A PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO GIVE UP

The indigenous people of Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands filed suit yesterday in US District Court charging the United States with genocide, torture and forced relocation. More than 1000 people who lived on the islands are listed as plaintiffs and are asking for millions of dollars in damages. The United States uses the island -- more than 1,000 miles from India, Mauritius, Australia and the Gulf States -- as a communications post and refueling station. The US acquired the chain from the British in 1965 and promptly finished ousting its inhabitants. The Chagossians charge that the agreement with the British says "acquisition of Diego Garcia for defense purposes will imply displacement of the whole of the existing population of the island." The Chagossians say U.S. military and contract workers forced them from the island in the late '60s and early '70s. The last movement of people was accomplished by herding them onto boats loaded with horses and other animals for a six-day voyage to Mauritius.

Back in the 60s the US was obsessing about Soviet expansion in to the Indian Ocean and was looking for a base in the area "without a population problem." The US offered the Brits an $11 million discount on the purchase of the US-made Polaris nuclear submarines as an incentive to come up with something for them. A memo from then Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart to Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1969 admitted that the payment was kept secret from Parliament and the US Congress. The first island choice fell through because the island involved was the home of rare tortoises with friends in ecology movement. The Chagossians had no such friends. The Chagos Islands were a part of the Mauritius, a British territory campaigning for independence. The Chagos Islands were home to some 1,800 people - mainly descendants of slaves - but no tortoises. Independence was granted to Mauritius, but only after the Chagos Islands were separated in November 1965 by an Order in Council and renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT. At this point, British politicians, diplomats and civil servants began a campaign - in their own words - "to maintain the pretense there were no permanent inhabitants" on the islands. To the outside world, there must be no inhabitants, merely people living there temporarily - migrant workers and other transients. And by the time the British and Americans were through there were none. Residents who left the island for any reason were prevented from returning. The remaining inhabitants eventually were evicted to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they failed to adjust to city life. Most remained on the fringes of society, poor and uneducated.

Last year a British judge ruled that the islanders could go home. "For us, it is a historical day to win this fight. It seems like David and Goliath," said Olivier Bancoult, chairman of the Chagos Refugee Group in Mauritius, who was exiled in 1968 at the age of 4. "We all think about returning, and we want compensation for all we have been suffering." Although at the time the US said the matter was between Britain and the Islanders, the U.S. government filed a statement during the hearing opposing the islanders' return to the archipelago on the grounds that it would be a "threat to national security," despite a distance of more than 130 miles between the air base and the nearest island.

The people of Chagos Island have waged a long fight to regain their dignity, their land, and their human rights. That fight continues.
Sources: Washington Post, BBC, Guardian, World Socialist Web

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