The depths of coalition betrayal, their broken promises, stretch far below the higher education cuts. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition has backtracked on the pre-election promises made to the Chagos Islanders. To explain the injustice of this decision, let me tell you a story.
Many miles away, in the glittering Indian Ocean, lie some sixty islands. They reflect the island paradises of legend: palm trees wave in the breeze; turtles bury eggs in the soft sandy beaches. Once, these islands were populated by the Chagos islanders. They fished in the bountiful seas and lived and traded in small tight-knit communities.
One day, this all changed. In the 60s, while the Cold War simmered, the USA cast its nets for a naval base in the area. The British Government (who “owned” the Chagos Islands as part of their colonisation of Mauritius – an island which gained independence from the British in 1968) leased the largest island, Diego Garcia to the Americans, who accepted on the condition that the island was uninhabited. And so, the first of many atrocities began.
Britain now simply lied. The government of the day claimed that the Chagos islanders were simply passing labourers with no right of abode. One senior Foreign Office official described them as “mere Tarzans and Men Fridays”, a horrific denial of the humanity of some 2000 people, some of whom were the fifth generation in their family to be born to the island. Passing labourers indeed.
To sustain this lie, Britain continued: the second atrocity was a series of acts so horrific that it is impossible to understand how those in office managed to justify it, either institutionally or personally. Without warning, the islanders were told they must leave their homes. Those abroad at the time, having been offered a free holiday to Mauritius by the British government, were simply barred from returning, leaving them stranded in foreign nations without their families, let alone such possessions as they owned. Those on the Chagos Islands themselves were rounded up: where they fled to the outer islands armed men came with boats to force them to leave. The islanders were packed off to neighbouring Mauritius and the Seychelles: some were under duress, and some were under the false illusion that they were going to islands with conditions similar to their own, where their way of life could at least continue as it always had done.
The British officers proceeded to “clear” the islands with ruthless efficiency. Homes were destroyed; pets and livestock were gassed and burnt. One Chagos islander describes that day:
“Our dogs, around 1,500 of them, were stacked and forced into a big building. All doors and windows were closed. We then saw two jeeps approach the building and back up in such a way as to bring their exhaust pipes as close as possible to a door; the British and American officers managed to connect the exhaust pipes of the vehicles to inside the building; they then left the vehicles’ engines running and went away… Pretty soon, we heard the dogs starting to cry, then scream painfully. It was one of the hardest scenes ever. The American and British officers failed to realise that people of African origin i.e.: the Chagossians, could naturally have pets and fall in love with them. We too considered our pets as members of our family; as much as would be hard today for a white family to suffer its dog being gas chambered, it was equally hard for us there. Our children cried so much in pain and sorrow and we all cried. This is still fresh in our minds.”
The horror did not stop there. Crammed onto boats too small for the number of islanders evicted, many fell ill on the journey, and in tales reminiscent of the slave ships of the 19th century, those who died were thrown overboard, to the screams of their families.
Having survived this harrowing journey, the islanders were abandoned at Port Louis, in Mauritius. They were given no support, no land, no education or housing, but merely left to fend for themselves and build their own shacks and beg on the streets. Lacking in education and facing discrimination at the hands of the local population, the islanders suffered, and continue to suffer.
And so began their quest: they asked not for what they deserved, but merely to be afforded the basic rights that any person should have access to. Life, freedom, food and shelter. Twenty years after abandoning them in the slums, the British Government offered each Chagossian the sum of about $1000. They took thumbprints ostensibly as acknowledgment of the receipt of the money, however, even in this apparent benevolence, the British were perpetuating their oppression of these people. The desperate and poorly educated Chagossians were being coerced into putting their thumns to a legal document renouncing their right of return to the Chagos Islands.
Five court rulings have declared the illegality of the action of the British government, and upheld the Chagossians right of return. The government has countered these with a so called “feasibility study” conducted in 2002, which claimed that the conditions on the Chagos islands render it unfit for human habitation, because of the risk of earthquakes and flooding. However, this seems like a thinly veiled lie, given the presence of a military base on the largest island, and the happy survival of the islanders on the Chagos Islands for many generations prior to their eviction. The government also, in 2004, issued a secret “royal order” banning anyone from setting foot on the islands.
Before the election, things began to look hopeful at last for this long-neglected community. William Hague (then Shadow Foreign Secretary) and Nick Clegg supported the return of the islanders to their home. Hague committed to a “fair settlement” (at the very least, compensation for the islanders) with the islanders “placed at the heart of any decisions taken about their homeland”, whilst Clegg’s office wrote that:
“[the] Liberal Democrats take the view that removing the Chagossians in the 1960s was a scandalous decision and this Government has continued to mistreat these people. They have done so in the face of opposition from the UN. Regardless of the legal arguments, Nick and the Liberal Democrats believe that the Government has a moral responsibility to allow these people to at last return home.
We have actively supported their cause in the past and we will continue to aid their campaign to see justice done. We have been appalled that the government has wasted time, money and effort defending the indefensible.”
With the rise to power of the coalition government, it appeared that finally justice would be done. However, in the last month Hague has betrayed these promises, saying that, “when you go into it in detail, it is quite hard to hold out the prospect of a fundamental change of policy, so I do not want to raise any hopes of that…In the light of what I have seen so far, we will be maintaining the position that we have taken on proceedings in the European Court”.
In other words, this coalition government is as firmly in the pocket of American interests as the government of 40 years ago, and the Chagos islanders are once more going to be denied their homes and rights. The depths of the injustices perpetrated over what is now almost half a century go so deep that I could not plumb them in their entirety in this article, and they cry ‘liar’ to the supposition that we live in a civilised, liberal society with a common humanity that stretches around the globe. On this, the coalition really has betrayed their promises, and here, an entire nation really is destroyed.
Amanda Moorghen
For more information, or to support the islanders, please visit http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/
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