“Partners In Crime: The UK, The US & The Scandal Of The Dispossessed Chagos Islanders”

The Polemicist

by Michael House

LONDON, England—(Weekly Hubris)—5/3/10—Mr. Dervillie Permal lived on the Chagos Islands, a tropical paradise south of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Until the summer of 1971.

He was coming back from work on a coconut plantation when he was stopped by armed soldiers, and told he must leave his island at once. He was not allowed to visit his home or take any property with him. He was frog-marched to a ship already full of distressed islanders.  His livestock were killed. So was his dog.

After a week, the ship docked at Port Louis, capital of Mauritius, 1200 miles from his home. There, he met his wife and children, who had traveled earlier to Port Louis for medical treatment and had been forceably prevented from returning home.

This was in 1971. Not 1871.

The illiterate, unskilled, poverty-stricken islanders were given no help to resettle. They lived in huts with dirt floors on the fringes of the city. Dervillie Permal made a few dollars unloading rice ships. His wife did a little sewing.  They raised seven children. Last year, their daughter brought them to Britain, where they now live, in a three-bedroom house in Crawley, Sussex.

Of the 2,000-odd Chagossians evicted from their homes in the late 60’s and early 70’s, just 700 survive.

In 1966, the Americans began looking for a base in the Indian Ocean as a counter to the Soviet threat. A deal was struck with the British Government —then as now firmly lodged in the President’s sphincter—whereby a 50- year lease was granted to the Americans on the largest island in the group, Diego Garcia, in return for Polaris nuclear missiles, sold cheap. The Americans insisted that the population of all the islands be “removed.”

The Brits agreed. Foreign Office mandarins described the islanders as “mere Tarzans and Men Fridays” who had “little aptitude for anything except growing coconuts.” The evictions were to be “timed to attract the least attention.” If the secret leaked, it was to be claimed that the islanders were “migrant contract laborers,” despite the families’ having lived there for generations.

Stalin would have been proud.

Once Diego Garcia had been ethnically cleansed, the British Government designated the remaining Chagos Islands the “British Indian Ocean Territory.” The other islands were cleansed by trickery, force and intimidation—islanders were encouraged to take trips and then not allowed to return, supply ships were stopped, and plantations were shut down.  They eked out an existence on Mauritius and in the Seychelles, often resorting to drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. There were deaths from malnutrition and suicide.

Someone in the government may have been slightly ashamed of one of the most squalid episodes in British colonial history. In 1982, the islanders were offered £4 million (less than £3,000 per person) on condition they renounce their right to return. Most signed with thumb-prints, since they could not read the document before them. In 2002, in a further attempt to buy them off, they were granted British citizenship.

Legal action began in 1998, and the government has contested the case inch by inch. In 2000, the Divisional Court ruled that the deportations had been unlawful. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, whose subsequent tragic death robbed the country of the only Cabinet Minister of integrity in the “New ‘ Labour Government, decided not to contest the ruling, agreeing that the islanders could return to any island except Diego Garcia.

Until 9/11. Then, the Americans decided that Diego Garcia was a vital launch pad for its war of aggression against Iraq. (It is also rumored that major al-Qaeda suspects were/are detained and tortured there.) The island is 150 miles away from its closest neighbor.

Rumsfeld gave the client state its instructions, which it hastened to obey.  In 2004, the UK issued two Orders in Council negating the court’s ruling.  The significance of the procedure is that it bypasses Parliament. But in 2006, the High Court ruled that the move was unlawful and “repugnant” (strong stuff for the judiciary in relation to governments). The Court of Appeal agreed in May 2007, dubbing the Orders in Council an abuse of power, with this ringing sentence: “The freedom to return to one’s homeland, however poor and barren the conditions of life, is one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings.”

All this on Tony Blair’s watch. So far, so predictable. Then, Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, hinting that he was not going to be Bush’s poodle.  Fat chance. The government successfully applied for leave to appeal to the House of Lords, then Britain’s Supreme Court, against the Court of Appeal’s ruling, a spokesman (how can these people face themselves in the mirror every morning?) waffling about treaty obligations and “effective governance of overseas territories” (aka the remnants of the British Empire).

In October 2008, the House of Lords upheld the government’s position. The handful of surviving Chagossians have now appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.

The leader of the Chagossians in Britain is Olivier Bancoult. His father and brother died of what the islanders call “sadness.” Two other brothers drank themselves to death and a sister killed herself. He says that the government is “playing with us until one-by-one we die and there is nobody left and they can silently close the case.”

The solicitor representing the islanders said, “I’ve lost count of the old folk I’ve met who have subsequently died broken-hearted at the fact they couldn’t see their beloved homeland.”

The story of the Chagos Islanders and their exiled inhabitants is one of the most shameful in recent British history. Mendacity, incompetence, cravenness and penny-pinching have all played their part in an injustice described by Britain’s former envoy to Mauritius as “one of the worst violations of fundamental human rights perpetrated by the UK in the 20^th century.” In the 21^st century, it is still going on.

(The words in the last paragraph are not mine. They were written by a commentator in the London Times.)

Here are the latest developments in this catalogue of shame. It has just come to light that a 2002 “independent” feasibility study, commissioned by the UK government to consider the practicalities of the Chagossians’ returning, was manipulated by the government to reflect its own determination to prevent a return. The government subsequently relied on the study in court proceedings.

The study came to a conclusion adverse to the Chagossians. However, one of the independent experts, Stephen Akester, sketched three possible scenarios for a partial return. However, a government official stressed to the consultants the “political importance” of their conclusions and, by the time the report was published in June 2002, Akester’s opinions had been expunged. He was told that his conclusions “did not survive the discussion with the client.”

The man who was British High Commissioner for Mauritius in 2002 stated that “the study reached the conclusions that official wanted to hear.”

The independence of the report is, of course, critical to the government’s defense of the action in the ECHR.

Ingenious as ever, the government has now dreamed up a new wheeze [UK slang for joke] to keep the Chagossians away. The whole area has been designated the world’s largest marine reserve. Fishing would, of course, be banned. Fishing was the staple industry of the Chagos islands. So, the returning Chagossians would have nothing to live on. Ergo, they could not return.

An elegant solution worthy of the mandarins of the Foreign Office. Britain wins international kudos from the conservation lobby while settling the hash of those pesky Chagossians once and for all. The survivors will soon die out, and the children will never have lived there and will be unlikely to want to start a new life in an alien environment.

It makes you proud to be British.

Lunatic at Large, 1: A senior Iranian cleric, one Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, has solved the problem of earthquakes. They are caused by women dressing immodestly. “Many women who do not dress modestly,” he told the congregation at Teheran’s Friday prayers, “lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.” This explains all the earthquakes in Australia, France, Italy, and Trafalgar Square on a Saturday night. Also in the South Pacific islands and Africa (until the missionaries arrived).

Lunatic at Large, 2:  Former NATO Commander, General John Sheehan has told a US Senate hearing that the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims in 1995 was caused by gay soldiers in the Dutch army. Having gay soldiers in the Dutch UN peacekeeping force sapped morale and contributed to the atrocity. The Dutch defense minister branded the comments “scandalous and not worthy of a soldier.” There is speculation that the general may become Sarah Palin’s running mate for the presidency in 2012, bringing  gravitas and intellectual weight to the ticket.

Lunatic, or, rather, Ill-Advised Person (mustn’t exaggerate) at Large, 3:  David “Dave” Cameron, old Etonian man-of-the people and aspiring Tory prime minister, during the current election campaign, sent out a leaflet to voters in his constituency in west Oxfordshire urging them to do everything they could to support local businesses. The leaflets were printed in Worcestershire.

Thought For The Day: I can just about imagine a Black, gay, liberal woman being elected President of the United States. But I couldn’t conceive of a white, heterosexual, mainstream, professed atheist male being elected. When that happens, the US will have come of age.

Postscript: Always fair-minded, I now bring you a positive story about the Foreign Office. There has just been leaked to a newspaper a Foreign Office memo on the prospective visit of Herr Ratzinger, alias “The Pope” to the UK. Ideas are mooted for making the visit a success—such as, His Holiness opening an abortion clinic, or blessing a gay couple or, my personal favorite, launching a new brand of condoms called “Benedict.”  Credit where credit is due.