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Right of return of Diego Garcia islanders

Mark Curtis

The dispossession of the Diego Garcia islanders to create a U.S. base is an indictment of Britain.

TODAY, A British-engineered occupation enters its fifth decade. There will be no commemoration, despite the human toll and murkiness surrounding what is going on there. Yet an entire population, exiled from their homeland and betrayed by the British Government, are stepping up their campaign to return home. The coming weeks may decide their fate.

Forty years ago this week, while African and Asian countries were throwing off British rule, officials in London were busy establishing a new colony. The British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) was created by detaching the Chagos island group from Mauritius and other small islands from the Seychelles, then both British colonies. Mauritius was given £3 million in compensation; the following year, Britain signed a military agreement with the U.S. leasing it the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 50 years.

Washington wanted the island as a military base and made clear it was not prepared to put up with any inhabitants there — so Britain forcibly moved all 2,000 of them, the last leaving in 1973. Ever since, the Chagossians, most of whom live in poverty in Mauritius where they were dumped by the British, have fought for their right to return.

In 2000, the Chagossians won an extraordinary legal victory allowing their return to the outlying islands in the archipelago.

But last year the government overturned this decision by issuing orders in council to ban the islanders from ever returning. Unless this decision is overturned by the high court next month, the Chagossians' fate may well be sealed.

Such action might be expected to be a matter of public outrage. Yet the U.K. Foreign Office boasts in its annual report: "We have defended successfully a legal challenge from the Chagossian people ... who had sought compensation and assisted resettlement." The government has probably spent around £1 million of public money to defeat the Chagossians.

The latest phase of deception involves the claim that resettlement of the Chagos islands is unfeasible, refuted by independent environmental analysts and the experience of the Asian tsunami last December.

Even the two-metre wave that hit Diego Garcia caused no damage to facilities. Moreover, the islands have already been resettled — by the U.S. military, which has built a library, post office, bank and chapel for the 1,700 troops there and enough housing for 1,500 civilian workers. The U.S. Navy website assures incoming servicemen that "personal living conditions on the island are excellent" but does not mention the exiled population.

The Chagos islands are, like Iraq, occupied territory, yet this small community has had few international friends. The story of Diego Garcia is an indictment of Britain's political culture as well as government policy. If, next month, the Government succeeds in its victimisation of this long-abused community, it will be our responsibility.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

(Mark Curtis, author of Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses, was director of the World Development Movement.)

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