Protecting what is not yours in the first place

A major conservation row is developing over proposals for Britain to establish the biggest and most unspoiled marine nature reserve in the world. The issue of the Chagos Islands raises the increasingly difficult question of how to weigh up the protection of the best remaining parts of nature, in a rapidly degrading world, against the needs and rights of people.

The Hawks bill turtle is critically endangered. (ALAMY)
It concerns the Chagos Archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a group of isolated coral islands teeming with wildlife which is considered to be among the least polluted marine locations on Earth. Its seawater is the cleanest ever tested; its coral reefs are completely unspoiled; its whole ecosystem, with its countless seabirds, turtles, coconut-cracking crabs (the world's largest), dolphins, sharks and nearly 1,000 other species of fish, is pristine.

Officially British Indian Ocean Territory, the islands are the subject of an ambitious plan by conservationists - backed by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband - to keep them the way they are, by creating a marine protected area, where fishing and all other exploitation would be banned, of 210,000 square miles - more than twice the land surface of Great Britain. In an age when the oceans and their biodiversity are being ever more despoiled, it would be a supreme example of marine conservation and one of the wildlife wonders of the world - in effect, Britain's Great Barrier Reef, or Britain's Galapagos.

The plan excites many wildlife enthusiasts and has the formal support of several of Britain's major conservation bodies, from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew and the Zoological Society of London to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The backing of the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary is significant. A public consultation on the plan ends on Friday.

But there is a notable omission from the plan. It takes no account of the wishes of the original inhabitants, the Chagossians - the 1,500 people living on the islands who, between 1967 and 1973, were deported wholesale by Britain, so that the largest island, Diego Garcia, could be used by the US as an airbase for strategic nuclear bombers.

Further reading.

Black site Chagos

Name:
Camp Justice
Continent:
Asia
Country:
Diego Garcia
Status:
Suspected Black Site
Control:
United States Navy


Location:

Diego Garcia is the largest and most southerly of the six main island groups that comprise the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 3,000 miles South of Iraq.

Background:

A Human Rights First report, Ending Secret Detentions, June 2004 [Deborah Pearlstein and Michael Posner. Available online at www.HumanRightsFirst.org] refers to detention facilities maintained by the US in various undisclosed locations including facilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, US war ships and Diego Garcia. The report states that denials by US and British Officials contradict repeated press reports that at least some individuals, including Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin) have been detained on Diego Garcia. Press reports referred to include several by Dana Priest, writing for The Washington Post. A December 2002 article [US Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogation. Available at www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37943-2002Dec25] refers to the use of Diego Garcia as a secret overseas detention centre. Similar comments are made by Mark Seddon writing for The Independent in December 2003 [The Independent December 13th 3003: Is There Another Guantanamo Bay on British Soil?] and referring to a Time Magazine article from October 2003 [The terrorist talks].

Detainees:

- Unknown detainees

Source: Cage Prisoners.

A people's navy...

Pete and Jon have been arrested in Diego Garcian waters. We have been told they are well but we haven't heard from them since their arrest. See the Home page for more coverage on their arrest. Below we reproduce the statement that they have prepared to give to the UK and US governments: We have sailed our boat Musichana over 2000 miles to demonstrate to you the serious nature of our concerns about the plight of the Chagossians and about your military activities on Diego Garcia.

It is our duty as British citizens, to challenge and expose these activities in a peaceful and responsible manner.

We represent a growing proportion of the world's population, who disagree with the treatment of the Chagossians and demand their right to return.

--The Chagos people were the legitimate inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelagos.

--Three generations of Chagossians are buried on the island.

--The UK courts have consistently supported the Chagossians in their right to return.

--While commendable, it is simply not good enough to allow some Chagossians to come back to clean and restore graveyards. When the work is finished they have to leave again.

We are disgusted by your military activities, because history has proven that violent military conflicts and all forms of terrorism solve nothing. Yet your actions and those of your respective Governments, which corruptly entangle profit making business with political and military decisions, continue to increase militarization and the use of force as a first rather than a last option and only perpetuate global instability and terrorise innocent people.

Your base here is, together with the other US bases throughout the world, part of an axis of evil and represents all the corruption and subversion of human decency. From here your bombers have rained terror, horror and destruction, often onto the heads of innocent people. It has also been used for secretly transporting and holding prisoners without regard to even the most basic and accepted concepts of justice.

We urge you, in the name of humanity to cease your inhumane activities. You must leave Diego Garcia forthwith and end your shameful and harmful presence here, so that the rightful inhabitants, who you exiled nearly forty years ago can return to their homes and live in peace.

The story of the "People's Navy" voyage to Chagos.

Story of a deportation

Almost four decades have elapsed but Dervillie Permal remembers clearly the summer day in 1971 when the British Government evicted him from the Chagos Islands, the tropical idyll in the heart of the Indian Ocean that was his home.
Now 73, his face contorts with anguish as he recalls in his native Creole how he had just left work at a coconut plantation when armed soldiers stopped him, told him he had to leave immediately and escorted him to a ship that was packed with weeping islanders. He was not permitted a final visit to his home. He was allowed to take only the possessions he had with him. His dog and livestock were killed.
A week later the Nordvaer deposited its wretched human cargo 1,200 miles away in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, a British colony at the time. There he was reunited with his wife Marie Aimee, who had taken their two children to Port Louis for medical treatment two years earlier and had been barred from returning to the sun-blessed archipelago.
The islanders – mostly illiterate, unskilled and penniless – were given no help to resettle. They lived in dirt-floor shacks in the slums of the city. Mr Permal scraped a living unloading rice from ships. Mrs Permal earned a few extra pennies from sewing. They raised seven children. Last year Hengride, their daughter, brought them to live with her in a three-bedroom, semidetached house that is occupied by ten Chagossians in the Sussex commuter town of Crawley.

Further reading.

Social life in the Chagos: the folklore

Far from the hectic and consuming life of Mauritius, we led a very peaceful life on our small islands.

There was no mad rush, we all lived according to our own rhythm, never in fear or in stress of having to strive to make both ends meet in order to feed the members of our family. Our society was constituted in such a way that we always had whatever we wanted, there was no poverty and no misery.

We never knew the meaning of hunger, deprivation or starvation until we were moved to Mauritius. We always had plenty of food, we ate to our heart’s content and drank to our good fortune. This was due to the fact that many, if not all of us, reared animals and poultry (chickens, ducks, pigs, turkeys, geese, guinea fowl, rabbits), we also grew fruit and vegetable gardens and vegetables that one family did not have were always obtained from another family in exchange for a vegetable that it did not have. Some of us had beehives, which produced fresh honey for the community. All of us knew how to fish and take food from the resourceful lagoon. Some of us were full time fishermen, the rest would fish whenever they had to or felt like it. We had the best fish, lobster, octopus and crab, ever. We always had fresh fish, most often red snappers and ‘babonne’ which are sold at over $25 a pound on western and far eastern markets and which we had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Inasmuch as fish have traditionally been a significant element of our diet, we were torn by the fact that we did not have the means to get fresh fish in Mauritius; all we could have was frozen fish, which, from all angles you look at it (nutritionally and taste), was a different thing altogether, if you could even get it. It is not that there is no fish in Mauritius, but on an island of 1.2m inhabitants, the lagoons having been emptied of their fish, fishermen have to be well organised to go outside the lagoons, which makes the fish much more expensive and not available to poor people like ourselves. I have a hard time imagining Italians being deprived of pasta and pizza, Chinese of rice and noodles, Americans of burgers, fries and ice cream: for us, fresh fish and other fresh sea produce was the basis of our diet. We cooked and had them in one hundred different ways.

From: Our life in Chagos

Always a pleasure to provide construction services on stolen land

Tutor Perini Corporation (NYSE: TPC), a leading civil and building construction company, announced that its subsidiary Black Construction, in joint venture with MACE International Limited, has been awarded a $19.2 million design-build contract in Diego Garcia by the Department of the Navy.

“We are pleased to be part of this program for the U.S. Navy. Our team at Black Construction continues to be a leader in providing construction services for the Navy and other governmental agencies in this part of the world.”

The U.S. Navy Support Facility (“NSF”) Diego Garcia is located in the Indian Ocean within the British Indian Ocean Territory. The project, called FY09 MCON Project P-181 Wharf Upgrade and Warehouse Facility, will support the relocation of a Land class vessel due to closure of the current ship homeport. This is the second phase of a planned three-phase construction program to provide facilities to support the Land class ship and the ships that it will service at NSF Diego Garcia in a timely manner. In addition, this project will upgrade the water and wastewater systems and construct storage facilities to support the operations.

Ronald Tutor, Chairman and CEO of Tutor Perini, said: “We are pleased to be part of this program for the U.S. Navy. Our team at Black Construction continues to be a leader in providing construction services for the Navy and other governmental agencies in this part of the world.”

Further reading

Black Construction is also concerned with the militarist destruction of the island of Guam.

Doutes sur retraite de Chagos

La récente décision des Etats-Unis pour un upgrading of the wharf facilties à la base militaire de Diego Garcia suscite des doutes quant à un éventuel retrait à l'expiration du bail initial de 50 ans et le retour de l'archipel des Chagos à Maurice en 2016. C'est ce qu'indiquent des observateurs qui suivent avec intérêt depuis plusieurs années déjà ce différend anglo-mauricien. Le dernier développement majeur en date demeure l'octroi d'un contrat d'un montant de Rs 300 millions pour des travaux au quai de Diego Garcia. Les travaux de modernisation des facilités portuaires devront durer jusqu'en octobre 2011, indique-t-on de sources militaires officielles.

Ainsi un consortium connu sous le nom de Black Construction Corp. / MACE International, JV, GMF Barrigada de Guam s'est vu octroyer en ce début d'année le contrat pour des travaux visant à upgrade the wharf facilities at Naval Support Facility à Diego Garcia. Mention est également faite qu'une firme spécialisée du Japon, The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Far East, à Yokosuka, comme faisant partie des contracting activities.

A ce stade, l'annonce publique de ce contrat d'un montant de Rs 300 millions pour des travaux échelonnés sur les prochains 22 mois, n'est pas accompagné de détails sur la nature des travaux envisagés par les militaires américains ou encore si ces travaux auront des répercussions sur l'environnement marin de l'archipel. Rappelons que Londres ambitionne de transformer les eaux des Chagos en une marine protection area.

Néanmoins, la succession de projets de nature militaire exécutés à Diego Garcia commence à susciter de malaises à Port-Louis. Les travaux pour la modernisation des wharf facilities at the Naval Support Base de Diego Garcia fait suite à la décision de Washington de doter cette base militaire de facilités pour accueillir des sous-marins équipés de lance-missile type Tomahawk. Ces nouvelles dispositions devront être opérationnelles à partir du mois d'avril prochain, avait annoncé la Marine américaine vers la fin de l'année dernière.

D'autre part, fin décémbre 2009, dans le sillage de l'attentat terroriste manqué sur un avion de la Northwest Airlines le jour de Noël avec pour principal suspect, l'étudiant nigérian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, la presse internationale avait fait état d'un projet des Américains pour l'utilisation des facilités militaires à Diego Garcia dans la nouvelle offensive contre Al-Qaeda au Yémen.

" The US has never publicly acknowledged the rapid build-up of its military presence in and near Yemen since last year but sources say that attacks already mounted by Yemeni government forces on al-Qaeda training camps would have been impossible without American hardware and knowhow. Future strikes could involve the use of US drones, fighter jets and ship-launched cruise missiles. "We are going to work with allies and partners to seek out terrorist activity [and] al-Qaeda", Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said. The US military has formidable firepower on permanent standby in the form of carrier battle groups stationed in Bahrain, and unimpeded access to Yemen from bases in Djibouti and the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia ", rapporte le Times de Londres à cet effet.

A ce stade, le gouvernement est encore au stade de la confirmation officielle des intentions militaires des Américains. Le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Arvin Boolell, interrogé par Le Mauricien, ce matin, sur ces nouveaux travaux d'infrastructure à Diego Garcia, a laissé entendre qu'il compte soulever cette affaire pour des précisions sur les composantes de ces travaux lors de sa prochaine rencontre avec le nouveau Chargé d'Affaires des Etats-Unis demain.

Entre-temps, le froid diplomatique entre Port-Louis et Londres est toujours de mise car le Foreign Secretary britannique, David Miliband, n'a pas encore répondu aux demandes d'explications et d'éclaircissements de Maurice au sujet du " Consultation Paper " sur le projet visant à faire de l'archipel des Chagos une marine protection area. Une des conséquences est que le troisième round des consultations bilatérales sur les Chagos, qui aurait dû se dérouler cette semaine à Londres, a été gelé à l'initiative de Maurice.





Source: Le Mauricien