by John Pilger
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has handed down a
momentous judgement that says Britain's colonial authority over the
Chagos Islands is no longer legal. John Pilger, whose 2004 film,
Stealing a Nation, alerted much of the world to the plight of the
islanders, tells their story here.
You can watch Stealing a Nation here.
There
are times when one tragedy tells us how a whole system works behind its
democratic façade and helps us understand how much of the world is run
for the benefit of the powerful and how governments often justify their
actions with lies.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the
British Government of Harold Wilson expelled the entire population of
the Chagos Islands, a British crown colony in the Indian Ocean, to make
way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.
In high secrecy, the Americans offered a discounted Polaris nuclear
submarine as payment for use of the islands.
The truth of this
conspiracy did not emerge for another 20 years when secret official
files were unearthed at the Public Record Office, in London, by lawyers
acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago. Historian
Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his
2003 book about Britain's post-war foreign policy. The British media all
but ignored it; the Washington Post called it a 'mass kidnapping'.
I
first heard of the plight of the Chagossians in 1982, during the
Falklands War. Britain had sent a fleet to the aid of 2,000 Falkland
Islanders at the other end of the world while another 2,000 British
citizens from islands in the Indian Ocean had been expelled by British
governments and hardly anyone knew.
The difference was that
the Falkland Islanders were white and the Chagossians were black and,
crucially, the United States wanted the islands - especially Diego
Garcia - as a major military base from which to command the Indian
Ocean.
The Chagos Islands were a natural paradise. The 1,500
islanders were self-sufficient with an abundance of natural produce, and
extreme weather was rare. There were thriving villages, a school, a
hospital, a church, a railway and an undisturbed way of life - until a
secret 1961 Anglo-American survey of Diego Garcia led to the deportation
of the entire population.
The expulsions began in 1965.
People were herded into the hold of a rusting ship, the women and
children forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertiliser. They were dumped
in the Seychelles, where they were held in prison cells, then shipped
on to Mauritius, where they were taken to a derelict housing estate with
no water or electricity.
Twenty-six families died here in brutal poverty, there were nine suicides; and girls were forced into prostitution to survive.
I
interviewed many of them. One woman recalled how she and her husband
took their baby to Mauritius for medical treatment and were told they
could not return. The shock was so great that her husband suffered a
stroke and died. Others described how the British and Americans gassed
their dogs - beloved pets to the islanders - as an intimidation to pack
up and leave. Lizette Talate told me how her children had 'died of
sadness'. She herself has since died.
The depopulation of the
archipelago was completed within 10 years and Diego Garcia became home
to one of the United States' biggest bases, with more than 2,000 troops,
two bomber runways, 30 warships, facilities for nuclear-armed
submarines and a satellite spy station. Iraq and Afghanistan were bombed
from the former paradise. Following 9/11, America's perceived enemies
were 'rendered' here and there is evidence they were tortured.
All
the while, the Chagos remained a British possession and its people a
British responsibility. After demonstrating on the streets of Mauritius
in 1982, the exiled islanders were given the derisory compensation of
less than £3,000 each by the British government.
When
declassified British Foreign Office files were discovered, the full
sordid story was laid bare. One file was headed, 'Maintaining the
Fiction' and instructed British officials to lie that the islanders were
itinerant workers, not a stable indigenous population. Secretly,
British officials recognised they were open to 'charges of dishonesty'
because they were planning to 'cook the books' - lie.
In 2000,
the High Court in London ruled the expulsions illegal. In response, the
Labour government of Tony Blair invoked the Royal Prerogative, an
archaic power invested in the Queen's 'Privy Council' that allows the
government to bypass Parliament and the courts. In this way, the
government hoped, the islanders could be prevented from ever returning
home.
The High Court again ruled that the Chagossians were
entitled to return and in 2008, the Foreign Office appealed to the
Supreme Court. Although based on no new evidence, the appeal was
successful.
I was in Parliament - where the highest court then
sat in the House of Lords - on the day of the judgement. I have never
seen such shame-faced judges in what was clearly a political decision.
In
2010, the British government sought to reinforce this by establishing a
marine nature reserve around the Chagos Islands. The ruse was exposed
by WikiLeaks, which published a US Embassy diplomatic cable from 2009
that read, 'Establishing a marine reserve might indeed, as the FCO's
[Colin] Roberts stated, be the most effective long-term way to prevent
any of the Chagos Islands' former inhabitants or descendants from
resettling.'
Now the International Court of Justice has
decided that the British government of the day had no right in law to
separate the Chagos Islands from Mauritius when it granted Mauritius
independence. The Court, whose powers are advisory, has said Britain
must end its authority over the islands. By extension, that almost
certainly makes the US base illegal.
Of course, the
indefatigable campaign of the Chagossians and their supporters will not
stop there: not until the first islander goes home.
