A many-sided secret

The US has been a shadowy puppet master behind the UK's crimes against the indigenous people of the Chagos Archipelago. In the 1960s and 1970s, the UK forcibly removed the Chagossians from their islands to enable the US to build a military base on Diego Garcia, one of the islands in the Archipelago. Diego Garcia is also where rendition planes allegedly stopped before spiriting people, such as Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj, away to torture.

The expulsion of the Chagossians for the construction of the Diego Garcia military base is a "many-sided secret," to quote a 2002 cable signed by former US ambassador to the UK, William Stamps Farish. This secret received renewed attention when The Guardian recently reported how the UK lied about the Chagossians to avoid international outcry about their expulsion. Newly released archival documents from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) show that in 1970, the UK conspired to call the Chagossians "contract labourers" to ensure that no alarm bells would sound over the forced expulsion of the indigenous population.

Elena Landriscina on Chagos (further reading).

Interview with Olivier Bancoult

Olivier Bancoult was four years old when he left the archipelago in 1967. His little sister had been hurt in a cart accident and was taken to a local dispensary on Bancoult's home island of Peros Banhos, in the northeastern part of Chagos archipelago. But the nurse there didn't have the resources to help; the girl would have to travel to Mauritius, an African island nation 1300 miles away, for effective treatment.

"So my mom and dad decided that the whole family needed to move to Mauritius, but that we would move back after the treatment of my sister," recalls Bancoult.
Further reading.

Chagos and the Falklands - the contrast revisited

Forty years ago: Chagos.
Thirty years ago: Las Malvinas.
Guess which anniversary does not get attention?

Diego Garcia "mothballed" in 2016?

Apparently the occupation of the Chagos Archipelago is going to be "mothballed" as of 2016. Another archipelago should be awaiting the fate of being strategically positioned.

Further reading: here and here.

The Malvinas and Chagos

These are the days when patriotism runs wild again about some foggy rocks near Antarctica, belonging to "this great nation" (the incedrible phrase used by the co-chairman of the Tory party on Question Time, Jan. 20th) and the right to self-determination of the inhabitants of these rocks is highlighted.

The days when the contrast to Diego Garcia and Chagos is yet a bit more poignant than usually.
John Pilger happens to write about Chagos.

And in London there will be the theatre piece Some Man Fridays in February and March. Check it out if you can.

Lalit on UK & US conspiracy, lies and impunity

It is not every day in our shared history that we find ourselves interconnected in such a matrix of struggles: the struggle against military bases and occupation, the struggle against decolonisation, the struggle to protect human rights and ecosystems. Diego Garcia represents this matrix. These struggles intersect at this atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the Chagos Archipelago, which is part of the Mauritius territory. The military base on Diego Garcia is not a coincidence in this matrix; it is at the very heart of the United States and Great Britain's military strategy.

What we are dealing with here in this part of our shared history is a criminal plot concocted by the British State and the American State; a conspiracy that the governments of UK and US have been trying to keep secret from us, from their own people and from the rest of the world. The role Great Britain has played on Chagos and Diego, sometimes on its own, sometimes alongside the prime mover, the United States of America, has been one of secrecy, conspiracy and a web of lies.

And, what is happening on Diego Garcia today can have important repercussions globally.

Further reading.

Mauritius sues UK for control of Chagos

Apparently it takes a Wikileaks "operation" to bring out in the open what we already have known for years:

The prime minister of Mauritius has accused Britain of pursuing a "policy of deceit" over the Chagos islands, its Indian Ocean colony from where islanders were evicted to make way for a US military base. He spoke to the Guardian as his government launched the first step in a process that could end UK control over the territory.

Navinchandra Ramgoolam spoke out after the Labour government's decision to establish a marine reserve around Diego Garcia and surrounding islands was exposed earlier this month as the latest ruse to prevent the islanders from ever returning to their homeland.

A US diplomatic cable dated May 2009, disclosed by WikiLeaks, revealed that a Foreign Office official had told the Americans that a decision to set up a "marine protected area" would "effectively end the islanders' resettlement claims". The official, identified as Colin Roberts, is quoted as saying that "according to the HMG's [Her Majesty's government's] current thinking on the reserve, there would be 'no human footprints' or 'Man Fridays'" on the British Indian Ocean Territory uninhabited islands."

Further reading.