The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2758, expelling the ROC and recognizing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the only legitimate representative of China to the UN. Subsequently, the ROC (aka Taiwan) has been isolated from the international system, recognized diplomatically by a dwindling number of mostly small states. At the last count, just twenty-two UN member states agreed that Taiwan was a country. One hundred and seventy-two others did not. Nonetheless, many of the latter group maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan, through trade or cultural bureaux that function suspiciously like embassies.
Mainland China continues to claim sovereignty over Taiwan, its twenty-third province, despite Taiwan’s own democratic government, its twenty-three million people and its highly industrialized economy. The feeling is mutual. Taiwan’s constitution formally claims sovereignty over mainland China. Bizarrely, the fact that Taiwan does not actively pursue its claim over the mainland has created the greatest political paradox of all. If Taiwan officially withdrew its territorial claim over mainland China, to match the real-world situation, many believe the government in Beijing would view it as a declaration of independence, and respond with considerable force.
TIBET
The spiritual leader of Tibet fled in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
Nobody crossed the mountain pass in winter. The snow was too deep. But this was an emergency, so every man and woman in the village worked through the night to clear the way for his escape route.
It was March, the third Tibetan lunar month, 1959. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama had left Lhasa in secret more than a week earlier. As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army began firing artillery shells at his palace, he rode away on a horse under cover of darkness. China’s official explanation was that he had been kidnapped by bandits.
Following a course prescribed by an oracle, His Holiness arrived in the village of Tsona dressed in a brown knitted cap and wearing dark glasses against the snow-glare. He spent the night in the village monastery, where strings of coloured prayer flags stretched from the compound’s mud walls up to the biscuit-coloured cliffs behind. He conducted evening prayers and meditation among the flickering yak butter lamps and old silk wall hangings while outside, high in the pass, the villagers stamped the snow down so the horses could cross.
A half-moon was floating in a perfect blue sky when he departed next morning, the residents of Tsona following his entourage saying prayers as they went. The perpetual parade moved in a constant hum generated by the muttering of mantras. People living along the wayside emerged from their homes to make prostrations as the horses struggled past. The route over the Himalayan mountains was precipitous and rocky, slippery and dangerous.
Over the pass, down through a forest and beyond, the spiritual leader of Tibet was offered asylum in India. The Dalai Lama settled in the city of Dharamsala, he and his followers moulding an area now known as Little Lhasa. And so began more than half a century of exile.
TUVA
Independent from 1921 until 1944, when it requested incorporation into the Soviet Union.
Salchak Toka was a man with a mission. On graduation from Moscow’s communist University of the Toilers of the East in 1929, he was keen to drag his homeland into the modern world. By following Soviet principles, his country – deep in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched by the might of Russia and China – could make the transition from feudalism straight to socialism, bypassing capitalism along the way. Toka became General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Tuvan People’s Revolutionary Party and set to work.
He made sure that Russians were granted full citizenship rights and traditional Tuvan religions systematically suppressed. Nomadic herding, the mainstay of Tuvan culture and livelihoods, was replaced by Soviet-style collective farms, while the Tibetan-Mongol script was discarded in favour of the Cyrillic alphabet. Toka won a Stalin Prize for a novel about herding, which some suggested he did not write, and received seven Orders of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. But Toka’s most significant contribution was still to come.
It is 1944. Toka visits Moscow as the German army approaches the Soviet capital. He submits a petition requesting Tuva’s admission to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But war is being waged across the globe, and no one outside the Soviet world takes any notice. It is 1946 before they do, when Toka speaks on Soviet radio. He describes how his formerly independent country has been ‘graciously accepted’ by the Supreme Soviet. In the USSR, the press begins a campaign to popularize their new member. Rather than marking the second anniversary of Tuvan accession, it transpires that this is in fact the twenty-ninth anniversary: Russia’s great October socialist revolution of 1917 is the key date that delivers on Tuva’s ‘century-old yearning for liberty and happiness’.
RYUKYU
Also known as Okinawa
Formerly independent kingdom seeking secession from Japan.
Dr Yasukatsu Matsushima leaned across the conference table and with great ceremony passed a document to the man from the foreign ministry. In doing so, he made the first direct request to the Japanese government. As co-founder of an academic society for research into Ryukyuan independence, Dr Matsushima had just initiated what he intended to be an historic chain of events.
A major focus of Ryukyu’s discontent revolves around the continued presence of US military bases on Okinawa, the main island in the Ryukyu archipelago. The bases are jointly administered by the Japanese and American governments, but neither side takes much notice of the local viewpoint. The once-independent Ryukyu islands were seized by Imperial Japan in the late nineteenth century and were devastated when US troops invaded in 1945, losing over a third of their population in the fighting. The Americans kept the islands afterwards, requisitioning land to build huge military facilities on Okinawa before finally returning the archipelago to Japan in 1972. But they hung on to the bases, which still occupy about one-fifth of the island.
Calls by Ryukyuan people to remove the Americans are routinely ignored by central government, but an independent Ryukyu could eliminate the military bases herself. Dr Matsushima and colleagues have built a strong legal case for a return to self-rule, based on careful research. The document passed to the foreign ministry on that damp afternoon in February 2015 protested that the forced annexation of Ryukyu was an obvious violation of international law and demanded that the colonization cease immediately.
The softly spoken professor of economics also asked for some documents in return: originals of three treaties between Ryukyu Kingdom and the USA, France and the Netherlands, signed with each country during the 1850s. These proved beyond doubt, he said, that Ryukyu was a sovereign nation at the time it was annexed.
MOROC-SONGHRATI-MEADS
Also known as the Spratly Islands
Declared an independent kingdom in the 1870s by a British naval captain whose descendants have continued to dispute ownership of its islands with China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
On Tuesday 5 July 1955, THE AGE, an Australian newspaper, ran the following story.
PLANES SEARCH FOR MYSTERIOUS ISLAND MANILA, JULY 4 – THE PHILIPPINE AIR FORCE IS SEARCHING THE SOUTH CHINA SEA FOR A MYSTERIOUS ISLAND SETTLEMENT CALLED THE ‘KINGDOM OF HUMANITY’.
THE PHILIPPINES PRESIDENT (MR RAMON MAGSAYSAY) SAID ON SUNDAY THAT HE WANTED TO KNOW WHETHER SUCH A PLACE ACTUALLY EXISTED. IF IT DOES, MR MAGSAYSAY WANTS TO DETERMINE WHETHER IT IS A LEGITIMATE SETTLEMENT WITHIN TERRITORIAL PHILIPPINES WATERS OR A CLANDESTINE BASE FOR SMUGGLERS AND COMMUNIST AGENTS.
SO FAR, THE ONLY FIRST-HAND DESCRIPTION OF THE ‘KINGDOM’ HAS COME FROM AN AMERICAN WHO CALLS HIMSELF ‘CONSUL FOR THE SOVEREIGN’. MR MORTON F. MEADS, AGED 33, TOLD THE COMMANDER OF THE PHILIPPINES AIR FORCE, BRIGADIER-GENERAL PELAGIO CRUZ, THAT THE ‘HUMANITY’ SETTLEMENT HAS A POPULATION OF 3,400 INCLUDING CHINESE, AMERICANS, FRENCH, INDONESIANS, MALAYANS AND JAPANESE.
Meads traced his ancestry to James George Meads, master of the B
ritish ship MODESTE, who in 1877 laid claim to an archipelago on behalf of the world’s downtrodden and persecuted. Meads dedicated the island nation to a peaceful existence and proclaimed himself King James I.
Morton Meads enlisted in the US army during World War II as the best way to fight for his country against the occupying Japanese force, and was cited for bravery in official dispatches. Since the war, the Philippines has not been the only country sniffing around Moroc-Songhrati-Meads, whose seabed contains rich deposits of oil and natural gas. In June 1972, Morton Meads led a delegation bound for the United Nations in New York to plead his nation’s case against the region’s bullies.
They never arrived. Tragedy struck when their ship, the E PLURIBUS UNUM, was sunk by Category 1 Typhoon Ora off the Filipino coast. There was just one survivor: Morton Meads.
BANGSAMORO
Predominantly Muslim enclave in the southern Philippines.
The snipers were hidden in the coconut palms. They’d been waiting every night for a week, since the drones started flying over the village, keeping the children awake. Now they could see armed men approaching on foot across the maize fields.
By the end of the shooting, at least sixty-seven people were dead. Most were Filipino special police officers on a mission to arrest suspected terrorists early that Sunday morning. The police ran low on ammunition and called the army for reinforcements, which didn’t arrive. The government called it a ‘misencounter’. The media called it a massacre.
The village of Mamasapano is on the island of Mindanao, cornerstone of Moro Muslim territory. The Moros have a history of armed resistance to outside rule, beginning with the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Many historians consider the Spanish-Moro War to be the world’s longest anti-colonial struggle. It lasted 333 years. The fight against the Spanish was followed by the fight against the Americans and then, in turn, the Japanese. The war of independence against the Philippine state is just the latest phase of a 400-year-long national liberation movement for the Moro nation, or Bangsamoro. This is a Muslim–Christian conflict with very deep roots.
All of which was supposed to have been resolved in 2014 with the signing of an historic peace agreement. The creation of Bangsamoro, a new autonomous political entity, had been accepted in lieu of full independence. At last the poorest region in the Philippines had a chance to reverse its stunted growth. But the signal for an end to the unrelenting conflict had not been received by all. The Mamasapano massacre of January 2015 left forty-four police officers dead, the worst disaster for Filipino forces in decades. Another sad chapter in a war that was supposed to be over.
WEST PAPUA
Former Dutch territory annexed by Indonesia in 1963.
Many believe that Theys Eluay was buried without his heart. It had been removed and sent away for analysis, they say, because the authorities thought he died of a heart attack. With or without it, he was buried at the local football ground. Twenty thousand people stood in the stifling heat to bid him farewell.
Mr Eluay was an unlikely independence hero, having once been a champion of integration with Indonesia. At the end of colonization in the early 1960s, the Dutch left and the Indonesians took over, promising West Papua a plebiscite on their future before the decade was out. When it came, the referendum took an unusual form. Eluay was one of just 1,025 tribal leaders hand-picked by the Indonesian government to represent nearly a million Papuans. To a man, the tribal leaders all voted to remain part of Indonesia. Years afterwards, Mr Eluay said the so-called Act of Free Choice had not felt particularly free.
Only much later did Eluay actively support independence. For a few short years his charismatic leadership appeared to unnerve the authorities. At the time of his death in 2001, he was free only on bail, charged with rebellion. The police cited a pro-independence gathering at his home and his role in a flag-raising ceremony. Flying the West Papuan ‘Morning Star’ flag in public still attracts a prison sentence of up to fifteen years.
They found his body the day after he attended a reception at the local headquarters of Kopassus, the Indonesian army’s Special Forces. At 10 o’clock that night, Mr Eluay’s driver made a distressed call to Eluay’s home saying that his boss had been abducted. As the driver was speaking, the phone was cut off. The driver was never seen again. Seven Kopassus officers were convicted of Eluay’s murder; the longest sentence was three years.
MINERVA
Libertarian republic declared in 1972 on reclaimed land above a submerged Pacific atoll.
The old King of Tonga was no shrinking violet. At his peak, Taufa’ahau Tupou IV weighed in at 35 stone and was, according to the GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS, the world’s heaviest sovereign: the largest king of the smallest kingdom. His Majesty was a jovial man, the benign ruler of a country known since the days of Captain Cook as the Friendly Islands.
But on 15 June 1972, His Majesty was feeling far from friendly. Months earlier, two nearby submerged reefs had been built up from concrete and coral blocks into very small islands by an international libertarian society, and declared the Republic of Minerva. The reefs had long served as fishing grounds for the Tongan people, and so it was that the king set off to reclaim his territory. He boarded the Tonga Shipping Company’s vessel OLOVAHA, a former English ferryboat that used to ply the waters between Penzance and the Scilly Isles. With the royal standard flying from its mast, His Majesty filled the small boat with dignitaries in traditional tree-bark mats, worn around the waist, a platoon of soldiers in full dress uniform and the police brass band.
Two days later, at both South and North Minerva, the OLOVAHA’s lifeboats were launched while the king remained aboard. But the final stretch before each island was too shallow, forcing the splendid royal entourage to wade ashore across the coral.
The Minervan flag was duly removed, hymns sung and prayers said. A royal proclamation was read as police and military stood, still dripping, to attention. A bugle sounded and, from across the water, the brass band played the national anthem. Tonga’s red and white ensign was slowly raised and the soldiers fired a salute. The landfill project that had briefly become a republic was no more, now officially claimed part of the Kingdom of Tonga.
MURRAWARRI
Aboriginal people that never ceded sovereignty over their ancient homeland.
They gave her four weeks to prove her case. How was it, they wanted to know, that Queen Elizabeth II of England, as constitutional monarch of Australia, had the right to govern Murrawarri? As far as they understood the matter, a country can claim authority over another territory in one of just three ways: by winning a war, signing a treaty, or occupying previously unoccupied land. No one in Murrawarri remembered signing a treaty, nor fighting a war. And they had been living there for longer than anyone could remember. Certainly long before the appearance of Europeans.
Look at the fish traps down at Brewarrina. Nobody knows how many centuries they’ve been there, but they may be 40,000 years old: the most ancient human construction in the world. It is said those rocks were positioned by Baiame, god of the Muruwari tribe, creator of everything. He designed those traps for local people during a time of drought, by casting his great net across the creek. The rock walls and stone pens mimic the pattern of his net along 400 metres of the river bed.
Murray cod, callop, catfish and silver perch could be herded and caught, during high and low flows alike, thanks to the stone traps. Steeped in legend and imbued with spiritual meaning, this was a bountiful spot in the dry scrub plain, one of the great inter-tribal meeting places of eastern Australia.
What then of that English monarch who would rule these prehistoric people? A month had passed and her time was up; answer came there none. For the people of Murrawarri, this resounding silence was tantamount to recognizing them as an independent nation. So in March 2013 the Murrawarri issued a declaration of the continuance of the state of their nation, a fundamental challenge to more than 200 years of colonial rule.
VEMERANA
Libertarian island republic briefly independent in 1980.
Four years in Nazi concentration camps had taught Michael Oliver all he needed to know about authoritarianism and the nation state. Although by now a naturalized US citizen, and a very wealthy one at that, he could still spot the signs of nascent repression. Capitalism in the USA wasn’t quite as unfettered as he preferred. So he established the Phoenix Foundation to aid his pursuit of the ultimate libertarian state.
Enter Jimmy Stevens, one-time bulldozer operator, now full-time leader of a magico-religious cult. He had political aspirations for his homeland, the South Pacific island of Espiritu Santo, and they slotted neatly into Mr Oliver’s agenda. Mr Stevens did a nice line in flamboyant oratory and liked to be known as Moses. In 1980, his island was part of an Anglo-French condominium heading for independence but Mr Stevens, with a little help from the Phoenix Foundation, had his own ideas.
An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist Page 6
