Richard Crawford reports on a staggering injustice.
About 2000 Chagossians once lived on the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, the majority on the ‘paradise island’ of Diego Garcia. There were 3 copra factories, a coaling station, and plans for tourism. The workers supplemented their pay by fishing, growing fruit & vegetables and rearing poultry. A Colonial Office film from the 1950s describes the population living “in conditions most tranquil and benign”. But this was not to last.
In 1965, rather than grant the islands independence along with Mauritius (of which they were then part), the UK ignored a UN resolution not to dismember Mauritius and instead created a new colony - the British Indian Ocean Territory. This allowed the British & American governments to carry out a plan they had been hatching for some time. In the following year, USA was given Diego Garcia on a 50-year lease, with an optional extension of a further 20 years, so that it could establish a military base there. US aircraft have since flown from there to bomb Afghanistan & Iraq. This deal was carried out in great secrecy, avoiding Parliament and Congress. It was not until 1975 that the US Senate revealed that the British Government had been secretly “compensated” with a discount of $14 million off the price of a Polaris nuclear submarine.
The Americans wanted the population of the Chagos expelled, and this the British proceeded to do, flouting articles 9 & 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which state that no one should be subjected to arbitrary exile, and everybody has the right to return to his country. The food ships stopped arriving and rumours were spread that the people would be bombed. They set about killing the islanders’ beloved pet dogs, first trying poisoning, then trying to beat some to death, then gassing them. Conditions on the ship transporting the people from Diego Garcia were so poor in one instance that as well as a lot of vomiting & diarrhoea, two women miscarried. Most of the Chagossians ended up in slums in Mauritius, consigned to poverty. Promises of houses with pieces of land & animals were not kept.
Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart wrote secretly to Prime Minister Harold Wilson on July 25 1968, proposing that the government lie to the world that there was “no indigenous population”, only migrant workers from the Seychelles & Mauritius. In fact, there had been a native population for several generations, since the French brought African slaves to work a plantation in the 18th century. Both Wilson & Defence Secretary Denis Healey agreed to the plan. Successive governments carried on “maintaining the fiction” (as a Foreign Office legal adviser put it), until declassified official documents revealing the conspiracy were discovered in the National Archives at Kew in the 1990s.
Meanwhile some of the distraught Chagossians, including children, had begun to die prematurely. Most were unemployed and penniless. Compensation did not arrive until 1978, five years after the last islander had been deported, and even then it was pitifully small - £650,000 to be shared amongst them all. The Chagossians staged demonstrations and hunger strikes. Eventually in 1982 a group of the most impoverished accepted a settlement of £4 million (about £3,000 per head). But for the circumstances in which many now found themselves, this compensation was sorely inadequate. In the early years of the 21st century, the unemployment rate of Chagossians in Mauritius was 60%, compared to the national figures of 4% (men) and 11% (women). The illiteracy rate, 15% in Mauritius as a whole, was 45% among Chagossians. Suicide rates were also high. In 2003 the islanders brought a court case seeking further compensation, but lost. Bill Rammell, Foreign Office minister responsible for the Chagos at the time, “welcomed” this decision, and in July 2004 spoke in Parliament of “substantial compensation [having] already been paid”.
Rather than pay out more compensation or prepare the Chagos Islands for the people’s return, The Blair and Brown governments have preferred instead to spend over £2 million on court cases opposing the Chagossians right to return. In 2000, judges in the High Court decided that the ordinance used to deport the people was unlawful. But that afternoon the Government published a new immigration ordinance that banned the islanders from returning to Diego Garcia. In 2004, avoiding Parliament again, the Government used the archaic royal prerogative, sending Orders-in-Council to the Queen for her signature, which overturned the Chagossians’ High Court victory, and banned them from ever returning home. Refusing to accept this, the islanders took to the High Court again, and in 2006 the judges again decided in their favour, declaring the 2004 Orders-in-Council null & void. The Government then took the case to the Court of Appeal, but in May 2007 the 3 sitting judges condemned Government tactics stopping the people’s return as unlawful and an abuse of power.
The US Administration opposes any return to Diego Garcia, quoting security reasons. The UK Government, despite supposedly being USA’s biggest ally, seems either unwilling or unable to persuade the Americans otherwise. The Chagossians have argued for another option - that of the UK preparing one or more of the other islands in the archipelago for their return. But still the Government resists. Former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett decided to appeal to the House of Lords, and David Miliband has supported this decision. The Foreign Office claims that the primary reason for the appeal was that the 2007 judgement “raises issues of constitutional law... that would adversely affect governance of all British Overseas Territories. This would include confusion in the legal system to be applied in those Overseas Territories, and potential conflicts between local and English courts.” An obscure reason for denying (or hopefully only delaying) the Chagossians a degree of restitution.
The case is to be heard in the Lords at the end of June 2008, with a decision expected in the autumn. For details on helping the campaign, see the website at www.chagos.org/home.htm or make your feelings known by writing to: Overseas Territories Directorate, Foreign Office, King Charles St., London SW1A. e.mail: msu.correspondence@fco.gov.uk
Richard Crawford is a member of Kent Green Party
Further info:
www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=351
www.chagossupport.org.uk
www.iloistrust.org
