Articles with the Tag Chagos Islanders

Nature: the latest excuse to deny Chagos Islanders their home

Environment, Imperialism, UK politics
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Seven years ago already I first read about what had happened to the Chagos Islanders, kicked out of their home so the US could have their Diego Garcia base there. The inhabitants were a security risk you see. The Ilois, as they call themselves, were therefore dumped in Mauritius, with many of them eventually settling in the UK as well. Over the years and then decades they have always fought for their right to return home, against succesive British governments, both Labour and Tory and in recent years they actually started winning their legal battles. Unfortunately, getting their claims honoured in courts and getting the UK government to do the same is not the same thing… Again, both Labour and Tory governments have done everything to stop or delay their return.

And the latest trick the current government is trying now might be the dirtiest: turning the Islands into a nature reserve:

This week the British government, backed by nine of the world’s largest environment and science bodies, including the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Royal Society, the RSPB and Greenpeace, is expected to signal that the 210,000 sq km area around the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean will become the world’s largest marine reserve. If it does, all fishing, collection of corals and hunting for turtles and other wildlife will be banned across an area twice the size of the British isles.

The Ilois of course protested:

Today, Chagossian supporters accused the government of duplicity. “The British government’s plan for a marine protected area is a grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country,” said Ram Seegobin, of the Mauritian party Lalit de Klas, in a letter to Greenpeace seen by the Guardian. “The conservation groups have fallen into a trap. They are being used by the government to prevent us returning,” said Evenor.

They were backed by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights group Reprieve, who has challenged the UK government on the use of Diego Garcia by the US to render suspected terrorists. “The truth is that no Chagossian has anything like equal rights with even the warty sea slug. There is no sense that the British government will let them go back. The government is not even contemplating equal rights for Chagossians and sea slugs.”

The environmental groups supporting the proposal of course deny they’re part of a greenwash, but it is typical of the divide on the left that they could allow themselves to be used this way. They’ve only looked at their own interests and didn’t consider the islanders until they were forced to.

Chagos islanders win court victory

Civil liberties, Imperialism, UK politics
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Three years ago I wrote about the plight of the Chagos islanders, who were kicked out of their archipelo back in the sixties to make way for the enormous US military base of Diego Garcia, located on the largest island of the Chagos archipelo. The Chagos islands were then and still are now a colony of the UK and it was the UK government who forcibly removed, “compensated” and dumped the inhabitants, the Ilois, in Mauritius, recently made independent. That would’ve been the end of it, if not for the incredible determination of the Ilois, who are still fighting for the right to return to their islands.

And that right came a step closer this week when they won a High Court judgment, which ruled that their removal was illegal. However, since it also granted the government the right to appeal, this is not the end of it. Also, even if this judgment is not appealed against, there are still other hurdles for them to jump through: the US has already stated it will not allow any of the islanders to return no matter what the UK courts decide…

The sordid history behind Diego Garcia

Imperialism, UK politics, War on Terror
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Diego Garcia is an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean, part of the Chagos Archipelago, home to one of the most important US military overseas bases, from which e.g. B-52 bombing missions were launched against Afghanistan and Iraq. Diego Garcia is not an US possession though, but is leased from the United Kingdom, starting from 1971. The US needed a secure base in the Indian Ocean, both to counter Soviet moves as well as to establish a secure intelligence post there.

At the time when the US first started showing interest into establishing a base in the Indian Ocean in the early 1960ties, the Chagos Archipelago was part of the British colony of Mauritius, which was on the brink of independence. The UK offered Mauritius their freedom, as well as 3 million UK pounds if they gave up their claim to the Chagos islands. Having done so, the UK then incorperated them as well as some other islands into the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT. This was then quietly, without debate in Parliament, leased out to the Americans for fifty years, in order for them to built their base. In return, the US offered a $11 million subsidiy on the Polaris nuclear missile system the UK was then buying from them.

So far, so what. Letting your ally establish a military base on your territory is hardly sordid, now is it? In this case, it is. Because at the time the US started building its base there, it wasn’t uninhabited. Nor where the other islands of the Chagos Archipelago. Before the US started building, the island group was home to the Ilois, which had been there for at least two hundred years.

So what happened to them, that they don’t live there anymore ? They got forcibly removed to Mauritius, forbidden to return to their homes and indeed kept away from it by force, all without any form of compensation, because the US wanted their base to be “secure”. All of which was blatantly illegal, both under international law and under British law, as established by the judgement in a lawsuit against the British Foreign Office undertaken by several of the Archipelago’s inhabitants:

“Section 4 of the Ordinance effectively exiles the Ilois from the territory where they are belongers and forbids their return. But the ‘peace, order, and good government’ of any territory means nothing, surely, save by reference to the territory’s population. They are to be governed: not removed. … I cannot see how the wholesale removal of a people from the land where they belong can be said to conduce to the territory’s peace, order and good government. … In short, there is no principled basis upon which section 4 of the Ordinance can be justified as having been empowered by section 11 of the BIOT Order. And it has no other conceivable source of lawful authority.”

Source: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/queen_v_fco-bancoult.html

Now originally, the US wanted to establish a base on a different island elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, the island of Aldabra, north of Madagascar. But this was home to a rare species of giant turtle and if a base where to be established there it would undergo much opposition from ecologists and nature lovers. Whereas nobody would bat an eyelid if a few hundred or so islanders would be robbed from their homes, as long as it could be plausibly denied that they were permanent residents.

Which is exactly what Britain did, starting from 1965 onwards. They consistently talked about the people living in the Chagos Archipelago as if they were only migrant workers for the copra plantations, and were “reall” Mauritanians. The British Foreign Office knew perfectly well this was untrue, but it was a convenient figleaf to justify the expulsion of the Ilois people. For the next thirty years, this would continue to be the official line of the UK government, until the island people finally won recognition through their court case against the Foreign Office. Not that this meant their troubles were over; the US still refuses to let them back into their homes.

I came across this case while reading Body of Secrets, a history of the US National Security Agency, written by James Bamford, which intrigued me enough to do some more online research about it. It just one example of why I don’t trust either the UK or US very much when it comes to the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq, regardless of whether I trust Bush or Blair personally. Both are far too willing to chose realpolitik over humanitarian concerns and plain decency.

Sources:
Body of Secrets, James Bamford, ISBN: 0-09-942774-5 (UK edition), pages 163-166
The Chagos Islands: A sordid tale, BBC News online, 3 November 2000.
Thirty years of lies, deceit and trickery that robbed a people of their island home, Ewen MacAskill and Rob Evans, The Guardian, November 4 2000
Diego Garcia: The ‘criminal question’ doctrine, Charles Judson Harwood Jr.