by Mark Curtis
Ever since their removal, the islanders have campaigned for proper compensation and for the right to return. In 1975, for example, they presented a petition to the British High Commission in Mauritius. It said:
We, the inhabitants of the Chagos islands – Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Salomen – have been uprooted from these islands because the Mauritius government sold the islands to the British government to build a base. Our ancestors were slaves on those islands but we know that we are the heirs of those islands. Although we were poor we were not dying of hunger. We were living free … Here in Mauritius … we, being mini-slaves, don’t get anybody to help us. We are at a loss not knowing what to do.14
The response of the British was to tell the islanders to address their petition to the Mauritian government. The British High Commission in Mauritius responded to a petition in 1974 saying that the ‘High Commission cannot intervene between yourselves as Mauritians and government of Mauritius, who assumed responsibility for your resettlement.’15 This, as the British government well knew, was a complete lie, as many of the Chagossians could claim nationality ‘of the UK and the colonies’ (see below). In 1981, a group of Chagossian women went on hunger strike for twenty-one days and several hundred women demonstrated in vain in front of the British High Commission in Mauritius.
The Whitehall conspiracy
British policy was: after removing the islanders from their home, to remove them from history, in the manner of Winston Smith.
In 1972 the US Defence Department could tell Congress that ‘the islands are virtually uninhabited and the erection of the base would thus cause no indigenous political problems’. In December 1974 a joint UK–US memorandum in question-and-answer form asked ‘Is there any native population on the islands?’; its reply was ‘no’. A British Ministry of Defence spokesman denied this was a deliberate misrepresentation of the situation by saying ‘there is nothing in our files about inhabitants or about an evacuation’, thus confirming that the Chagossians were official Unpeople.16
Formerly secret planning documents revealed in the court case show the lengths to which Labour and Conservative governments have gone to conceal the truth. Whitehall officials’ strategy is revealed to have been ‘to present to the outside world a scenario in which there were no permanent inhabitants on the archipelago’. This was essential ‘because to recognise that there are permanent inhabitants will imply that there is a population whose democratic rights will have to be safeguarded’. One official noted that British strategy towards the Chagossians should be to ‘grant as few rights with as little formality as possible’. In particular, Britain wanted to avoid fulfilling its obligations to the islanders under the UN charter.17
From 1965, memoranda issued by the Foreign Office and then Commonwealth Relations Office to British embassies around the world mentioned the need to avoid all reference to any ‘permanent inhabitants’. Various memos noted that: ‘best wicket … to bat on … that these people are Mauritians and Seychellois [sic]’; ‘best to avoid all references to permanent inhabitants’; and need to ‘present a reasonable argument based on the proposition that the inhabitants … are merely a floating population’. The Foreign Office legal adviser noted in 1968 that ‘we are able to make up the rules as we go along and treat inhabitants of BIOT as not “belonging” to it in any sense’.18
Then Labour Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart wrote to prime minister Harold Wilson in a secret note in 1969 that ‘we could continue to refer to the inhabitants generally as essentially migrant contract labourers and their families’. It would be helpful ‘if we can present any move as a change of employment for contract workers … rather than as a population resettlement’. The purpose of the Foreign Secretary’s memo was to secure Wilson’s approval to clear the whole of the Chagos islands of their inhabitants. This the prime minister gave, five days later on 26 April. By the time of this formal decision, however, the removal had already effectively started – Britain had in 1968 started refusing to return Chagossians who were visiting Mauritius or the Seychelles.19
A Foreign Office memo of 1970 outlined the Whitehall conspiracy:
We would not wish it to become general knowledge that some of the inhabitants have lived on Diego Garcia for at least two generations and could, therefore, be regarded as ‘belongers’. We shall therefore advise ministers in handling supplementary questions about whether Diego Garcia is inhabited to say there is only a small number of contract labourers from the Seychelles and Mauritius engaged in work on the copra plantations on the island. That is being economical with the truth.
It continued:
Should a member [of the House of Commons] ask about what should 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.20
Detailed guidance notes were issued to Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence press officers telling them to mislead the media if asked.
The reality that was being concealed was clearly understood. A secret document signed by Michael Stewart in 1968, said: ‘By any stretch of the English language, there was an indigenous population, and the Foreign Office knew it.’ A Foreign Office minute from 1965 recognises policy as ‘to certify [the Chagossians], more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else’. Another Whitehall document was entitled: ‘Maintaining the Fiction’. The Foreign Office legal adviser wrote in January 1970 that it was important ‘to maintain the fiction that the inhabitants of Chagos are not a permanent or semi-permanent population’.21
Yet all subsequent ministers have peddled this lie in public, hitting on the formula to designate the Chagossians merely as ‘former plantation workers’, while knowing this was palpably untrue. For example, Margaret Thatcher told the House of Commons in 1990 that:
Those concerned worked on the former copra plantations in the Chagos archipelago. After the plantations closed between 1971 and 1973 they and their families were resettled in Mauritius and given considerable financial assistance. Their future now lies in Mauritius.22
Foreign Office minister William Waldegrave said in 1989 that he had recently met ‘a delegation of former plantation workers from the Chagos Islands’, before falsely asserting that they ‘are increasingly integrated into the Mauritian community’. Aid minister Baroness Chalker also told the House that ‘the former plantation workers (Illois) are now largely integrated into Mauritian and Seychellese society’.23
New Labour has maintained the fiction in the twenty-first century, continuing to peddle the official line in the court case that the islanders were ‘contract labourers’. As I write this, the Foreign Office website contains a country profile of the British Indian Ocean Territory that states there are ‘no indigenous inhabitants’.24
Another issue that the British government went to great lengths to conceal was the fact that many of the Chagossians were ‘citizens of the UK and the colonies’. Britain preferred to designate them Mauritians so they could be dumped there and left to the Mauritian authorities to deal with. The Foreign Secretary warned in 1968 of the ‘possibility … [that] some of them might one day claim a right to remain in the BIOT by virtue of their citizenship of the UK and the Colonies’. A Ministry of Defence note in the same year states that it was ‘of cardinal importance that no American official … should inadvertently divulge’ that the islanders have dual nationality.25
Britain’s High Commission in Mauritius noted in January 1971, before a meeting with the Mauritian prime minister, that:
Naturally, I shall not suggest to him that some of these have also UK nationality … always possible that they may spot this point, in which case, presumably, we shall have to come clean [sic].
In 1971 the Foreign Office was saying that it was ‘not at present HMG’s policy to advise “contract workers” of their dual citizenship’ nor to inform the Mauritian government, referring to �
��this policy of concealment’.26
Ministers also lied in public about the British role in the removal of the Chagossians. For example, Foreign Office minister Richard Luce wrote to an MP in 1981, in response to a letter from one of his constituents, that the islanders had been ‘given the choice of either returning [to Mauritius or the Seychelles] or going to plantations on other islands in BIOT’ [sic]. According to this revised history, the ‘majority chose to return to Mauritius and their employers … made the arrangements for them to be transferred’.27
Ministers in the 1960s also lied about the terms under which Britain offered the Diego Garcia base to the US. The US paid Britain £5 million for the island, an amount deducted from the price Britain paid the US for buying the Polaris nuclear weapon system. The US asked for this deal to be kept secret and prime minister Harold Wilson complied, lying in public. A Foreign Office memo to the US of 1967 said that ‘ultimately, under extreme pressure, we should have to deny the existence of a US contribution in any form, and to advise ministers to do so in [parliament] if necessary’.
A Foreign Office memo of 1980 recommended to the then Foreign Secretary that ‘no journalists should be allowed to visit Diego Garcia’ and that visits by MPs be kept to a minimum to keep out those ‘who deliberately stir up unwelcome questions’.28
The defence lawyers for the Chagossians, who unearthed the secret files, note that:
Concealment is a theme which runs through the official documents, concealment of the existence of a permanent population, of BIOT itself, concealment of the status of the Chagossians, concealment of the full extent of the responsibility of the United Kingdom government …, concealment of the fact that many of the Chagossians were Citizens of the UK and Colonies … This concealment was compounded by a continuing refusal to accept that those who were removed from the islands in 1971–73 had not exercised a voluntary decision to leave the islands.
Indeed, the lawyers argue, ‘for practical purposes, it may well be that the deceit of the world at large, in particular the United Nations, was the critical part’ of the government’s policy.29
New Labour, old values
I met Olivier Bancoult and a group of Chagossians on their visit to London in October/November 2002 to give evidence to a further high court hearing. They are demanding fuller compensation and the right to return to Diego Garcia, both opposed by the government, which is continuing to challenge them in court. On this visit they were not meeting Foreign Office officials. Bancoult told me that:
Every time we come to explain clearly about the Chagossians, they always give us hope without anything coming. The Foreign Office is not acting in good faith to get things moving in our favour. It seems they are not interested in us, maybe because we’re black skinned and African origin. If you take the example of the Falklands, the problem was solved. If you take Montserrat, everything was solved. It is shameful that the UK is head of the Commonwealth.30
I found the group of Chagossians a very dignified yet sorry sight. Most were bewildered by what they were having to go through – come over to London from Mauritius to sit in court hearings every day to give evidence on why they should be allowed to return to their homeland, in proceedings conducted in a language almost none of them spoke, and with some of them frail and ill. Their stay was only possible due to the firm of lawyers and the Chagos Support Group in Britain, which is itself run on a shoestring budget, scraping together the minimum finance. The government gave not a penny. When I met them, the group of Chagossians were huddled in a small basement of a London hotel, whose owners were providing them with the favour of basic food during their stay. The indignity of it all at the hands of the British government is part of the scandal.
As Labour’s Treasury spokesperson in 1981, Robin Cook protested about the use of Diego Garcia by US nuclear-armed bombers; but as Foreign Secretary he was reportedly ‘evading the issue’ when it was raised at the UN, and supported the government’s court case against the islanders. Britain also continues to reject calls by the Mauritian government to return Diego Garcia to it, saying it will do so only when no longer ‘needed for defence purposes’.31
In the process of drawing up the Overseas Territories Bill, the Blair government initially tried to deny the Chagossians the full British citizenship on offer to inhabitants of the other overseas territories, saying they were citizens of Mauritius – a longstanding deception that British governments knew to be false. Only grudgingly did the government concede full citizenship rights.32
It has to be said that the government position has been quite extraordinary. The Blair government is continuing to oppose the Chagossians’ search for justice, as well as maintaining much of the apologias and deceit that has marked elite policy for the last four decades. It doesn’t even believe it has anything officially to apologise for. Foreign Office minister John Battle told the House of Commons that the court case concerned only the settlement of the outer islands ‘not the rights and wrongs of the way in which the Illois were removed’.33
Whitehall is distinctly unhappy about the ruling in the court case and is in effect doing what it can to block its implementation. The Chagossians’ return ‘is not a realistic prospect’, Foreign Office minister Tony Lloyd told the House of Commons in 1998, before the high court ruling of November 2000. He added that ‘successive British governments have given generous financial assistance to help with the resettlement of the Illois in Mauritius’, referring presumably to the small pay-outs made in 1978 and 1982.34
A mere three months before the high court ruling in favour of the islanders’ right to return to the outlying islands, Foreign Office minister Peter Hain said that:
The outer islands of the territory have been uninhabited for 30 years so any resettlement would present serious problems both because of the practical feasibility and in relation to our treaty obligations.35
Similarly, a Foreign Office memorandum to the House of Commons stated that resettlement of the outlying islands would be ‘impractical and inconsistent with the existing defence facilities’. ‘Our position on the future of the territory will be determined by our strategic and other interests and our treaty commitments to the USA.’ The memo said nothing about the government’s obligations to the rights of the islanders – which is at least honest, since it is clear that neither Conservative nor Labour governments have ever cared a hoot about the islanders or any weird notion of human rights.36
A year after the court case victory the government was effectively defying the ruling of the court. The Foreign Office blocked the first planned visit by the islanders to their home for thirty years, saying ‘the security situation precludes this’. It said that ‘we continue to give your general request to facilitate a visit careful consideration, without any commitment to fund such a visit’. The islanders merely intended to stay one night aboard ship, on a reconnaissance visit.37
The Foreign Office has also dragged out the process of conducting a feasibility study on resettlement, and then concluded from it that resettlement on the islands is largely infeasible anyway, saying that long-term habitation on the islands would be precarious and the costs prohibitive. The Chagossians were allowed to take no part in this study. By contrast, a feasibility study conducted for the islanders shows that resettlement is feasible and that there would be adequate water, fish and other supplies, even with low levels of investment. This study states that ‘it is fatuous to suggest that the islands cannot be resettled’ and that the conclusion of the government’s feasibility study is ‘erroneous in every assertion’. It notes that the Chagos islands are indeed already successfully settled – by the US military.38
So-called ‘yachties’ appear to spend months living on the outlying islands. Meanwhile, millions of euros have been set aside by the EU in aid for overseas territories – ™ 2 million for the Pitcairn islands, for example, with a population of around four dozen. The British government has not asked the EU for anything to resettle the Chagossians.
The court ca
se resulted in a compromise, securing the islanders’ right to return to the outlying islands, but not Diego Garcia. The British government remains adamantly opposed to their return to Diego Garcia, referring to ‘treaty obligations’ to the US – that is, the deal illegally stitched up between the two. Access to Diego Garcia ‘will continue to be controlled strictly and will be by permit only’, the government says. Thus Labour will require the deported inhabitants to have a special permit to visit their territory. This is in contrast to the 1,500 civilian workers currently employed on Diego Garcia, mainly from Mauritius and the Philippines, who service the US base. The British and US navies conduct sea and air patrols to ensure no one gets too close to Diego Garcia.39
The US was also strongly opposed to any resettlement, even in the outlying islands, and exerted pressure on the British government to prevent this. The Guardian published a confidential letter from the State Department to the Foreign Office saying that such resettlement ‘would significantly downgrade the strategic importance of a vital military asset unique in the region’. The US disclosed that it was seeking permission from Britain to expand its military base on Diego Garcia and to ‘develop the island as a forward operating location for expeditionary air force operations – one of only four such locations worldwide’. This was a year before September 11th provided easy pretexts for such increased power projection. Following the court case, the US conceded that it could not prevent the islanders from returning to the outer islands but will not allow them on Diego Garcia.40