Indian Ocean Islanders Take On a Superpower

Former truck driver Norbert L'Emclume, 65, sits in a shabby hut in Cassis, a slum in Port Louis, the capital of the island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. His wife hangs up laundry, while their grandchildren play on old mattresses laid across a narrow, open sewage ditch. In addition to serving as in impromptu playground, the mattresses are also where the 12 members of L'Emclume's family sleep.

Questions about L'Emclume's origins awaken sad memories and he often responds with an elegiac poem often recited in the slums. "I left my country, my little island; I lost my family and my heart."

This week, the fate of L'Emclume and other former Chagossians is the subject of a case being argued halfway around the world, before a court in London. Once again, lawyers and judges in faraway Great Britain are revisiting the story of a destroyed paradise in the Indian Ocean -- and a dirty chapter in the more recent history of the former colonial power.

At issue is a story from the days of slavery, except that this tale begins only four decades ago. It's the story of how Her Majesty's government depopulated and sold off the 60-square-kilometer (about 23 square miles) Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, along with their 2,000 inhabitants, including L'Emclume. Their imperial goals, after all, were more important.

The story begins in the 1960s, when the English -- then as now led by Queen Elizabeth II -- depopulated the islands. The Chagossians were starved out, pets were gassed before the eyes of the islands' children, and finally, the islanders were loaded onto freighters and shipped off to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

What to do with the inhabitants?

The emptied islands didn't remain empty for long, though. For $14 million -- paid indirectly in the form of a discount on Polaris rockets purchased by Great Britain from the United States -- America leased the largest island in the archipelago in 1966. Diego Garcia soon became one of the US's most important military bases the world over.

The choice of location was hardly accidental. From the beginning of the coldest phase of the Cold War -- beginning in the early 60s with the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis -- the US had been ramping up its search for strategically located military bases. A base in the Indian Ocean, they reasoned, would help keep the Soviet Union and China at bay. Films at Britain's national archive, the Public Records Office in London, offer extensive documentation of the exploratory trips taken by US military personnel. For the Americans, the Chagos Islands were the perfect location. The only problem? They were inhabited.

The Chagossians originally came from Mozambique, Madagascar, Senegal and southern India. The descendants of slaves, they worked on the coconut plantations and made a living trading in copra, a lamp oil derived from coconuts and a sought-after commodity on Mauritius and in the Seychelles. Indeed, the Chagos Islands were also known as the "Oil Islands."

The plantation owners on the three largest islands, Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Salomon, had created a well-functioning infrastructure. The islands boasted churches, schools and even a small railroad. Food, lodging and medical care were free for the plantation workers.

The islanders raised ponies and donkeys, pigs and chickens, and they spent much of their time fishing in the idyllic lagoons surrounding the atolls. As a sign of loyalty to the Queen, even the simplest corrugated metal huts proudly displayed the Union Jack or the Chagossian coat of arms, which depicts three portly tortoises.

A net of lies and fabrications

But the United States wanted Diego Garcia swept clean -- and they also wanted to avoid embarrassing questions by the United Nations over the fate of the local inhabitants. To satisfy the Americans' demands, the British Foreign Office began weaving a net of lies and fabrications. According to one proposal, the Chagossians would be classified as migrant workers from Mauritius and the Seychelles, which would conveniently legitimize their deportation. But the plan was quickly discarded when the results of an anthropological study showed that this was not the case. Ultimately, the British decided simply to keep quiet about the islanders' whereabouts.

"I would advise a policy of quiet disregard -- in other words, let's forget about this one till the United Nations challenges it," advised one civil servant in an internal memo. In 1966 another top diplomat, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, issued the following instructions to his colleague, Dennis Greenhill: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours.... There will be no indigenous population except seagulls."

When Great Britain granted its colony Mauritius, which also included Chagos, independence in 1968, the "Oil Islands" remained under London's guardianship. The depopulation program began in 1971 and ended in 1973, when the last Chagossians were forcibly deported and Diego Garcia was turned over to the United States.

Nowadays about 5,500 Chagossians and their offspring live in exile -- 4,500 in Port Louis, 650 in the Seychelles and 300 near London's Gatwick Airport. Although London paid each deported Chagossian about £3,000 in compensation, most of the islanders quickly slipped into poverty, succumbing to unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, AIDS and high rates of suicide. The Creole word the Chagossians themselves use to describe their melancholy condition is "chagrin" -- longing.

But in 1998 they decided to fight back, and filed a lawsuit against the British government. The Chagossians' legal representatives, led by Nelson Mandela's attorney Sydney Kentridge, discovered a treasure trove in the Public Records Office: the many handwritten files that documented the fate of Diego Garcia. In 2000, the High Court declared the deportations illegal and ruled that the displaced Chagossians were within their rights in seeking to return to the islands.

"7.20 S, 72.25 E"

But the United States had absolutely no intention of giving up "7.20 S, 72.25 E," as the base is known in military circles. For the Americans, Diego Garcia is an indispensable launching pad for sorties over Afghanistan, Iraq and other destinations throughout half of Asia -- an ideal hub for a powerful fleet of B-52 and Stealth bombers.

The island has a harbor that can accommodate 30 warships. It also has shooting ranges and other training facilities, crude oil and gasoline storage tanks. From its vantage point on Diego Garcia, Washington monitors the region's tanker routes, as well as the activities of rising global players India and China. The island is home to about 4,000 troops, as well as civilian employees, mainly from Sri Lanka and the Philippines, but none from the Chagos Islands.

"Diego Garcia is experiencing steady growth, so as to meet professional and personal needs," raves the US Marines' Web site. But the archipelago is off-limits to visitors. With the exception of a British representative without any authority and the families of US military personnel, no one else is permitted to set foot on the islands.

In June 2004, the Americans made it clear that they intend to neither leave Diego Garcia nor tolerate any expatriate locals on the neighboring islands, claiming that they could "set up jamming transmitters and obstruct important military missions." The British Foreign Office, for its part, urged Queen Elizabeth II to issue a rare "Order in Council," an order made possible under the rules of the revised constitution that invalidates all previous court rulings while circumventing the British parliament. In doing so, the Queen appears to have banned the Chagossians from their native islands once and for all.

"Was Her Majority given a chance to read the order before she signed it?" asks Olivier Bancoult, president of the Chagos Refugees Group in Cassis, who plans to personally stage a protest in London against the royal edict. "Does she remember how London sent a fleet of ships to save the 2,000 Falkland Islanders in 1982, while 2,000 Chagossians, subjects of the crown just as they were, were simply abducted?"

Despite everything, the exiles envision their future as British subjects. All they want is to follow the lead of other island nations and transform their home into a profitable tourist destination. They do not expect the Americans to withdraw, at least for now. Given their current situation, the Chagossians would be content with well-paying jobs with the US military. "We are a small people without blonde hair and without education," says Bancoult. "But we ask the world to respect us and let us return home."
The island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is located perfectly from a strategic point of view. But when the US military adopted it as a military base in the 1960s and 70s, it was inconveniently populated. The natives were driven out -- but now, they want their home back.

By Padma Rao