Depopulation of Diego Garcia
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The Diego Garcia depopulation controversy pertains to the expulsion of the established inhabitants of the island of Diego Garcia during the 1960s and 70s. The displaced inhabitants and their advocates have claimed that their right of occupation was violated by the British Foreign Office, accused of orchestrating the depopulation so that the island could be used as a U.S. military base. The British government has generally denied any wrongdoing, and disputes the emigrants' right to be repatriated.
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[edit] The Ilois
Until 1971, the Ilois were the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, the archipelago containing Diego Garcia. Their name is patois for 'islanders'. Until their removal began in the late 1960s, the Ilois lived mainly at subsistence level, keeping goats, chickens, pigs and a few cattle, as well as growing vegetables. Their economy was based on the harvesting of locally-cultivated coconuts into copra and oil, the latter being much prized by the cosmetics industry. At long but regular intervals, a trade ship would arrive from Mauritius to collect the harvests for the owners of the plantations. Diego Garcia had no electricity, no telephone connection, no regular postal service and little in the way of Government (which usually took the form of a yearly visit by the British Governor of the Islands).
Originally the Ilois came from Mauritius, the Seychelles and Madagascar. They had settled on the Chagos from the late-18th and 19th century, beginning when the islands were French-owned. The Chagos came into British possession at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Thus, many generations of Ilois had maintained permanent residence on the Chagos Islands.
[edit] Diego Garcia and Mauritian independence
With the British Empire in decline, a UN deadline was set for the secession of Mauritius. On 12 March 1968, Mauritius would become autonomous. Thus, the Chagos Islands would become part of a separate state.
At some stage prior to this deadline, the United States and the United Kingdom consulted each other on the fate of the islands. The United States wanted 'an austere communications facility' in the Indian Ocean and asked Britain for use of any Indian Ocean territory that might be suitable.
This would be under a leasing agreement - British-owned but American-run, as found at Ascension Island or Lakenheath. The U.S. rent from the lease of any British territory would go towards paying for Britain's newly-acquired Polaris missiles.
The United States initially asked for the Aldabra Atoll, which had no human inhabitants. However, it was found to be home to the rare Aldabra tortoise. There are around 100,000 of these creatures on the islands which, due to their isolation, form a natural 'niche'. The wildlife lobby ensured that the U.S. plans for Aldabra were dropped.
Diego Garcia is the largest of the Chagos. At fourteen miles by four it is large enough to build a number of full-length runways. The island is also horseshoe-shaped, making it a natural harbour capable of containing the entire U.S. Naval fleet. To the cabinet of Harold Wilson, Diego Garcia seemed a natural second choice for the United States, who wished the island to be unpopulated for reasons of security.
However, this was considered a problem insofar as it may have been contary to international law to separate Diego Garcia and retain it after Mauritian independence. The second problem facing the British was that, under principles of self-determination expressed by Article 73 of the UN Charter, it is stated that "the interests of the inhabitants of a territory are paramount" in determining its future.
This article - later invoked by Britain to launch the Falklands War - ran contrary to U.S. wishes which were for any leased territory to be 'swept' and 'fully sanitised' - i.e., devoid of human inhabitants.
[edit] British purchase of the Chagos
The problem of Mauritian sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago was circumvented at a 1965 London conference prior to the independence of Mauritius. Mauritian Prime Minister Seewoosagar Ramgoolam was persuaded to sell the Chagos to Britain for the bargain price of £3m (1967 rate). Ramgoolam was later awarded a knighthood in the 1965 New Year's Honours List, and it is speculated that this may have been a form of reward for the sale.
Through the sale the Chagos and a handful of other Indian Ocean islands (including tortoise-rich Aldabra and neighbouring Agalega) thus became a new colony - the British Indian Ocean Territory.
In 1966, with the ownership of the Chagos secured, Great Britain and the United States executed an "exchange of notes" making the island of Diego Garcia available for the defence needs of both countries for the next 50 years.
[edit] Depopulation
In early March 1967, the British Commissioner declared BIOT Ordinance Number Two. This unilateral proclamation was called the Acquisition of Land for Public Purposes (Private Treaty) Ordinance and enabled him to acquire any land he liked (for the UK Government). On April 3 of that year, under the provisions of the order, the British Government bought all the plantations of the Chagos archipelago for £660,000 from The Chagos Agalega Company. According to the conspiracy theory, the plan was to deprive the Ilois of an income and so encourage them to leave the island voluntarily. In a memo dating from this period, Colonial Office head Denis Greenhill (later Lord Greenhill of Harrow) wrote to the British Delegation at the UN:
- "The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. Unfortunately, along with the seagulls go some few Tarzans and Man Fridays who are hopefully being wished on Mauritius."
Another internal Colonial Office memo read:
- The Colonial Office is at present considering the line to be taken in dealing with the existing inhabitants of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). They wish to avoid using the phrase 'permanent inhabitants' in relation to any of the islands in the territory because to recognise that there are any permanent inhabitants will imply that there is a population whose democratic rights will have to be safeguarded and which will therefore be deemed by the UN to come within its purlieu. The solution proposed is to issue them with documents making it clear that they are 'belongers' of Mauritius and the Seychelles and only temporary residents of BIOT. This devise, [sic] although rather transparent, would at least give us a defensible position to take up at the UN."
Advocates of the Ilois (see links below) claim that the number of Ilois residents on Diego Garcia was deliberately under-counted in order to play down the scale of the proposed depopulation. Three years before the depopulation plan was concocted, the British Governor of Mauritius, Sir Robert Scott, is said to have estimated the permanent population of Diego Garcia at 1,700. In a BIOT report made in June 1968, the British Government estimated that only 354 Ilois were third generation 'belongers' on the islands. This number subsequently fell in further reports.
Later that year, the British Government asked for help from the legal department of their own Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in creating a legal basis for depopulating the islands. The first paragraph of the FCO's reply read:
- "The purpose of the Immigration Ordinance is to maintain the fiction that the inhabitants of the Chagos are not a permanent or semi-permanent population. The Ordinance would be published in the BIOT gazette which has only very limited circulation. Publicity will therefore be minimal."
The Government is therefore accused of deciding to clear all the islanders by denying they ever belonged on Diego Garcia in the first place and then removing them. This was to be done by issuing an ordinance that the island be cleared of all non-inhabitants. The legal obligation to announce the decision was fulfilled by publishing the notice in a small-circulation gazette not generally read outside of FCO staff.
For many years, family groups of Ilois had made trips to the Mauritian mainland on the periodic steamers that collected the copra from Diego Garcia. They would then get to spend the money they had earned in the townships, and experience something of modern life. When they had tired of this, they would simply get on the next steamer home - even though this might mean a wait on Mauritius of several months.
Starting in March 1969, Ilois visiting Mauritius found that they were no longer allowed to get on the steamer home. They were told their contracts to work on Diego Garcia had expired. This left them homeless, jobless and without means of support. It also prevented word from reaching the rest of the Diego Garcia population. Relatives who travelled to Mauritius to investigate their missing family members also found themselves unable to return.
[edit] 'A Memorandum of Guidance' (1970)
In 1970, British MP Tam Dalyell heard about what was happening to the Ilois and gave notice that he intended to ask a number of questions in Parliament. Within days of Dalyell's notification, Eleanor Emery, Head of the Indian Ocean Department at the FCO, drafted a 'memorandum of guidance' for internal circulation. The reason for the memorandum, she stated, was 'a recent revival of public interest in the British Indian Ocean Territory'.
She then stated:
- "We shall continue to try to say as little as possible to avoid embarrassing the United States administration.
- "Apart from our overall strategic and defence interests, we are also concerned at present not to have to elaborate on the administrative implications for the present population of Diego Garcia of the establishment of any base there.
- "We would not wish it to become general knowledge that some of the inhabitants have lived on Diego Garcia for several generations and could, therefore, be regarded as 'belongers'.
- "We shall advise ministers in handling supplementary questions to say that there is only a small number of contract workers from the Seychelles and Mauritius, engaged to work on the copra plantations.
- "Should an MP ask about what would happen to these contract labourers in the event of a base being set up on the island, we hope that, for the present, this can be brushed aside as a hypothetical question at least until any decision to go ahead with the Diego Garcia facility becomes public."
[edit] U.S. personnel arrive
On January 23, 1971 a nine-man advance party from the U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 40 (NMCB-40) landed on Diego Garcia to confirm planning information and conduct a survey for beach landing areas.
At 5pm (local time) on March 9, 1971, the USS Vernon County arrived at Diego Garcia. The next day, she began underwater and beach surveys in preparation for beaching. Two days after that, the ship beached and began offloading men and construction equipment for construction of a US Navy base on Diego Garcia.
Construction continued for the remainder of the summer, with the completion (July 28, 1971) of the first runway on the island (3,500 feet in length).
[edit] The last Ilois are removed
In March 1971, a BIOT civil servant travelled from Mauritius to tell the Ilois that they were to leave. A memorandum related that:
- "I told the inhabitants that we intended to close the island in July. A few of them asked whether they could receive some compensation for leaving 'their own country.' I kicked this into touch by saying that our intention was to cause as little disruption to their lives as possible."
Some weeks later, the remaining Ilois began packing their belongings and nailing shut their houses. They were shipped to Mauritius by the U.S. Navy as they became ready. On October 15 1971, the few remaining Ilois held a last Mass in the island's one church and put down their donkeys. The U.S. Naval staff rounded up and killed the Ilois' dogs by gassing them with exhaust fumes from vehicles. The bodies were put into a furnace and cremated.
One survivor of the depopulation era, Lizette Tallatte, later told journalist John Pilger: "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."
Later that day, last of the Ilois and their families were shipped out on the MV Nordvaer. They arrived at Mauritius and were left at Port Louis.
[edit] International law
The case has not been heard by any international court of law; Mauritius is prevented from bringing a claim to the International Court of Justice by the terms of British submission to the the voluntary jurisdiction of the ICJ, and no right of petition exists "in right of" the British Indian Ocean Territory to either the European Court of Human Rights or the UN Human Rights Committee.
According to Article 7(d) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which established the ICC, "deportation or forcible transfer of population" constitutes a crime against humanity if it is "committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack". The ICC is not retroactive: alleged crimes committed before July 1, 2002 cannot be judged by the ICC.[1]
[edit] Compensation
The British Government had allocated £650,000 'in full and final settlement of HMG's obligations' towards its dispossessed citizens - slightly less than £400 per head. This money went to the Mauritian Government to defray the costs of resettling the Ilois. The Mauritian Government, however, did not recognise it had a duty to resettle the Ilois.
[edit] Protests
The Ilois had been left homeless in an island where unemployment already stood at 20 percent. Moreover, their trade was copra farming which was not translatable to the local economy as Mauritius's chief crop was sugar cane. The Ilois also spoke a patois unique to Diego Garcia, meaning it would be difficult to integrate with Mauritians. It is claimed that within the first year, many Ilois committed suicide and others turned to crime and prostitution in order to survive.
A few of the literate exiles put together a petition that they presented to the British High Commissioner, asking for a house and a plot of land for each family, so that they could support themselves. The Commissioner immediately delivered this petition to the Mauritian Government.
Mauritian opposition party the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) began to question the validity under international law of the purchase of the Chagos and the removal of the Ilois.
In 1975, David Ottaway of the Washington Post wrote and published an article entitled: "Islanders Were Evicted for U.S. Base" which related the plight of the Ilois in detail.
This prompted two U.S. Congressional committees to look into the matter. They were told that the 'entire subject of Diego Garcia is considered classified' [1].
In November 1975, the Sunday Times published an article entitled The islanders that Britain sold.
That year, a Methodist preacher from Kent, Mr George Champion, began a one-man picket of the FCO, with a placard reading simply: 'DIEGO GARCIA'. This continued until his death in 1982.
In 1976, the government of the Seychelles took the British government to court. The Aldabra, Desroches and Farquhar Islands were returned to the Seychelles and the United States cancelled its 60-year lease of the islands from Britain.
In 1978, at Bain Des Dames in Port Louis, six Ilois women went on hunger strike and there were demonstrations in the streets (mainly organised by the MMM) over Diego Garcia. In 1979, a Mauritian Committee asked Mr. Vencatassen’s lawyer to negotiate more compensation. In response to this, the British Government offered £1.25m to the surviving Ilois on the express condition that Vencatassen withdraw his case and that all Ilois sign a "full and final" document renouncing any right or return to the island. Some of the Ilois did indeed sign. The document also contained provisions for those that could not write, by allowing the impression of an inked thumbprint to ratify the document. This questions the validity of the documents, if it implies that the signatories were illiterate.
[edit] Recent developments
In 2000 the British High Court granted the islanders the right to return to the Archipelago. In 2002 the islanders and their descendants, now numbering 4,500, returned to court claiming compensation, after what they said were two years of delays by the British Foreign Office.
However, on 10th June 2004 the British government made two Orders-in-Council forever banning the islanders from returning home[2], reversing the 2000 court decision. Some of the Ilois are making return plans to turn Diego Garcia into a sugarcane and fishing enterprise as soon as the defence agreement expires (some see this as early as 2016). A few dozen other Ilois are still fighting to be housed in the UK[3].
On May 11, 2006 the British High Court ruled that the 2004 Orders-in-Council were unlawful, and consequently that the Ilois were entitled to return to the Chagos Archipelago.[4] [5] It remains to be seen whether the British Government will appeal, and when or how the judgment might be implemented in practice. An action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Robert McNamara, the former United States Secretary of Defense was dismissed as a nonjusticiable political question.[6]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Chagossian protestor site: http://www.refusingtokill.net/Chagos/chagos.htm
- http://www.counterpunch.org/pilger10062004.html
- http://www.granta.com/extracts/1225
- http://www.lalitmauritius.com/deigohowdiego.htm
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk_politics/1005064.stm
- Chagossian timeline: http://www.lalitmauritius.com/kronoloziprufrid.htm
- Stealing a Nation, a 2004 documentary by John Pilger (at Google Video)
