STEALING A NATION: The Plight of Diego Garcia

PARADISE CLEANSED!

By John Pilger

10/11/04, "The Guardian" -- There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else". The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win."

Stealing a Nation, John Pilger's documentary investigating the expulsion of the Chagos islanders will be shown on ITV on Wednesday at 11 pm; his new book, Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and Its Triumphs, is published by Jonathan Cape.

Copyright © The Guardian.

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SOURCE: INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE

The British high court has thrown out a compensation claim brought by the Ilois people of the Chagos Islands against the British government, saying the case was ”an obviously unmeritorious” one. The stunned islanders say they will appeal and ask for the support of the African Union.

By Osei Boateng:

The Namibian president, Sam Nujoma, says in the interview published on page 33 of this issue -- (i.e. November 2003 issue of New African) -- that the African Union (AU) "must not sit and watch as people of African descent suffer discrimination abroad." The AU, he says, "must protest strongly against [such discrimination]. We must not allow our people to be badly treated."

The plight of the Ilois people (also known as Chagossians), some of whom have now come to live in Britain (30 years after their forceful removal from their homes by the British government to make way for an American military base on the largest of the Chagos islands, Diego Garcia), is a serious test case for the nascent African Union.

In 1980, the OAU passed a resolution affirming that the Chagos and its prime island, Diego Carcia, were an integral part of Mauritius, and thus of Africa (see New African, Sept 2002). The Chagos Archipelago consists of 65 islands and lies 1,200 miles northeast of Mauritius.

The southernmost of the islands is Diego Garcia. It is now one of the most precious jewels in the US defence structure, although the archipelago (“an integral part of Africa”) still technically “belongs” to Britain. In November 1965, it was renamed the “British Indian Overseas Territory”. Until the name change, the archipelago was part of Mauritius and administered by the British governor of Mauritius.

But in 1965, in high secrecy, the British “leased” Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands to the US “for 50 years”. The “lease” runs out in 2016 but it could be extended for another 20 years. “When the Americans expressed interest in the islands, the Chagos dropped off public discourse and scholarship”, writes Borgna Brunner of http://www.infoplease.com.

After the deal, the indigenous people of the archipelago, the Ilois, were tricked by the British government and shipped out of their homes between 1965 and 1973 to make way for the American military base. Many of them were dumped in Mauritius, but some went to the Seychelles. Forgotten was the word. They were neither officially recognised as Mauritian citizens nor British. In fact, the British refused to grant them automatic right of abode in the UK, and thus denied them British passports, until last year.

In Mauritius, the Ilois were badly treated by the locals and many died. The rest lived in abject poverty, forcing them to want to return to their native homes in the Chagos. Their many years of campaign were crowned with victory in the British high court three years ago. The court said their “wholesale removal” was “an abject legal failure”, and ruled that they could return, though not to Diego Garcia proper, but to the other surrounding islands … {!}. The court asked the British government to facilitate their return by providing the needed infrastructure for human habitation on the islands that were destroyed when they were shipped out.

The British government initially accepted the ruling but has since stalled, claiming that the islanders could not return because the needed infrastructure investment was too prohibitive on “what are remote islands with few resources”.

London now claims that the Chagossians’ return is “impractical and inconsistent with the existing defence facilities” on Diego Garcia. According to the Foreign Office, the British “position on the future of the territory will be determined by our strategic and other interests, and our treaty obligations to the USA.” That is the rob!

The Americans do not want the islanders back, even on the surrounding islands, because they “might pose a security threat to the Diego Garcia base, which is now home to the Stealth and B-52 bombers”, and also some 'Al Qaeda prisoners'. Washington has thus put pressure on London to stop the islanders’ return despite the November 2000 high court ruling that they could do so.

The Americans have already sought British permission to extend the Diego Garcia base by “developing the island as a forward operating location for expeditionary air force operations -- one of only four such locations worldwide”.

This means, therefore, that access to the archipelago will continue to be “by permit only”, and the British and American navies will continue to stop anybody (Ilois or otherwise) from getting near. Last year, named and shamed (including in the pages of New African) for the appalling treatment given to the Chagossians, London was finally moved to give the remaining 8,000 Ilois and their descendants British passports. Some of them saved money for their airfares from Mauritius to Britain. And several hundred of them have since arrived only to find that the “mother country” was not a "mother" after all.

Arriving via Gatwick Airport, they were immediately herded into temporary accommodation in the nearby town of Crawley, where the Sussex County Council now says the upkeep of the Ilois is not its responsibility but the central government's. But Tony Blair's government that preaches about "human rights" in Africa and elsewhere, will not provide the money for the Chagossians' upkeep.

Fed up, the county council threatened last month to stop paying for the Ilois' stay in Crawley, thus forcing them to go to court to seek compensation from the British government on behalf of 5,000 Chagossians in and outside Britain.

On 9 October, Justice Duncan Ouseley, sitting in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, threw out the case, saying it should not be allowed to proceed because it was "hopeless" and "unmeritorious". According to him, though the Ilois could claim to have been treated shamelessly by successive British governments, "it will be a waste of public money to continue with the case". The Chagossians, who had filled the court and the corridors outside, were shocked beyond belief! The judge told them: "Justice does not require an obviously unmeritorious case to be allowed to proceed. Ill-treatment does not require a hopeless case to be allowed to continue." … {!}

The judge even claimed that successive British governments (i.e. seven since 1965) had not known that their actions were unlawful, and that there was no legal basis for the islanders' "unlawful exile”.

In his infinite mercy, Justice Ouseley ordered that the islanders should pay one-third of the defence costs. He said the Chagossians “left behind their homes, their pets and domestic animals, their larger items of moveable property, taking only a small quantity of personal possessions”. The conditions on the ships that carried them away, the judge admitted, were “dreadful” and “engendered many bitter memories of the horses being better cared for than the passengers”. Yet he still ruled that the Chagossians' claim had “no reasonable ground”.

Justice Ouseley added: “The Chagossians alone were made to pay a personal price for the [American] defence establishment on Diego Garcia,” but said they had twice been compensated already -- £650,000 in the 1970s and £4m in the 1980s[/color] …

This, the judge said, was meant to “improve their sad conditions, but was not evidently generous ... Their poverty, sadness and sense of loss and displacement impel their continuing desire to return to the islands which were their home.”

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The British Foreign Office proclaimed itself "pleased" with the judgement. A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are pleased with the decision from the judgement but we need time to study it closely to see what implications there might be.” …

… Which forced Mark Curtis, the author of the book, Web of Deceit: Bntain’s Real Role in the World, to write in the British daily, The Guardian, a day after Justice Ouseley’s judgement: "Britain’s treatment of the Chagossians is a national disgrace. Their struggle will continue in the US courts. Meanwhile, we might honour the Chagossians if only by laughing whenever Tony Blair professes his support for human rights."

The lawyer for the Chagossians, Richard Gifford, said his clients were "in a state of shock”, but added that "when you have been kicked around for 30 years, you get a bit used to setbacks". He said they would appeal and fight on until they got justice. This is where they sorely need the voice and muscle of the African Union.

As Mark Curtis put it in his Guardian article: "The giant lie at the heart of British policy [in 1968] was that the Chagossians were never permanent inhabitants of the islands but simply ‘contract labourers’. The then foreign secretary, Michael Stewart, wrote a secret note to [Prime Minister] Harold Wilson in 1969 saying: 'We could continue to refer to the inhabitants generally as essentially migrant contract labourers and their families', and added that it would be helpful if ‘we can present any move as a change of employment for contract workers ... rather than as a population resettlement.’ Seven successive British governments have maintained this fiction."

And now is the time for London to pay for that fiction.

SOURCE: New African, November 2003.

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