These date back from pre-medieval times and are the remaining powers Her Majesty has to make laws. The Orders signed sound innocuous enough. However their effect is catastrophic for the Ilois people who once inhabited Diego Garcia and the nearby Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
In the cold war of the 1960’s, Britain was preparing to pull out of Suez. Wilson was politically supporting the US in Vietnam and was under pressure. The US was desperate for a staging post on the long flight from Europe to the far east and asked for a base from Britain in the Indian Ocean. Wilson, not keen on committing political suicide by deploying troops to Vietnam, offered the base on Diego Garcia as a ‘communications facility’.
The only fly in the ointment was the local population. Descendants of slavery, they worked on the islands, fishing and processing coconuts. Described as a bunch of ‘man Friday’s’ by the permanent secretary in the Colonial Office they were removed by deception and subterfuge to make way for a US facility.
This took seven years up until 1973. The moment the last Chagos Islanders left for Mauritius, the Americans moved in and created two runways, a dock and base. All free and on a British colony from which they continued to supply the war in Vietnam. It has, over the years, been a handy place from which to directly bomb Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Chagossians, however were dumped on the dockside in Port Louis where they survived in desperate poverty. Ten years later they were paid minimal compensation which was used by most to settle debts and taken by land agents. The Chagossians in Mauritius are still poor and desperate and have lodged another claim for compensation in the English Courts. This is being fiercely resisted by the loquacious barristers acting for the Foreign Secretary.
However the Chagossian have had two notable victories. In 2000 they challenged their removal in the courts and won a right of return to their beloved islands. In 2002 after a lot of parliamentary pressure they won the right to UK nationality in the British Overseas Territories Act.
Apparently acting in good faith, the Foreign Office undertook a feasibility study on re-settling the islands and arranged a visit.
However, the visit did not happen as the Islanders wanted to visit Diego Garcia and this was rejected on ‘security grounds’. Apparently what the US is doing on that once pristine island is so sensitive that even graves cannot be visited. As the compensation issue dragged on, islanders clung onto the hope of their right to return. On 10 June, that was blown away.
Tam Dalyell and myself met the Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell with Alan Vincatassaran from the UK-based Chagos Community. We were told that the islands were unsustainable of life, that there was no indigenous population and that current security concerns were over-riding all other thoughts.
This latest piece of deceit is not new; and it will be opposed in parliament and internationally. The Foreign Office seems more interested in providing a free base for the US war machine than keeping faith with a people so wronged thirty years ago.
l On 6 July the campaign begins with simultaneous demonstrations outside the British High Commission in Mauritius and the Foreign Office in London from 11.30pm to 1.30pm.