’68 all have to die out like the rest of us.
Day of the Pillow when?
From Hobbes to H L A Hart, law is the enforceable command of a sovereign entity. Ergo, international law is not law, but merely an attempt to derive some rules from existing treaties, conventions, declarations, etc.
What’s the going rate for buying sovereignty? If agriculture land is £10000ha, and land with full development rights is 50* that. Area of Chagos varies with sea level but around 63km2, so maximum price around £3.15bn. Could agree no sea bed development.
But there’s no legal way of working it out, and you can’t use markets.
But who would you buy it from – anyone with a Chagos born grandparent perhaps and tell Mauritius they get SFA.
I understand that Mauritius is advertising itself as an ideal place for British retirees to move to. Perhaps learning Mandarin would also be beneficial?
The Chagos would be a great place to send all our illegals.
I still prefer South Georgia as an option, though
Perhaps learning Mandarin would also be beneficial?
Curiously, French is a better option, it is more widely spoken than English in Mauritius despite the UK having nicked it off Napoleon in 1815. That or the local creole.
Since the islands were uninhabited before the Frogs took ’em over, the French are surely the indigenous inhabitants.
So they are the ones who should be given the Chagos Archipelago. Not the slaves they dumped there later.
– The speed is still all about beating Trump.
Which is odd, as Trump already holds the relevant island and easily controls the rest. All he needs to do is publicly express his disgruntlement at the UK breaking the current arrangement and Starmer will fold like the very flacid thing he is. But it would be much more fun if Trump just took ownership for the USA as a fuck you.
It is interesting that a Chinese representative would order giving the islands back to earlier inhabitants. Given the situation in the South China Sea, I would have thought the CCP wouldn’t want to set a legal precedent there.
PJF, I think we may see a clash between the “modern” USA – all about power – and the “postmodern rules-based New Progressive World Order” – all about rules as they make them up. I wonder which will win? Given the Diego Garcia base is “joint US-UK” (oh yeah?), the Yanks have possession and it’s stuffed with military equipment in a very convenient place to defend itself, I think the odds must be very short.
The Mauritians are in line for about $10,000 per person. I imagine they are quite keen to get their hands on the money, even if it will be very unevenly distributed.
However, it won’t happen. 1. We don’t have billions to piss away. 2. If we did, our voters would revolt. 3. Trump won’t allow it.
It’s just another advance fee fraud cooked up by TTK and his international lawyer pals.
. . . “joint US-UK” (oh yeah?) . . .
We do have a permanent military presence there; about 40 RN and RM personel as a Naval Party. Mostly covering admin, customs and fisheries protection. A token affair.
“Given the situation in the South China Sea, I would have thought the CCP wouldn’t want to set a legal precedent there.”
Do you think the CCP would follow any precedent unfavorable to them?
It’s all about setting precedents for those inclined to follow them, or able to get an income urging their fellow citizens to follow them, e.g. TTK and his law practice.
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the (human rights) lawyers.”
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113991956474899296
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/02/12/us-cannot-protect-europe-pentagon-chief-tells-nato-allies/
Paywall free of above:
https://archive.ph/nOjN0
Looks like Ukraine and Europe under the bus.
Major, proper war here in five years. Bugger.
@PJF
Only if we keep provoking the neighbours.
I can well see why the US wants to leave the EU to it.
Fed up paying for Ursula von der Karen’s battalion of Broomsticktroopers and the UK’s hopeless navy of two white elephants “LST”s with no defence fleet, and flying off a couple of shortrange flying pianos.
If they ever get the carriers to leave port without breaking down, Putin must quail in his boots, he’ll be laughing so loud.
It’s probably time the UK and the EU stopped pretending it’s still the 1950s and started learning to live with the neighbours. They have gas!
There won’t be any war here in five years, at least not with Russia. Civil war, possibly.
@Tim the Coder – February 12, 2025 at 8:19 pm
It’s probably time the UK and the EU stopped pretending it’s still the 1950s and started learning to live with the neighbours. They have gas!
So have we! Unfortunately the twats in charge at the moment won’t let us extract it!