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Let the People of Diego Garcia Return to their Homeland
Over a weekend of memorials, I was remembering a friend who died of a broken heart. Her death certificate may not say so, but she did. Aurélie Lisette Talate died last year at 70 of what members of her community call, in their creole language, sagren—profound sorrow.
Madame Talate, as many called her, was a stick-thin, strong-biceped woman. She ate almost nothing, smoked a lot, and spoke with a power that earned her the nickname ti piman—little chili pepper—because the littlest chilies are the hottest and fiercest. Then again, on the rare occasions when she smiled, she smiled like a little girl.
Madame Talate died of sagren because the U.S. and British governments exiled her and the rest of her Chagossian people from their homeland in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago to create a secretive military base on Chagos’ largest island, Diego Garcia.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the final deportations, when the last boatload of Chagossians arrived 1,200 miles from their homes, on the western Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles. In those same 40 years, the base on British-controlled Diego Garcia helped launch the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and was part of the CIA’s secret “rendition” program for captured terrorist suspects.
The history of the base, which the U.S. military calls the “Footprint of Freedom,” dates to the 1950s and 1960s. By then, Chagossians had been living in the previously uninhabited Chagos islands for almost 200 years, since their ancestors arrived as enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In 1965, after years of secret negotiations, Britain agreed to separate Chagos from colonial Mauritius (contravening UN decolonization rules) to create a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory. In a secret 1966 agreement, Britain gave U.S. officials base rights on Diego Garcia and agreed to take those “administrative measures” necessary to remove the nearly 2,000 Chagossians in exchange for $14 million in secret U.S. payments.
Beginning in 1968, any Chagossians who left Chagos for medical treatment or regular vacations in Mauritius were barred from returning home, marooning them often without family members and deprived of almost all their possessions. British officials soon began restricting food and medical supplies to Chagos. Anglo-American officials designed a public relations plan aimed at, as one British bureaucrat said, “maintaining the fiction” that Chagossians were migrant laborers rather than a people with roots in Chagos for five generations or more. Another British official called them “Tarzans” and “Man Fridays.”
In 1971, the U.S. Navy’s highest-ranking admiral, Elmo Zumwalt, issued the final deportation order in a three-word memo ringing of Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz: “Absolutely must go.”
British agents, with the help of Navy Seabees, quickly rounded up the islanders’ pet dogs, gassing and burning them in sealed cargo sheds. They ordered Madame Talate and the remaining Chagossians onto overcrowded cargo ships. During the deportations, which took place in stages until May 1973, most Chagossians slept in the ship’s hold atop guano—bird crap—while prized horses stayed on deck. By the end of the five-day trip, vomit, urine, and excrement were everywhere. At least one woman miscarried.
Arriving in Mauritius and the Seychelles, Chagossians were literally left on the docks. They were homeless, jobless, and had little money, and they received no resettlement assistance. In 1975, the Washington Post broke the story in the Western press and found them living in “abject poverty.” Most remain deeply impoverished to this day.
Soon after Madame Talate arrived in Mauritius, two of her sons died. Madame Talate experienced fainting spells, couldn’t eat, and became remarkably skinny after being, in her words, “fat” in her homeland.
“I had something that had been affecting me for a long time, since we were uprooted” from Diego Garcia, she told me. “This sagren, this shock. … And it was this same problem that killed my child,” she continued. “We weren’t living free like we did in our natal land. We had sagren when we couldn’t return.”
Scores more Chagossians have reported deaths from sadness and sagren. They are not alone. Reports of deaths from a broken heart abound, including among elderly people forced into nursing homes and other indigenous and displaced peoples. In my own family, my grandmother recounts how her mother died of a broken heart after sending her 13-year-old son from Nazi Germany to Amsterdam in 1938, where he was ultimately deported to Auschwitz and murdered. When she died, her doctor said she died of a broken heart. “The guilt she carried with her ultimately just broke her heart,” my grandmother explains. “Yes. It’s possible.”
In fact, medical research increasingly supports such claims: one study suggests that acute stress can bring on fatal heart spasms in people with healthy cardiac systems; anotherindicates that the death of a spouse or child can cause dangerous heart rhythms, potentially increasing the risk of heart attacks and sudden cardiac death.
Before her death, Madame Talate helped lead her people in demanding the Anglo-American powers return them to their homeland. Sadly, after 40 years, too many Chagossians like Madame Talate have died brokenhearted, with the two governments still refusing to let them go home.
Recently the heartbreak has mounted. In 2008, after three lower courts in Britain had ruled the expulsion illegal, Britain’s highest court overturned those rulings by a 3-2 margin, upholding the government’s colonial right to exile a people. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed the Chagossians’ final appeal on procedural grounds.
A day after the European court ruling, the Obama administration rejected the demands of an online petition signed by some 30,000 asking the White House to “redress wrongs against the Chagossians.” The administration sidestepped U.S. responsibility and said Britain has been doing enough to address “the hardships they endured.”
To make matters worse, in 2010, the British government created a Marine Protected Area(MPA) in Chagos. Officials denied it was an attempt to prevent a return no matter the court rulings. Then a secret Wikileaks cable revealed a senior British official saying, “Former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.” U.S. officials agreed the MPA would likely “be the most effective long-term way to prevent” resettlement. Adding insult to injury, the British official repeated his predecessor’s racist slur, saying the MPA would allow no “Man Fridays.”
Shockingly, British judges presiding over a Chagossian legal challenge to the MPA last month ruled the Wikileaks cable inadmissible as evidence because it violates diplomatic privilege. British and U.S. authorities will “neither confirm nor deny” its authenticity.
Repeatedly our leaders in the White House and Congress and their British allies have turned their backs on the injustice our nations committed against a small people. The Chagossians, who now number some 5,000, don’t want to remove the base on Diego Garcia. They simply want to return (and, for many elders, die) where their ancestors are buried and receive proper compensation.
It’s long past time our country acknowledges its responsibility for the Chagossians’ exile and ensures these demands are met. Especially compared to the billions we’ve spent on Diego Garcia, it would take pennies to help repair the lives of those who’ve suffered for the base.
After 40 years of exile and too many broken hearts, it’s long past time we let the Chagossians go home.
FPIF senior analyst David Vine is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University.
Let the People of Diego Garcia Return to their Homeland - FPIF
Diego Garcia’s shameful history continues:
The modern history of the Chagos Islands is a thoroughly despicable one. This small archipelago, situated in the middle of the Indian Ocean, was originally part of what was then the self-governing British colony of Mauritius.
Mauritius was convinced to sell these islands to the UK in 1965 under dubious circumstances: the sale was part of the independence negotiations (independence was achieved in 1968) and the prime minister of Mauritius who negotiated the deal was awarded a knighthood soon after the transfer.
The UK subsequently leased the largest island of the archipelago, Diego Garcia, to the US (who wanted it for a military base) partly in exchange for a discount on Polaris nuclear missiles. In preparation for the construction of the military base, the UK then proceeded to forcibly remove the islands inhabitants, dropping them off unceremoniously in the Seychelles and what was left of Mauritius.
Diego Garcia became an important base for the US, particularly so in the 2000s, when it served as a hub from which long-range bombers attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. The base has been used by the CIA for so-called ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights, and may also have served as a CIA black site prison.
In 2010, the UK established a Marine Protected Area (the world’s largest) around the archipelago. According to US diplomatic cables made public courtesy of Wikileaks, this move was specifically designed to prevent former residents from returning (survival for the inhabitants would be difficult if they were prevented from fishing).
For the UK, this clever ‘solution’ looked good from any angle: not only would the possibility of return be taken off the table, but US military activities could continue, and ‘points’ for environmental concern could also be scored.
Isolated and unpopulated (or conveniently depopulated) islands are, of course, the ideal springboards from which to project military power in this day and age. There are none of the hassles associated with holding or running a colony, for example, and not only do they make sense in pure military terms (especially if one has long-range bombers), but they also preclude witness or interference by any pesky civilians, journalists or human rights organizations.
In the case of populated islands, the consent of inhabitants can, to a degree, be bought, but opposition can still be politically and financially costly, as the US and its generally willing collaborator (the Japanese government) have found, for example, in the use of Okinawa for military bases.
A former coconut plantation on Diego Garcia, out of use since 1970.
Photo by Steve Swayne under a CC Licence.
The lease of the Chagos Islands to the US expires in 2016, and any possible extension has to be agreed on by December 2014 (the lease allows for a 20-year extension). Crucially, the original terms of purchase of the Chagos Islands allow for their return to Mauritius when they are no longer needed for defence purposes. If there is a time for negotiating a return of the islands to Mauritius, it is now. Indeed, the prime ministers of the UK and Mauritius are set to meet this week, and the issue of the Chagos Islands is on the agenda.
Mauritius has expressed its intention to have the islands returned, but interestingly, has also made it clear that it does not intend to challenge the continuation of US military activities there. Clearly, allowing the base to remain in Diego Garcia would serve as a considerable financial incentive for the government of Mauritius.
But how receptive will the UK be to a call by Mauritius for the return of the islands? Will their response reveal anything about possible plans in the West to bomb Iran? Diego Garcia would undoubtedly serve as one of the key military hubs in the case of any such catastrophe.
There are other deals in play. Mauritius has recently agreed to offer its territory and services for the prosecution and imprisoning of Somali pirates. Was this designed to improve their bargaining position for the return of the Chagos Islands? To what degree will any such deals benefit the people of Mauritius and the former (forcibly evicted) inhabitants who wish to return to the Chagos Islands (as opposed to a few people holding political power at the top)?
Will the end result of all of this simply be a continuation of the same old systems under new management? This is a good time for some hard-hitting media scrutiny on this issue – in the UK, US and Mauritius.
Virgil Hawkins is the author of Stealth Conflicts: How the World's Worst Violence is Ignored and is currently an associate professor at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, Japan and a research associate at the University of the Free State, South Africa. - See more at: Diego Garcia's shameful history continues -- New Internationalist
Some images of diego garcia and its people
Over a weekend of memorials, I was remembering a friend who died of a broken heart. Her death certificate may not say so, but she did. Aurélie Lisette Talate died last year at 70 of what members of her community call, in their creole language, sagren—profound sorrow.
Madame Talate, as many called her, was a stick-thin, strong-biceped woman. She ate almost nothing, smoked a lot, and spoke with a power that earned her the nickname ti piman—little chili pepper—because the littlest chilies are the hottest and fiercest. Then again, on the rare occasions when she smiled, she smiled like a little girl.
Madame Talate died of sagren because the U.S. and British governments exiled her and the rest of her Chagossian people from their homeland in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago to create a secretive military base on Chagos’ largest island, Diego Garcia.
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the final deportations, when the last boatload of Chagossians arrived 1,200 miles from their homes, on the western Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles. In those same 40 years, the base on British-controlled Diego Garcia helped launch the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and was part of the CIA’s secret “rendition” program for captured terrorist suspects.
The history of the base, which the U.S. military calls the “Footprint of Freedom,” dates to the 1950s and 1960s. By then, Chagossians had been living in the previously uninhabited Chagos islands for almost 200 years, since their ancestors arrived as enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In 1965, after years of secret negotiations, Britain agreed to separate Chagos from colonial Mauritius (contravening UN decolonization rules) to create a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory. In a secret 1966 agreement, Britain gave U.S. officials base rights on Diego Garcia and agreed to take those “administrative measures” necessary to remove the nearly 2,000 Chagossians in exchange for $14 million in secret U.S. payments.
Beginning in 1968, any Chagossians who left Chagos for medical treatment or regular vacations in Mauritius were barred from returning home, marooning them often without family members and deprived of almost all their possessions. British officials soon began restricting food and medical supplies to Chagos. Anglo-American officials designed a public relations plan aimed at, as one British bureaucrat said, “maintaining the fiction” that Chagossians were migrant laborers rather than a people with roots in Chagos for five generations or more. Another British official called them “Tarzans” and “Man Fridays.”
In 1971, the U.S. Navy’s highest-ranking admiral, Elmo Zumwalt, issued the final deportation order in a three-word memo ringing of Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz: “Absolutely must go.”
British agents, with the help of Navy Seabees, quickly rounded up the islanders’ pet dogs, gassing and burning them in sealed cargo sheds. They ordered Madame Talate and the remaining Chagossians onto overcrowded cargo ships. During the deportations, which took place in stages until May 1973, most Chagossians slept in the ship’s hold atop guano—bird crap—while prized horses stayed on deck. By the end of the five-day trip, vomit, urine, and excrement were everywhere. At least one woman miscarried.
Arriving in Mauritius and the Seychelles, Chagossians were literally left on the docks. They were homeless, jobless, and had little money, and they received no resettlement assistance. In 1975, the Washington Post broke the story in the Western press and found them living in “abject poverty.” Most remain deeply impoverished to this day.
Soon after Madame Talate arrived in Mauritius, two of her sons died. Madame Talate experienced fainting spells, couldn’t eat, and became remarkably skinny after being, in her words, “fat” in her homeland.
“I had something that had been affecting me for a long time, since we were uprooted” from Diego Garcia, she told me. “This sagren, this shock. … And it was this same problem that killed my child,” she continued. “We weren’t living free like we did in our natal land. We had sagren when we couldn’t return.”
Scores more Chagossians have reported deaths from sadness and sagren. They are not alone. Reports of deaths from a broken heart abound, including among elderly people forced into nursing homes and other indigenous and displaced peoples. In my own family, my grandmother recounts how her mother died of a broken heart after sending her 13-year-old son from Nazi Germany to Amsterdam in 1938, where he was ultimately deported to Auschwitz and murdered. When she died, her doctor said she died of a broken heart. “The guilt she carried with her ultimately just broke her heart,” my grandmother explains. “Yes. It’s possible.”
In fact, medical research increasingly supports such claims: one study suggests that acute stress can bring on fatal heart spasms in people with healthy cardiac systems; anotherindicates that the death of a spouse or child can cause dangerous heart rhythms, potentially increasing the risk of heart attacks and sudden cardiac death.
Before her death, Madame Talate helped lead her people in demanding the Anglo-American powers return them to their homeland. Sadly, after 40 years, too many Chagossians like Madame Talate have died brokenhearted, with the two governments still refusing to let them go home.
Recently the heartbreak has mounted. In 2008, after three lower courts in Britain had ruled the expulsion illegal, Britain’s highest court overturned those rulings by a 3-2 margin, upholding the government’s colonial right to exile a people. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed the Chagossians’ final appeal on procedural grounds.
A day after the European court ruling, the Obama administration rejected the demands of an online petition signed by some 30,000 asking the White House to “redress wrongs against the Chagossians.” The administration sidestepped U.S. responsibility and said Britain has been doing enough to address “the hardships they endured.”
To make matters worse, in 2010, the British government created a Marine Protected Area(MPA) in Chagos. Officials denied it was an attempt to prevent a return no matter the court rulings. Then a secret Wikileaks cable revealed a senior British official saying, “Former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.” U.S. officials agreed the MPA would likely “be the most effective long-term way to prevent” resettlement. Adding insult to injury, the British official repeated his predecessor’s racist slur, saying the MPA would allow no “Man Fridays.”
Shockingly, British judges presiding over a Chagossian legal challenge to the MPA last month ruled the Wikileaks cable inadmissible as evidence because it violates diplomatic privilege. British and U.S. authorities will “neither confirm nor deny” its authenticity.
Repeatedly our leaders in the White House and Congress and their British allies have turned their backs on the injustice our nations committed against a small people. The Chagossians, who now number some 5,000, don’t want to remove the base on Diego Garcia. They simply want to return (and, for many elders, die) where their ancestors are buried and receive proper compensation.
It’s long past time our country acknowledges its responsibility for the Chagossians’ exile and ensures these demands are met. Especially compared to the billions we’ve spent on Diego Garcia, it would take pennies to help repair the lives of those who’ve suffered for the base.
After 40 years of exile and too many broken hearts, it’s long past time we let the Chagossians go home.
FPIF senior analyst David Vine is an assistant professor of anthropology at American University.
Let the People of Diego Garcia Return to their Homeland - FPIF
Diego Garcia’s shameful history continues:
The modern history of the Chagos Islands is a thoroughly despicable one. This small archipelago, situated in the middle of the Indian Ocean, was originally part of what was then the self-governing British colony of Mauritius.
Mauritius was convinced to sell these islands to the UK in 1965 under dubious circumstances: the sale was part of the independence negotiations (independence was achieved in 1968) and the prime minister of Mauritius who negotiated the deal was awarded a knighthood soon after the transfer.
The UK subsequently leased the largest island of the archipelago, Diego Garcia, to the US (who wanted it for a military base) partly in exchange for a discount on Polaris nuclear missiles. In preparation for the construction of the military base, the UK then proceeded to forcibly remove the islands inhabitants, dropping them off unceremoniously in the Seychelles and what was left of Mauritius.
Diego Garcia became an important base for the US, particularly so in the 2000s, when it served as a hub from which long-range bombers attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. The base has been used by the CIA for so-called ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights, and may also have served as a CIA black site prison.
In 2010, the UK established a Marine Protected Area (the world’s largest) around the archipelago. According to US diplomatic cables made public courtesy of Wikileaks, this move was specifically designed to prevent former residents from returning (survival for the inhabitants would be difficult if they were prevented from fishing).
For the UK, this clever ‘solution’ looked good from any angle: not only would the possibility of return be taken off the table, but US military activities could continue, and ‘points’ for environmental concern could also be scored.
Isolated and unpopulated (or conveniently depopulated) islands are, of course, the ideal springboards from which to project military power in this day and age. There are none of the hassles associated with holding or running a colony, for example, and not only do they make sense in pure military terms (especially if one has long-range bombers), but they also preclude witness or interference by any pesky civilians, journalists or human rights organizations.
In the case of populated islands, the consent of inhabitants can, to a degree, be bought, but opposition can still be politically and financially costly, as the US and its generally willing collaborator (the Japanese government) have found, for example, in the use of Okinawa for military bases.
A former coconut plantation on Diego Garcia, out of use since 1970.
Photo by Steve Swayne under a CC Licence.
The lease of the Chagos Islands to the US expires in 2016, and any possible extension has to be agreed on by December 2014 (the lease allows for a 20-year extension). Crucially, the original terms of purchase of the Chagos Islands allow for their return to Mauritius when they are no longer needed for defence purposes. If there is a time for negotiating a return of the islands to Mauritius, it is now. Indeed, the prime ministers of the UK and Mauritius are set to meet this week, and the issue of the Chagos Islands is on the agenda.
Mauritius has expressed its intention to have the islands returned, but interestingly, has also made it clear that it does not intend to challenge the continuation of US military activities there. Clearly, allowing the base to remain in Diego Garcia would serve as a considerable financial incentive for the government of Mauritius.
But how receptive will the UK be to a call by Mauritius for the return of the islands? Will their response reveal anything about possible plans in the West to bomb Iran? Diego Garcia would undoubtedly serve as one of the key military hubs in the case of any such catastrophe.
There are other deals in play. Mauritius has recently agreed to offer its territory and services for the prosecution and imprisoning of Somali pirates. Was this designed to improve their bargaining position for the return of the Chagos Islands? To what degree will any such deals benefit the people of Mauritius and the former (forcibly evicted) inhabitants who wish to return to the Chagos Islands (as opposed to a few people holding political power at the top)?
Will the end result of all of this simply be a continuation of the same old systems under new management? This is a good time for some hard-hitting media scrutiny on this issue – in the UK, US and Mauritius.
Virgil Hawkins is the author of Stealth Conflicts: How the World's Worst Violence is Ignored and is currently an associate professor at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, Japan and a research associate at the University of the Free State, South Africa. - See more at: Diego Garcia's shameful history continues -- New Internationalist
Some images of diego garcia and its people
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