World Affairs
Don't mention the Chagossians
Published 20 November 2007
A resolution to the long-running British injustice to the Chagos islanders could have signalled a switch in UK foreign policy
The dawn of the Brown premiership could have heralded a shift in British foreign policy by resolving the long-running injustice to the Chagos Islanders.
It is, after all, more than 40 years since these people were evicted from their Indian Ocean home by the UK so the Americans could build an airbase.
Such a move would have had the additional advantage of introducing some political distance between London and Washington.
It might even have gone some way to revitalising Brand Britain which has undoubtedly suffered badly - both inside and outside the country - because of Iraq.
But it has now become obvious that even with the selection of left-leaning, senior figures like David Miliband and Mark Malloch Brown at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office it is, for all practical purposes, business as usual.
Gordon Brown, unlike his predecessor Tony Blair, may not always be on the phone to George W Bush but it is clear that he is still a staunch supporter of the "special relationship".
Indeed, in his Mansion House speech on foreign affairs, the British Prime Minister declared that he regarded America as the UK’s most important ally in re-energising international institutions like the United Nations in order to tackle a range of 21st century problems - from climate change and trade reform to nuclear proliferation, global terrorism and flu pandemics.
The Chagossian issue wasn’t mentioned in the Guildhall speech. Why would it be? One suspects that at the lofty heights of global government from where Gordon Brown aspires to operate he would think -- if he thinks about it at all -- that the exile of the Chagossians from their homeland in the Indian Ocean is all a bit unfortunate but, that when the political arithmetic is calculated, some sacrifices, preferably by the "little" people, are sometimes required to sort out the world’s "big" problems.
Maybe this is what the British Prime Minister had in mind when he used the now much commented on phrase "hard-headed internationalism" in his speech at the Guildhall.
But sometimes politicians can be a little too hard-headed. Indeed, there is something peculiarly cruel about the way the British government’s legal juggernaut has set off once more to crush the hopes of the Chagossians who have already won a series of victories in the courts allowing them the right of return to the islands of Chagos archipelago which were illegally detached from the colony of Mauritius three years before its independence in 1968 and now form part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.
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No sooner do the Chagossians achieve victory in one legal case, than the government appeals and the heavy, legal machinery once again clunks into gear. And this time the reason, as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokespeople are very keen to explain to anyone prepared to listen, is that there is an urgent need to define the defence status of all British overseas territories including Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands -- not just the British Indian Ocean Territory, you understand -- because of the Court of Appeal judgement in May this year which ruled that the British government had abused its power in evicting the Chagossians from their paradise islands.
All this legal manoeuvring very conveniently prevents the islanders returning to their homeland, of course.
Meanwhile, over the last few months the Americans have been busy upgrading some of the aircraft hangars at the Diego Garcia base in order to accommodate the B-2 stealth bombers -- equipped with new 30,000 lbs bunker-busting bombs -- that will relocate to the island from the Barksdale base in Missouri if President Bush decides to authorise military strikes against suspected illegal Iranian nuclear facilities.
And the legal moves undoubtedly buy the British government more time. Indeed, there must be a hope in London that as more and more of the original 2000 inhabitants of the Chagos Islands grow older or die - there are around 850 still alive, 700 in Mauritius and 150 in the Seychelles - the Chagossians’ campaign to return to their homeland will lose momentum. By and large, elderly people don’t make good campaigners and dead ones don’t campaign at all.
The Chagossians may be perceived in some quarters as small players in the great scheme of things but to ignore their legitimate plea to return to the archipelago after so many victories undermines the legal process -- its spirit if not the technical aspects, anyway -- and is immensely damaging to the UK’s image abroad.
This argument was powerfully put by David Snoxell, the former British High Commissioner to Mauritius, 2004-06, in a letter to The Times three days before the government made its announcement on November 6 declaring that it was going ahead with its decision to appeal to the House of Lords to seek clarification about the status of its overseas territories.
"Apart from the legal costs, which have to be funded by post closures in Africa, the UK's reputation for defence of human rights and basic freedoms is brought into question," he wrote. "For the British government to be pursuing a case that denies the Chagossian community its fundamental right to return to its homeland, a right that has been restored by our courts at each level over the past seven years, puts us on par with those countries we condemn for lesser human rights violations."
Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian exiles in Mauritius, takes a similar line. "Why is the British government always lecturing the rest of the world about human rights when it ignores the human rights of the Chagossian people? We have already won twice in the High Court and again in the Court of Appeal so why do we now have to go to the House of Lords and waste even more of the British taxpayers’ money?” he asks.
These are simple questions which do not require the sophisticated legal responses that will no doubt be delivered by the Law Lords next summer. In the meantime, perhaps Gordon Brown or his ministers David Miliband and Lord Malloch Brown might like to answer them.
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