UK Chagos Support Blog

This is the first post in quite a while, so plenty to report.

First of all, the big date we’re all waiting for now is Monday 30 June – this is when the Government’s appeal to the House of Lords against last year’s decision in favour of the islanders is due to be heard. The islanders are optimistic about the outcome, and are mindful that this represents the Government’s last avenue of appeal.

You've probably heard (Times, BBC, Guardian) about Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s admission that Diego Garcia was indeed used by the US to refuel CIA ‘rendition’ flights, despite the Government having previously denied this on the basis of assurances from the US.

Olivier Bancoult, leader of the Chagos Refugees Group, said: “We Chagossians deeply regret that our island has been used as a place where terror suspects have been transported while we are not free to go there… We believe the time has come for the British Government to follow the example of the Australian Prime Minister [who apologised to the Aborigines] to take responsibility for their acts and doings and to apologise to the Chagossian community.”

Meanwhile the Foreign Affairs Committee has been gathering evidence for its inquiry into the Overseas Territories. Olivier came to London in January to give evidence, and the committee has also received evidence from representatives of the Diego Garcian Society and the Chagos Island Community Association.

The committee chairman Mike Gapes told Olivier: “As you know… your islands have a particular history. We hope at some point they will also have people resident there who can act as guardians of the environment.” Most encouraging!

We have two major projects underway which have been made possible by grants from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which promotes democratic reform, constitutional change and social justice.

In April we will be launching a major campaign entitled Let Them Return!, pushing for resettlement of the outer islands of Chagos. Keep an eye on letthemreturn.com which will be going live soon.

At the same time we will be publishing our proposal for resettlement.

Even in the short period following the islanders' court victory in 2000 when the Government was contemplating resettlement, there was no consultation with the islanders. Since then it has consistently opposed resettlement on the grounds of costs and environmental risk. Our job has been to contest these grounds and show how we believe resettlement should take place.

We approached Dr John Howell, former director of the Overseas Development Institute in London and, more recently adviser to the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs in South Africa, to help. John visited Mauritius three times to meet with Chagossians, potential investors, engineers, environmental NGOs and quantity surveyors. He has consulted widely with resettlement sceptics as well as supporters.

Our proposals draw on the feasibility studies and the conservation management plan commissioned by BIOT (British Indian Ocean Territory – the official name for Chagos). We had nothing like the resources available to those studies, and we do not claim to have produced a fully-fledged resettlement ‘plan' - this is a task for the BIOT itself. We are providing our preliminary answers to five main questions that itwill need to address:

- How many Chagossians want to return and how will they live?
- How will the resettled population support itself?
- How will Chagossians contribute to conservation?
- How will resettlement be managed?
- How much will it cost and where will the money come from?

We hope BIOT will recognise the constructive contribution that the CRG and others have made to addressing reasonable concerns about environmental conservation and economic viability.

We are finding support for the islanders in all sorts of places. X-Factor winner Steve Brookstein has agreed to write, sing and release a song for the Chagossians. Steve was asked recently by the Daily Mirror what he would do if he was Prime Minister, and replied: “I’d apologise to the natives of Diego Garcia who were thrown off their island in 1973 to make way for a US military base.”

The community groups in Crawley, the Diego Garcian Society and the Chagos Island Community Association, have been continuing their work to support the islanders living there. Representatives of the Diego Garcian Society are hoping to arrange a visit to Diego Garcia and have held positive meetings with the Foreign Office to discuss this. The society is also working with Crawley Council to provide basic English courses for Chagossians - about thirty islanders are already enrolled.

# posted by UK Chagos Support : 12:04 PM 3 comments

In just over a week, 631 people put their names to our petition urging the Prime Minister to drop the appeal to the Lords against the islanders' right to return. He didn't.

On Tuesday we learned that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office is pursuing the appeal, despite the the Lords' demand that it pays the islanders' costs as well as its own. The legal battle against the islanders has already cost the FCO more than £2m.

As usual, the decision came at the latest possible moment. The FCO tells us the case is unlikely to be heard before the spring.

A busload of islanders from Crawley came to Downing Street on Saturday to deliver a letter asking Gordon Brown to end the injustice now. Channel 4 News came too - you can watch their report here.

Meanwhile the islanders continue to suffer, as detailed in this excellent article from The Times.

Hengride Permal of the Chagos Island Community Association said: "It's like the Government is playing a game with us and we are tired of it. But we will never give up."

One vocal supporter of the islanders is David Snoxell, who was High Commissioner to Mauritius from 2000 to 2004. As the UK's representative in the country where the bulk of the Chagossian exiles now live, Snoxell became all too familiar with the islanders' plight - not least when they were protesting at the gates of his house. In a recent letter to The Times he said that the Government's decision to pursue the appeal "puts us on a par with those countries we condemn for lesser human rights violations".

But the Government is approaching the end of the road. The islanders are already looking seriously resettlement, with a study underway with funding from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

In a lecture given by Snoxell at Bristol University on Wednesday, he said: "This 42 year old saga of deceit, perfidy and human rights violations is drawing to a close... Perhaps next year we may hope that, once the legal process has been exhausted, HMG will purge this shocking stain on the UK’s reputation."

Six MPs, two MEPs and two members of the House of Lords have put their names to a letter in today's Times calling for the Prime Minister to follow his speech On Liberty (25 October) by accepting the right of the Chagossians to return to their islands, and dropping the appeal to the Law Lords.

All three main parties are represented among the signatories.

Please sign the petition calling on the Prime Minister to drop the appeal to the Law Lords against the Chagos islanders! Hurry, we only have until November 6th...

We've just heard that the House of Lords has agreed to hear the Government's appeal against May's Appeal Court decision, which upheld the quashing of orders banning the islanders from going home.

But (and it's a fairly big but) the Lords have taken the case on one condition - that the Foreign Office pays all the costs, whether it wins or loses.

It's quite a strong early indication of the Lords' feelings on this case, and it leaves the FCO with a dilemma.

With more than £2 million already spent on legal action against the islanders, taking this case forward would be an even bigger waste of public funds. The FCO has until Tuesday 6 November to decide what to do.

Instead of delaying justice yet again and throwing away more money, the Government now has a chance to start righting the wrong.

After more than twenty years of debate, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted a declaration upholding the rights of indigenous people, including their right to restitution or compensation for land that is taken away from them.

The UK welcomed the declaration, saying: "We recognise that indigenous peoples have suffered many historic injustices and continue to be amongst the poorest and most marginalised peoples of the world..."

...But the statement went on to say that the UK and its territories do not have any indigenous people.

Of course, it's easy to "recognise" an injustice if you don't recognise the victims...

There's a lot of fun to be had with online petitions on the Number 10 website.

As the Government is learning, the danger of asking people their opinions is that they might tell you. Seven thousand people recently put their names to a petition calling for Gold by Spandau Ballet to become the new national anthem.

The petition calling for justice for the Chagossians was rather more serious than that. At least, we thought so. But the only response that the powers that be could muster was to point us back to an old statement made by Bill Rammell at the time of the notorious Orders in Council in 2004, with the same old tired excuses about resettlement being too expensive and too precarious, and compensation having already been paid.

Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Resettlement has never been properly looked into, and the compensation payments of the 1980s were one sided and mismanaged.

The islanders are still living in exile, many of them in poverty, because of what this country did to them. They deserve a better response than this.