SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
diego garcia
Chagossians 'Deplore' Deal Allowing US-UK to Keep Diego Garcia Air Base
"We remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland," one diaspora Chagossian said in response to the agreement.
Oct 03, 2024
Activists on Thursday decried a deal under which the United Kingdom will cede sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius with the exception of Diego Garcia, an island from which the Indigenous Chagossian people were forcibly expelled over half a century ago to make way for one of the world's largest and most important U.S. military bases.
The agreement—which was announced Thursday by the U.K. and Mauritius governments—grants the latter full sovereignty over the remote Indian Ocean archipelago, while allowing the United States and Britain to keep the joint base on Diego Garcia for the next 99 years. Under the deal, Mauritius authorities will facilitate Chagossians' eventual resettlement of the archipelago, with the apparent glaring exception of Diego Garcia.
"Following two years of negotiation, this is a seminal moment in our relationship and a demonstration of our enduring commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes and the rule of law," a joint statement published by the U.K. and Mauritius governments states. "Negotiations have been conducted in a constructive and respectful manner, as equal sovereign states, on the basis of international law, and with the intention of resolving all outstanding issues between the United Kingdom and Mauritius concerning the Chagos Archipelago, including those relating to its former inhabitants."
"The treaty will address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians," the statement adds. "Mauritius will now be free to implement a program of resettlement on the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, other than Diego Garcia, and the U.K. will capitalize a new trust fund, as well as separately provide other support, for the benefit of Chagossians."
U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed what he called the "historic agreement," which he said represents a "clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome long-standing historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes."
Some Chagossians also welcomed the deal. Isabelle Charlot, chair of the Chagos Islanders Movement, told BBC Radio 4 that the agreement gave her hope that her family could return to "a place that we can call home, where we will be free."
Other Chagossians decried the deal. The advocacy group Chagossian Voices—which is based in Crawley in West Sussex, England—said in a statement:
Chagossian Voices deplore the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations which have produced this statement of intent concerning the sovereignty of our homeland. Chagossians have learned this outcome from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland. The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored and we demand full inclusion in the drafting of the treaty.
"We remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland," Chagossian Voices founding member Frankie Bontemps told the BBC.
Diego Garcia was once home to around 1,500 Creole-speaking Chagossians and their beloved dogs. However, in the 1960s the U.S. convinced Britain to grant it full control there and subsequently began to "sweep" and "sanitize" the atoll of its Indigenous population, in the words of one American official.
"We must surely be very tough about this," one British official privately wrote, adding that "there will be no Indigenous population except seagulls."
Many Chagossians were tricked or terrorized into leaving. U.S. Marines told them they'd be bombed if they didn't evacuate, and Chagossians' dogs were gassed to death with fumes from military vehicles. The islanders were permitted to take just one suitcase with them. Most were shipped to Mauritius, where they were treated as second-class citizens and where many ended up living in poverty and heartbreak in the slums of the capital, Port Louis.
Meanwhile—and without any apparent sense of irony—the U.S. military dubbed the new Halliburton-built base on Diego Garcia Camp Justice. In addition to launching an unknown number of attacks on countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq from Diego Garcia during the ongoing so-called War on Terror, the U.S. military also dumped large amounts of human sewage into a protected coral lagoon on the atoll, belying British claims of commitment to ecological stewardship.
The forced displacement of the Chagossians was largely hidden from the U.S. and British public. However, the Chagossians never stopped fighting for justice. Britain's High Court of Justice twice ruled that their removal was illegal. In 2010, WikiLeaks published a secret U.S. diplomatic cable exposing nefarious intentions—denying Chagossians their right of return—behind the establishment of a marine reserve around the atoll.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory opinion that the U.K. was exercising "illegal" sovereignty over Diego Garcia and urged the British government to "decolonize" the atoll by handing sovereignty to Mauritius, whose government long contended it was forced to cede control in order to secure its own independence from Britain.
Responding to the new agreement, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday that while the deal will "address the wrongs against the Chagossians of the past," it "looks like it will continue the crimes long into the future."
"It does not guarantee that the Chagossians will return to their homeland, appears to explicitly ban them from the largest island, Diego Garcia, for another century, and does not mention the reparations they are allowed to rebuild their future," HRW senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin said in a statement.
Keep ReadingShow Less
From Galapagos to Guam: US Military Bases are a Threat to Local Communities
My family’s home has been forced to leave our ecological future in the hands of the United States military, one of the largest polluters globally
Jun 20, 2019
This month I got two of the most distressing pieces of news I could imagine. The first was a headline: US to use Galapagos island as a military airfield. The second came from my grandmother: two of our family friends are in the end stages of Agent Orange poisoning.
I'm from Guam; one of the countless islands of the Pacific used by the United States military as a base. At just 8 miles wide and 30 miles long, about a third of our island is covered by military installations with more build-up expected. My family and my community know all too well what being used as an airfield means. 52,000 veterans have organized into the group Agent Orange Survivors of Guam to lobby for benefits related to their exposure to the infamous herbicide while serving in the Pacific.
While we are home to a vibrant indigenous community, beautiful and sadly rare flora and fauna, and a rich history, we are also home to stockpiled chemical weapons, countless ammunitions, regular bombings and live-fire trainings, and more consequences of a military positioned for a world of constant danger.
Former Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, took to Twitter after the announcement of the airfield saying, "Galapagos NO es un 'portaaviones' para uso gringo." Galapagos is "not an aircraft carrier" for the Americans. The sentiment is a familiar one. Many know my island as the United States' "unsinkable aircraft carrier." While we are home to a vibrant indigenous community, beautiful and sadly rare flora and fauna, and a rich history, we are also home to stockpiled chemical weapons, countless ammunitions, regular bombings and live-fire trainings, and more consequences of a military positioned for a world of constant danger.
Along with the physical consequences of being used as a military base, CHamorus (the indigenous people of Guam) and others around the US's more than 600 bases globally know the threats to sovereignty these installations bring with them. For CHamorus this has meant 500 years without self-determination as well as a system of rights that is left to the discretion of a Congress 8,000 miles away from Guam. The inhabitants of the island Diego Garcia experienced forcible removal from their homes as build up began. Panama created a constitution that would specifically allow United States military intervention resulting in 24 invasions between 1856 and 1989.
Ecuador's constitution explicitly states, "establishment of foreign military bases or foreign facilities for military purposes shall not be allowed," as the nation is "a territory of peace." Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrin insists that no installation will have "permanence".
This reasoning has been seen in justification of United States presence at the Soto Canal Air Base in Honduras. While officials insist that the U.S. forces are simply "guests" on the site of the Honduran Air Force Academy, the installation is now more than 30 years old. As reported by the Associated Press in the late 80's, some U.S. officials describe the build-up as "temporary but indefinite."
Many of these bases are within indigenous communities, particularly communities whose natural environment is deeply integrated to a nation or a people's culture.
My family's home has been forced to leave our ecological future in the hands of the United States military, one of the largest polluters globally. In the Department of Defense's latest plans, about 1,000 acres (about 8%) of Guam's remaining native limestone forest will be razed. The sites of planned build-up are culturally significant to CHamoru people and artifacts continue to be unearthed as construction continues.
CHamoru activists and members of the State Historic Preservation Office have expressed needs to halt construction. Linda Aguon, the office's divisional supervisor, said, "We keep discovering things, we keep discovering things. Can't we just stop?" She was joined in questioning the planned build up by Senators Therese Terlaje and Kelly Marsh.
An environmental director with Marine Corps Activity Guam, Al Borja, responded insisting, "Will we preserve in place for latte shards from a pot that was dropped? That's not going to happen because I know the ranges have to be where they are, and that's not going to force us to reconsider this." Sentiments like this from representatives of the United States military, for me, are a reminder of the massive land seizures by the Department of Defense following the liberation of my grandmother and about 13,000 other CHamorus from a World War II era concentration camp.
In August of 1944, Guam was to become the forward base for United States attacks targeting Japan and to accomplish this goal the military seized 82% of the land of the island for military purposes (this is the high water mark of American land holdings on the island). Anyone without explicit authorization to access American military bases would be shot on sight if they were found on what had been taken as military land. Eighteen construction and engineering battalions immediately began construction of military outfits including what is now known as Anderson Airforce Base and began using it as the flight strip from which daily bombings of Japanese territory would occur by way of B-29's.
Since then just a few families have received little, in any, compensation for their lost land or severe health problems consistent with exposure to continuous simulated war.
This is a problem that has global importance. A report by Brown's Watson Institute published last week found that the average annual carbon footprint of the United States' military-industrial complex is about on par with that of the Netherlands: 153 million metric tons per year. And this is a conservative number given the secrecy of the Pentagon and the reporting loopholes for military organizations written into the Kyoto Protocol.
The Pentagon has significantly acknowledged the threats that continued carbon consumption poses. One of the report's authors, Neta Crawford, explains "We have defense forces so they protect us. If in the long run, these defense forces make us less secure then we need to rethink what we're doing." Still, build-up continues in Guam and, apparently, on Galapagos.
For the communities affected by these military installations, the continued political, cultural, and medical issues represent a far greater threat than that which the bases supposedly protect us from. They are an affront to self-determination and spell the end for a place's environment.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Diego Garcia: The "Unsinkable Carrier" Springs a Leak
A court ruling against colonial exploitation could threaten a strategic U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean. Indigenous advocates say it’s about time.
Apr 14, 2019
The recent decision by the Hague-based International Court of Justice that the Chagos Islands -- with its huge U.S. military base at Diego Garcia -- are being illegally occupied by the United Kingdom (UK) has the potential to upend the strategic plans of a dozen regional capitals, ranging from Beijing to Riyadh.
For a tiny speck of land measuring only 38 miles in length, Diego Garcia casts a long shadow. Sometimes called Washington's "unsinkable aircraft carrier," planes and warships based on the island played an essential role in the first and second Gulf wars, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Libya. Its strategic location between Africa and Indonesia and 1,000 miles south of India gives the U.S. access to the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the vast Indian Ocean. No oil tanker, no warship, no aircraft can move without its knowledge.
Most Americans have never heard of Diego Garcia for a good reason: No journalist has been allowed there for more than 30 years, and the Pentagon keeps the base wrapped in a cocoon of national security. Indeed, the UK leased the base to the Americans in 1966 without informing either the British Parliament or the U.S. Congress.
The February 25 Court decision has put a dent in all that by deciding that Great Britain violated United Nations Resolution 1514 prohibiting the division of colonies before independence. The UK broke the Chagos Islands off from Mauritius, a former colony on the southeast coast of Africa that Britain decolonized in 1968. At the time, Mauritius objected, reluctantly agreeing only after Britain threatened to withdraw its offer of independence.
The Court ruled 13-1 that the UK had engaged in a "wrongful act" and must decolonize the Chagos "as rapidly as possible."
"The Great Game" in the Indian Ocean
While the ruling is only "advisory," it comes at a time when the U.S. and its allies are confronting or sanctioning countries for supposedly illegal occupations -- Russia in the Crimea and China in the South China Sea.
The suit was brought by Mauritius and some of the 1,500 Chagos islanders who were forcibly removed from the archipelago in 1973. The Americans, calling it "sanitizing" the islands, moved the Chagossians more than 1,000 miles to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they've languished in poverty ever since.
Diego Garcia is the lynchpin for U.S. strategy in the region. With its enormous runways, it can handle B-52, B-1 and B-2 bombers, and huge C-5M, C-17, and C-130 military cargo planes. The lagoon has been transformed into a naval harbor that can handle an aircraft carrier. The U.S. has built a city -- replete with fast food outlets, bars, golf courses and bowling alleys -- that hosts some 3,000 to 5,000 military personnel and civilian contractors.
What you can't find are any native Chagossians.
The Indian Ocean has become a major theater of competition between India, the U.S., and Japan on one side, and the growing presence of China on the other. Tensions have flared between India and China over the Maldives and Sri Lanka, specifically China's efforts to use ports on those island nations. India recently joined with Japan and the U.S. in a war game -- Malabar 18 -- that modeled shutting down the strategic Malacca Straits between Sumatra and Malaysia, through which some 80 percent of China's energy supplies pass each year.
A portion of the exercise involved anti-submarine warfare aimed at detecting Chinese submarines moving from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean. To Beijing, those submarines are essential for protecting the ring of Chinese-friendly ports that run from southern China to Port Sudan on the east coast of Africa. Much of China's oil and gas supplies are vulnerable, because they transit the narrow Mandeb Strait that guards the entrance to the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz that oversees access to the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The U.S. 5th Fleet controls both straits.
Tensions in the region have increased since the Trump administration shifted the focus of U.S. national security from terrorism to "major power competition" -- that is, China and Russia. The U.S. accuses China of muscling its way into the Indian Ocean by taking over ports, like Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan that are capable of hosting Chinese warships.
India, which has its own issues with China dating back to their 1962 border war, is ramping up its anti-submarine forces and building up its deep-water navy. New Delhi also recently added a long-range Agni-V missile that's designed to strike deep into China, and the right-wing government of Narendra Modi is increasingly chummy with the American military. The Americans even changed their regional military organization from "Pacific Command" to "Indo-Pacific Command" in deference to New Delhi.
The term for these Chinese friendly ports --"string of pearls" -- was coined by Pentagon contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and, as such, should be taken with a grain of salt. China is indeed trying to secure its energy supplies and also sees the ports as part of its worldwide Road and Belt Initiative trade strategy. But assuming the "pearls" have a military role, akin to 19th century colonial coaling stations, is a stretch. Most the ports would be indefensible if a war broke out.
An "Historic" Decision
Diego Garcia is central to the U.S. war in Somalia, its air attacks in Iraq and Syria, and its control of the Persian Gulf, and would be essential in any conflict with Iran. If the current hostility by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. toward Iran actually translates into war, the island will quite literally be an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Given the strategic centrality of Diego Garcia, it's hard to imagine the US giving it up -- or rather, the British withdrawing their agreement with Washington and de-colonizing the Chagos Islands. In 2016, London extended the Americans' lease for 20 years.
Mauritius wants the Chagos back, but at this point doesn't object to the base. It certainly wants a bigger rent check and the right eventually to take the island group back.
It also wants more control over what goes on at Diego Garcia. For instance, the British government admitted that the Americans were using the island to transit "extraordinary renditions," people seized during the Afghan and Iraq wars between 2002 and 2003, many of whom were tortured. Torture is a violation of international law.
As for the Chagossians, they want to go back.
Diego Garcia is immensely important for U.S. military and intelligence operations in the region, but it's just one of some 800 American military bases on every continent except Antarctica. Those bases form a worldwide network that allows the U.S. military to deploy advisors and Special Forces in some 177 countries across the globe. Those forces create tensions that can turn dangerous at a moment's notice.
For instance, there are currently U.S. military personal in virtually every country surrounding Russia: Norway, Poland, Hungary, Kosovo, Romania, Turkey, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. Added to that is the Mediterranean's 6th Fleet, which regularly sends warships into the Black Sea.
Much the same can be said for China. U.S. military forces are deployed in South Korea, Japan, and Australia, plus numerous islands in the Pacific. The American 7th fleet, based in Hawaii and Yokohama, is the Navy's largest.
In late March, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships transited the Taiwan Straits, which, while international waters, the Chinese consider an unnecessary provocation. British ships have also sailed close to Chinese-occupied reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
The fight to de-colonize the Chagos Islands will now move to the UN General Assembly. In the end, Britain may ignore the General Assembly and the Court, but it will be hard pressed to make a credible case for doing so. How Great Britain can argue for international law in the Crimea and South China Sea, while ignoring the International Court of Justice on the Chagos, will require some fancy footwork.
In the meantime, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth calls the Court decision "historic," and one that will eventually allow the 6,000 native Chagossians and their descendants "to return home."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular