Never knew there were Chagossians exiled by US and UK when they built Diego Garcia

Forty Years of Heartbreak: Let the People of Diego Garcia Return to their Homeland - huffingtonpost

Over a weekend of memorials, I was remembering a friend who died of a broken heart. Her death certificate may not say so, but she did. Aurélie Lisette Talatedied last year at 70 of what members of her community call, in their creole language, sagren--profound sorrow.

Madame Talate, as many called her, was a stick-thin, strong-biceped woman. She ate almost nothing, smoked a lot, and spoke with a power that earned her the nickname ti piman--little chili pepper--because the littlest chilies are the hottest and fiercest. Then again, on the rare occasions when she smiled, she smiled like a little girl.

Madame Talate died of sagren because the U.S. and British governments exiled her and the rest of her Chagossian people from their homeland in the Indian Ocean's Chagos Archipelago to create a secretive military base on Chagos's largest island, Diego Garcia.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the final deportations, when the last boatload of Chagossians arrived 1,200 miles from their homes, on the western Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles. In those same forty years, the base on British-controlled Diego Garcia helped launch the Afghan and Iraq wars and was partof the CIA's secret "rendition" program for captured terrorist suspects.

The history of the base, which the U.S. military calls the "Footprint of Freedom," dates to the 1950s and 1960s. By then, Chagossians had been living in the previously uninhabited Chagos islands for almost 200 years, since their ancestors arrived as enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In 1965, after years of secret negotiations, Britain agreed to separate Chagos from colonial Mauritius (contravening UN decolonization rules) to create a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory. In a secret 1966 agreement, Britain gave U.S. officials base rights on Diego Garcia and agreed to take those "administrative measures" necessary to remove the nearly 2,000 Chagossians in exchange for $14 million in secret U.S. payments.

Beginning in 1968, any Chagossians who left Chagos for medical treatment or regular vacations in Mauritius were barred from returning home, marooning them often without family members and almost all their possessions. British officials soon began restricting food and medical supplies to Chagos. Anglo-American officials designed a public relations plan aimed at, as one British bureaucrat said, "maintaining the fiction" that Chagossians were migrant laborers rather than a people with roots in Chagos for five generations or more. Another British official called them "Tarzans" and "Man Fridays."

In 1971, the U.S. Navy's highest-ranking admiral, Elmo Zumwalt, issued the final deportation order in a three-word memo ringing of Joseph Conrad's Kurtz:

"Absolutely must go."

British agents, with the help of Navy Seabees, quickly rounded up the islanders' pet dogs, gassing and burning them in sealed cargo sheds. They ordered Madame Talate and the remaining Chagossians onto overcrowded cargo ships. During the deportations, which took place in stages until May 1973, most Chagossians slept in the ship's hold atop guano--bird crap. Prized horses stayed on deck. By the end of the five-day trip, vomit, urine, and excrement were everywhere. At least one woman miscarried.

Arriving in Mauritius and the Seychelles, Chagossians were literally left on the docks. They were homeless, jobless, and had little money, and they received no resettlement assistance. In 1975, the Washington Post broke the story in the Western press and found them living in "abject poverty." Most remain deeply impoverished to this day.

Soon after Madame Talate arrived in Mauritius, two of her sons died. Madame Talate experienced fainting spells, couldn't eat, and became remarkably skinny after being, in her words, "fat" in her homeland.

"I had something that had been affecting me for a long time, since we were uprooted" from Diego Garcia, she told me. "This sagren, this shock.... And it was this same problem that killed my child," she continued. "We weren't living free like we did in our natal land. We had sagren when we couldn't return."

Scores more Chagossians have reported deaths from sadness and sagren. They are not alone. Reports of deaths from a broken heart abound, including among elderly forced into nursing homes and other indigenous and displaced peoples. In my own family, my grandmother recounts how her mother died of a broken heart after sending her 13-year-old son from Nazi Germany to Amsterdam in 1938, where he was ultimately deported to Auschwitz and murdered. When she died, her doctor said she died of a broken heart. "The guilt she carried with her ultimately just broke her heart," my grandmother explains. "Yes. It's possible."

In fact, medical research increasingly supports such claims: one study suggests that acute stress can bring on fatal heart spasms in people with healthy cardiac systems;another indicates that the death of a spouse or child can cause dangerous heart rhythms, potentially increasing the risk of heart attacks and sudden cardiac death.

Before her death, Madame Talate helped lead her people in demanding the Anglo-American powers return them to their homeland. Sadly, after forty years, too many Chagossians like Madame Talate have died brokenhearted, with the two governments still refusing to let them go home.

Recently the heartbreak has mounted. In 2008, after three lower courts in Britain had ruled the expulsion illegal, Britain's highest court overturned those rulings by a 3-2 margin, upholding the government's colonial right to exile a people. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed the Chagossians' final appeal on procedural grounds.

A day after the European court ruling, the Obama administration rejected the demands of an online petition signed by some 30,000 asking the White House to "redress wrongs against the Chagossians." The administration sidestepped U.S. responsibility and said Britain has been doing enough to address "the hardships they endured."

To make matters worse, in 2010, the British government created a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in Chagos. Officials denied it was an attempt to prevent a return no matter the court rulings. Then a secret Wikileaks cable revealed a senior British official saying, "Former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve." U.S. officials agreed the MPA would likely "be the most effective long-term way to prevent" resettlement. Adding insult to injury, the British official repeated his predecessor's racist slur, saying the MPA would allow no "Man Fridays."

Shockingly, British judges presiding over a Chagossian legal challenge to the MPA last month ruled the Wikileaks cable inadmissible as evidence because it violates diplomatic privilege. British and U.S. authorities will "neither confirm nor deny" its authenticity.

Repeatedly our leaders in the White House and Congress and their British allies have turned their backs on the injustice our nations committed against a small people. The Chagossians, who now number some 5,000, don't want to remove the base on Diego Garcia. They simply want to return (and, for many elders, die) where their ancestors are buried and receive proper compensation.

It's long past time our country acknowledges its responsibility for the Chagossians' exile and ensures these demands are met. Especially compared to the billions we've spent on Diego Garcia, it would take pennies to help repair the lives of those who've suffered for the base.

After forty years of exile and too many broken hearts, it's long past time we let the Chagossians go home.

Chagos Islanders attack plan to turn archipelago into protected area - TheGuardian

The 55 islands and the sparkling seas around them are famed for their clean waters and pristine coral reefs. They are described by naturalists as the "other Galapagos", "a lost paradise" and a "natural wonder" and are officially recognised as a biodiversity hotspot of global importance.

This week the British government, backed by nine of the world's largest environment and science bodies, including the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Royal Society, the RSPB and Greenpeace, is expected to signal that the 210,000 sq km area around the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean will become the world's largest marine reserve. If it does, all fishing, collection of corals and hunting for turtles and other wildlife will be banned across an area twice the size of the British isles.

More than 275,000 people from more than 200 nations have sent messages in support of Britain's full protection of the Chagos Islands and their surrounding waters, but one group is distinctly uneasy.

The original Chagossians, who were deported between 1967 and 1973 to make way for a giant US nuclear air force base on the largest island, Diego Garcia, say they would in effect be barred from ever returning because the marine protection zone would stop them fishing, their main livelihood. "There would be a natural injustice. The fish would have more rights than us," said Roch Evenor, secretary of the UK Chagos Support Association, who left the island when he was four.

The islanders, who number about 4,000 and live in exile in Britain, Mauritius and elsewhere, have battled through the British courts for nearly 20 years for the right to return and appeared to have won an important victory in 2000 when the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook, decided in their favour. But following the September 11 attacks, the UK government reversed Cook's decision and the Chagos case has migrated between courts. Most recently, the House of Lords ruled against them after Britain cited American security concerns. Their last hope is that the European court of human rights will overturn the decision in their favour in the next few months.

Today, Chagossian supporters accused the government of duplicity. "The British government's plan for a marine protected area is a grotesquely transparent ruse designed to perpetuate the banning of the people of Mauritius and Chagos from part of their own country," said Ram Seegobin, of the Mauritian party Lalit de Klas, in a letter to Greenpeace seen by the Guardian. "The conservation groups have fallen into a trap. They are being used by the government to prevent us returning," said Evenor.

They were backed by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights groupReprieve, who has challenged the UK government on the use of Diego Garcia by the US to render suspected terrorists. "The truth is that no Chagossian has anything like equal rights with even the warty sea slug. There is no sense that the British government will let them go back. The government is not even contemplating equal rights for Chagossians and sea slugs."

Supporters of the islanders also suspect that the timing of the announcement of the protected area is highly political. "Clearly, the British government is preparing a fall-back plan; if they lose the case in Europe, then there will be another 'reason' for denying the banished people their right of return," said Olivier Bancoult, a Chagossian leader in Mauritius.

Today, scientists and conservationsists denied that they were being "used" by the government.

"The UK government agrees that a marine protection area will not create a barrier for the Chagossians to return. The two issues are separate. If the Chagossians are given a right to return, any conservation measures will be adjusted. The aim is to protect the reserve now so that the resources there would be available for the Chagossians if and when they return. As it is, the seas there are being heavily depleted by French and Taiwanese fleets," said a spokeswoman for the US-basedPew environment group, which is expected to contribute millions of dollars to establish the reserve.In a letter on its website, Greenpeace said: "[We] acknowledge and support the Chagossians in their struggle, and hope that they are successful. But at the moment, the Chagos Islands are being administered by the UK government, and whatever way you look at it, taking steps to protect the marine life there is a good idea. If and when the Chagossians are repatriated, then the protection of the seas around the archipelago will need to be readdressed, and yes, that may well involve allowing fishing by the islanders."

But David Snoxell, former high commissioner to Mauritius, said the marine reserve would set up a significant barrier to the Chagossians' return. "The environment groups were beguiled [into giving their support]. If the government were to designate a protection area they would be erecting a psychological, legal and economic barrier against the Chagossians, and send a strong message that they would not be welcome in their homeland. It would be highly prejudicial."