The Chagosians – my summary of their story - Gary

Every place has its human story – but none more strange or tragic than that of Chagos and its people forced in to exile in the early 1970s.

“A shocking recent act of imperial arrogance”

is how one journalist has described the hand the UK and USA sprang upon the unsuspecting Chagosians.

The Islands
Chagos is an archiplelago of 65 tiny coral islands surrounding a series of atolls and lying dead centre of the equatorial Indian Ocean.  First settled in 1793 (only 5 years after the First Fleet brought European settlers to Australia’s Botany Bay) the New Chagosians were slaves and lepers, brought to these islands from Mauritius to establish coconut plantations.  Emancipated in 1838, the former slaves were at intervals joined by fresh waves of emigrants from Africa, Madagascar and India to work company plantations.

The Culture
The archipelago, for most of its settled history, has been administered by the British, first as part of the Seychelles and then as part of the colony of Mauritius.  The plantations were held under lease and then as freehold, first by a Mauritian Company, and then by a wealthy Seychelleese family company.  The Chagosians were essentially company employees or their dependents.  Workers were paid wages (mostly in the form of basic goods and provisions), but also limited cash, held for individuals until sufficient had accumulated for them to travel to Mauritius to purchase additional needs.  Families maintained gardens for fresh fruit and vegetable, raised chickens and supplemented their diet by fishing.  Ships came regularly, delivering mail and supplies and taking the coconut products.  Settlement focused on three main towns on the atolls of Diego Garcia, Salomon and Peros Banhos where copra processing and storage facilities and wharfs were located.  Community facilities included schools, churches, hospitals and graveyards.  At its peak, around 1970, the population numbered around 2000 people.  The Chagosians had by then evolved their own distinctive language and culture and many could trace their lineage back to the earliest days of settlement.  The Chagosians might be considered just company employees (of a company likely headed for bankruptcy), but increasingly they were also gaining many of the characteristics of nationhood. But things were about to change.

A Strategic Neccessity
In the midst of the cold war, with the British withdrawing from Asia and closing bases in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, the US decided upon the strategic necessity of an Indian Ocean base to protect the flow of Gulf oil.  In 1964, following a feasibility survey, Chagos became the location of choice, but a US requisite was that it be sans Chagosians.  Mauritius was at the time a self governing colony moving towards independence, so a first requirement was for the British to decouple Chagos from Mauritius via a payment of £3 million.  So in 1965 the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) came into existence – Chagos now had a new name!  In 1966 the British secretly reached an agreement with the US on a 50 year lease to develop any island of the BIOT for defense purposes.  In 1967 the British purchased all the plantation company’s BIOT assets from its Seychellian owners and progressively closed down the plantations and arrival of supply ships.  On April 1971 the UK quietly issued a policy called BIOT Immigration Ordinance #1 which made it a criminal offence for those without military clearance to be on the islands without a permit.  During that same year the US commenced construction of a major military base on Diego Garcia. By 1973 all the Chagosians had been removed, by force if necessary, from their homes, heritage and way of life, and their houses, stock and domestic pets systematically destroyed.

Without ceremony the now homeless, voiceless Chagosians were deposited upon the docks in either Mauritius or the Seychelles.  Largely destitute, with little education and not speaking the language of these host countries, the Chagosians were largely confined to the fringes of these societies, living in slums.  Many are still there.  But they have slowly developed a voice and are fighting back!

Fightback!
Some compensation has been forthcoming, first £650,000 in 1973 (though not distributed until 1978!) and then £4 million in 1982.  In November 2000 the UK High Court ruled that the expulsion of the Chagosians was unlawful and conferred on them the right of return.  But the Chagosians were going to need assistance to return and before this could happen, in 2004, orders were passed by the UK Parliament removing this right of return.  In 2006 these orders were overturned by the High Court, returning to Chagosians their right of return.  The UK government appealed this ruling but was defeated in the Court of Appeal.  The judges called the treatment of islanders “unlawful and an abuse of power”.  But the government still had a strong backstop, taking its appeal to the House of Lords, which in 2008 overturned the High Court.  The Chagosians again lost their right of return!  But still they fight on.

They currently have at least two more irons in the fire.  The Chagosians have taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights and await a judgment there.  The UK government, dogged to the last, has chosen to continue to fight on rather than reaching a ‘friendly settlement’ as this jurisdiction proposed.  As well on 4 April 2012 a petition was lodged with the US White House asking the US to consider the plight of the people of Chagos.

Conclusion
I wonder that we ask some people in the world to pay too high a price for the charmed existence us Westerners enjoy. Certainly as a family we all agreed that if it was indeed necessary then the whole exercise could at least have been done a whole lot better.

The settlement of East Point on the atoll of Diego Garcia, as it existed in 1968 

Top: arrival of mail, bottom: husking coconuts, both Diego Garcia 1963 

Approaching the military base ‘Camp Justice’ on the atoll of Diego Garcia.

Photos of the base taken between 1986 and 1999.  The base is now the only place of human habitation remaining in the BIOT.

PHOTOS
Thanks is extended to the photographers which may or may not include:
Chas Anderson, Kirby Crawford, David Dixon
Mont Hirons, Rebecca Klaus, Ted Morris
Goetz Reineke, Charles and Anne Sheppard
Mark Spalding, Donald Taylor, John Topp

- - -