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Olivier Bancoult: The US and UK stole the Chagos islands 50 years ago. We need them back [1]
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Date: 2023-07
US military personnel live in my birthplace, the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, but I am not allowed to. Since I was four years old, my people, the Chagossians, have lived in impoverished exile, while the US military has been enjoying the fruits of my homeland.
The plight of my people has been ignored for more than 50 years. But recently, for the first time, a major human rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, called attention to the “crimes against humanity” committed against my people by both the US and British governments. And for the first time, the US government has finally admitted that “the manner in which” we were removed “is regrettable”.
Between 1968 and 1973, the US and British governments forcibly removed us from our homeland during construction of the US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island in our Chagos Archipelago, which Britain has controlled since 1815. The two governments took our houses, our jobs, almost all our possessions, and the land of our ancestors, leaving us with nothing.
As the leader of the Chagos Refugees Group, I have spoken to people around the world, asking them to support our struggle to return home and to be compensated for our loss. In May, we will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the last deportation from Chagos. The new report and the slight change in tone from the US government may help create the momentum we need. Later this year, I am planning to visit Washington, DC and New York City to speak with members of Congress, the Biden administration, and other Americans to ask for their support.
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For more than 50 years, the United States and Britain, which call themselves champions of human rights, have been ignoring the human rights of my people, including the fundamental right to live in our homeland. We are more Black lives that have not mattered.
Like vice president Kamala Harris, my people are of mixed African and Indian ancestry. We are the descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured Indians who first settled the Chagos islands around the time of the American Revolution.
Life was very peaceful in Chagos. We had our own culture. We had our traditions. We all lived as one family. We all had work on coconut plantations. We weren’t rich but, as my mother said, it was the sweet life.
That life was taken from us when in the 1960s US officials asked Britain to create a base on Diego Garcia. In 1966, the US government secretly agreed to pay the UK $14m: the US would get a base, and the UK agreed to remove my people without our consent.
US and UK officials invented fictions that we were “transient contract workers” who could be deported. In reality, as they knew, we had lived in Chagos for generations. One British official called us “Tarzans” and “man Fridays”.
My family was exiled in 1968 after travelling to a hospital for treatment for my sister, Noellie, who had been in an accident. Sadly, the hospital could not save Noellie. When my mother went to get our boat tickets home, she was told our islands had been sold to build a US military base. She was told we could never return home again. After hearing the news, my father, who had the key to our home in his pocket, had a stroke.
Other Chagossians were deported between 1971 and 1973. They forced our people onto overcrowded cargo ships and dumped us 1,200 miles away in Mauritius and Seychelles. People said conditions on board were like slave ships. During the deportations on Diego Garcia, a British government manager and US sailors killed our pet dogs by gassing them and then burning their carcasses.
In exile in Mauritius and Seychelles, life was very difficult for us. We lived in slums. We found lives of unemployment, drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. My mother had to work multiple jobs to feed our family. Sometimes she picked stale bread out of trash cans to feed us. Sometimes we went to sleep hungry. My siblings and I sold water in a cemetery after school to make money. Over the years I lost three brothers to drugs and alcohol and illness. My sister committed suicide. My mother had to go to a psychiatric hospital. My father, and many Chagossians like him, died of sadness because we couldn’t return to our homeland.
Still we demanded our fundamental right to return. Led by women like my mother, we held demonstrations and went on hunger strikes. In 1983, my mother and other Chagossian women created the Chagos Refugees Group to work for our community. When I was 18, they asked me to get involved because I was one of only a few Chagossians getting an education and learning English.
Through the years we won small victories, such as the right to full UK citizenship, after we sued the US and UK governments. US courts sadly dismissed our suit, saying they had no right to overrule executive decisions about military policy. Three times we defeated the UK government in the High Court in London only to lose on appeal. We are continuing our struggle in the courts as both governments refuse to let us return home. The US, despite its statement of regret, has said little more than: “The United States remains steadfast in its respect for and promotion of human rights.”
Our fortunes began to change when we joined the Mauritian government in taking the UK to the International Court of Justice. In 2019, the court ruled that the UK’s occupation of Chagos was “unlawful” because it violated decolonisation rules. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution, by 113 votes to six, ordering Britain to “withdraw its colonial administration” and “cooperate with Mauritius in facilitating the resettlement” of my people.
After two years ignoring the ruling, the British government finally announced in November that it would negotiate with Mauritius over sovereignty, the base, and our right of return. We are encouraged by the progress, but once again we are being excluded from these negotiations over our islands. Once again, powerful governments are making decisions about our lives over our heads.
In its report documenting the crimes against humanity committed against us, Human Rights Watch demanded the UK “ensure meaningful and effective consultations with the Chagossian people,” adding that “any future agreement concerning Chagos needs to be centred around the rights of the Chagossians, including the right to return, and full reparations for the decades of abuse”.
The UK’s minister for overseas territories, Zac Goldsmith, said in a letter to Human Rights Watch that the British government had “deep regret” over our treatment, but claimed we have “no right of abode” in our islands, and said nothing about reparations. The government promised only to “engage with Chagossian groups as negotiations progress” with Mauritius.
Now is the time for the two governments to stop talking about “regret” and act to end our suffering. The US and UK should fully involve Chagossians in the negotiations over our homeland’s future. We need to have the right to return. And we need to receive full reparations, including resettlement assistance.
Everyone should have the right to live in their birthplace. Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that “no one shall be subjected to… exile”. How can we accept that the so-called champions of human rights, the US and UK governments, have banished our fundamental rights? How is it possible that other people are making barbecues on our beaches while we are living in exile?
We were born on these islands. We need the right to live on these islands. All we are asking for is our human rights.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/chagos-islands-olivier-bancoult-uk-us-military-base-human-rights-watch/
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