A British High Court last week ruled that the government of the United Kingdom, which controls the island, acted unlawfully in expelling thousands of local residents in the 1960s to make way for the U.S. military base.

London gave Washington a 50-year lease to the 52-island Chagos Archipelago, then a part of British-owned Mauritius, for construction of a military base. The court also overturned a 1971 order banning the islanders from returning.

Some 3,000 families were evicted from their homes and sent 1,200 miles away to Mauritius and "simply dumped at dockside," said a lawyer for the islanders. The inhabitants of Diego Garcia, descendants of African slaves and Indian plantation workers, were fishermen, farmers, and coconut plantation workers.

Former resident Rita Bancoult told the media, "The British thought that because we were black, the descendants of slaves, they could do what they wanted. We were promised homes, cattle, and money to help us begin a new life on Mauritius. But it never materialized.... The British were the hangman of our people."

Washington has strongly objected to the return of the islanders and the British government quickly issued new ordinances allowing return to any of the 52 Chagos islands, except for Diego Garcia, now the only inhabited island. A Foreign Office official told the Financial Times that London "will not be going all out to create a public-sector funded community on these islands."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home