---

A Cold War power play

New book exposes U.S.-U.K. deal to forcibly remove Chagossians to built U.S. base on Diego Garcia

A new book just published in the United States is giving Americans their first glimpse into the forced expulsion of more nearly 2,000 people from the Chagos islands in the 1960s to make way for a U.S. military base, and the author says he hopes President Obama will take note.

Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia, is the product of more than six years of research by David Vine, currently an assistant professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. Vine traveled several times to Mauritius and the Seychelles to research his book, and lived for a time among the Chagossians in their homes in Port Louis.

The book tells the story of how Cold War politics led to the forced relocation of residents of Diego Garcia and the surrounding Chagos Archipelago from 1968 to 1973. The Chagossians -mostly of African and Hindu heritage - were taken 1,200 miles away by boat to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they were left on the docks with no resettlement assistance. Vine said they have lived in abject poverty ever since - ignored by the American and U.K. governments that created their plight and by the island governments that took them in.

The story is virtually unknown in the United States. A Washington Post article in the 1975 shed some light and led to public hearings in the U.S. Congress, but the issue has been forgotten since then. Most Americans can't identify Diego Garcia as either a U.S. military base or as an island in the Indian Ocean, guessing instead that it must be the name of a musician or a baseball player.

"The aim of my book is to raise awareness about the Chagossian's exile and their 40-year struggle to return to their homeland," Vine told an April 17 gathering in Washington, D.C. for the launch of his book. Money made in sales from the book will be given to the Chagossian people to help finance the legal efforts they have launched to return to their islands.

Vine is taking his book tour to several cities in the United States over the next few weeks - San Francisco, Kansas City, Providence, and New York City. In June, he will travel to London for book signing events and to meet with members of the British Parliament, and then he'll go to Mauritius on June 18 for more speaking events.

Vine is especially hopeful that his book will catch the attention of officials in President Barack Obama's administration.

"We finally have an administration in Washington that might be more sympathetic to their cause, especially with Obama's interest in changing the role of the United States in the world," Vine said. "From the U.S. perspective, (helping the Chagossians) would be a highly symbolic but important step to change the reputation of the United States and how it treats others."

Vine said that he and others in Washington, including law students at the American University School of Law and human rights groups, are working to create a support association in the United States that will raise awareness of the plight of the Chagossian people. They will lobby the U.S. Congress and Obama administration for a change in policy that will allow the Chagossians to return to their homeland. Supporters are also sending letters to Oprah Winfrey, the popular U.S. talk show host, asking her to focus one of her television shows on the Chagos issue.

"We hope we can make inroads in Washington, and will approach specific members of Congress and officials at the Pentagon, State Department and the White House," he said in an interview with Weekend.

"We want the United States to finally take rightful responsibility in this matter and allow the Chagossians to return," Vine said. "Right now, there's a logjam because the British says it's the Americans who won't allow a civilian population on the islands, while the U.S. says it's a British matter. We want the two governments and the government of Mauritius to sit at the table and come to an agreement."

He said the Chagossians seek two things from the United States: the permission to return to only one of the out-islands, Peros Banhos, where they believe they can develop a successful tourist industry, and funds for resettlement. The Chagossians do not advocate shutting down the military base, he said, as that would be unrealistic.

This will not be an easy sell, however, as the U.S. base at Diego Garcia has become one of the most strategically important and secretive U.S. military installations outside the United States. The U.S. government has consistently resisted allowing any non-military presence on any of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago, citing security, and currently Diego Garcia is accessible to only military transport.

Also working against this effort will be the global recession. Finding funds in a tight U.S. budget for a Chagos resettlement will be hard to justify, as the Congress and the Obama administration are focused on repairing the U.S. economy, while they also face enormous financial obligations oversees with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vine argues, however, that resettlement money - estimated at about 5 million British pounds - "is a small amount compared to the huge bailouts that countries are now providing" to shore up their economies.

Known as the Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, the base became a key launching pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has been reported to be a location of a top secret CIA prison. Jointly operated by the United States and the U.K., it is a naval refueling and support station and home to the naval unit that readies ships in the Military Sealift Command prepositioning program in the Indian Ocean. It is also an important air base that houses some of the largest military aircraft used in the 1991 Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Telescopes positioned there are part of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, and the base is an emergency landing site for the NASA Space Shuttle.

The base became more important after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Because of Diego Garcia's proximity to Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, 2,000 additional Air Force personnel were sent, and a new housing facility was built. In 2007, a new submarine base was built on the island and additional fuel supplies were shipped, Vine wrote.

"It's the single most important military facility we've got," respected Washington-area military expert John Pike told Vine. Pike, who runs the website GlobalSecurity.org, explained, "It's the base from which we control half of Africa and the southern side of Asia, the southern side of Eurasia." It's "the facility that at the end of the day gives us some say-so in the Persian Gulf region. If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented."

Vine's book describes in extensive detail how the Chagos Archipelago was transformed from an isolated group of tropical islands into a strategic military base founded on Cold War fears about possible Soviet expansion in the Indian Ocean.

The story unfolds in 1965, when the Chagos Islands, which include Diego Garcia, were detached from Mauritius to form part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). In 1966, the U.K. government bought the islands and the copra and coconut plantations, which were not profitable due to introduction of new oils and lubricants. In 1971, the plantations were closed as part of a secret agreement between the United States and the U.K. that allowed the U.S. to develop the military base and use it under a lease that expires in 2036. That agreement forbids any other economic activity on the island.

No money exchanged hands, but it is claimed that the U.K. received a $14 million discount on the acquisition of Polaris missiles from the United States.

As part of the agreement, the native population of Diego Garcia and the surrounding Chagos Archipelago were forcibly removed. Vine discovered that beginning in 1960s, U.S. officials initiated secret conversations with the British government and eventually secured British agreement to provide "exclusive control" of the island "without local inhabitants." "The governments finalized the deal with an exchange of notes, in effect creating a treaty but circumventing congressional and parliamentary oversight," Vine wrote. This included removing 2,000 Chagossians.

With this deal completed, islanders leaving Chagos for vacations or medical treatment on Mauritius and were prohibited by the British from returning to Chagos. The British then began restricting supplies for the islands, and Chagossians began to leave as food and medicines were in short supply. In 1971, the U.S. Navy began construction on Diego Garcia and ordered the British to remove the remaining residents.

Just before the last deportation, soldiers herded the Chagossian's pet dogs into sealed sheds and gassed and burned them in front of the owners, Vine said. The islanders were forced to board overcrowded cargo ships that took them to Mauritius and the Seychelles. There the Chagossians received virtually no resettlement help and found themselves homeless, jobless and with little money. After years of protests, the British government agreed to pay compensation - about $6,000 per person. Much of that money was used to pay off large debts that accumulated since expulsion, Vine said, and did little to improve the poor living conditions of the displaced Chagossians.

As a graduate student in anthropology in New York in 2001, Vine said he knew nothing of the military base or the plight of the Chagossians when he was asked to be a researcher on a lawsuit being drawn up by Michael Tiger, a professor at American University's Law School. Through a relationship with Sivarkumen "Robin" Mardemooto, a former student of Tigar's who was also the islanders' Mauritian lawyer, Tigar was asked to explore launching a lawsuit in the United States similar to one in the U.K. Working with law students in his American University legal clinic, Tigar said he was preparing to file a class action lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington.

Tigar said the lawsuit would charge the defendants with harms including forced relocation, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and genocide. The court would be asked to grant the right of return, award compensation, and order an end to employment discrimination that had barred Chagossians from working on the base as civilian personnel.

Between 2001 and 2008, Vine went to Mauritius and the Seychelles four times, conducted research at the British Records Office and the U.S. Navy archives, interviewed former U.S. government officials involved in the expulsion, and visited the national archives in Mauritius.

Vine said he got hooked by the story, and decided to expand his research beyond just the impact of the expulsion on the Chagossians. "I wanted to tell the story of the United States and the U.S. Government officials who ordered the removals and created the base," Vine wrote. "How and why, I wanted to know, did my country and its officials do this?"

Vine published his doctoral thesis on the plight of the Chagossian people, and that thesis formed the basis of this book.

"I did everything with the people from working, cooking, studying, cleaning, partying and watching French-dubbed Brazilian telnovelas on Mauritian TV to attending wedding baptisms first communions, public meetings, birthday parties and funerals," Vine wrote of his experiences living with the Chagossians. "With the help of dedicated Mauritian interviews, I completed a large survey of living conditions with more than 320 islanders."

Vine's book reads like a personal narrative rather than an academic thesis. His story intertwines quotes from interviews with Chagossians living in exile with facts he unraveled in the case, and he interjects his own observations gleaned from the long periods of time he spent with the exiles.

Of life before the military base, Vine wrote: "While far from luxurious and still a plantation society, the islands provided a secure life, generally free of want, and featuring universal employment and numerous social benefits, including regular if small salaries in cash and food, land, free housing, education, pensions, burial services, and basic health care on islands described by many as idyllic."

About 5,000 Chagossians currently live in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the U.K., and their legal battles have brought both success and setbacks in their quest to return to the islands.

In Britain, the High Court in London has three times ruled that the expulsion of the islanders was illegal under U.K. law. But that ruling was later overturned by Britain's Law Lords. The U.S. lawsuit has been dismissed. Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights is considering the merits of the Chagos case, and an All Party Parliamentary Group has been formed in the U.K. parliament to promote the cause of the Chagossians. Similar support groups are forming in the United States.

In 2006, about 100 Chagossians were allowed to visit Diego Garcia for a week, to tend to graves and visit their birthplaces.

"The Chagossians' story forces us to face those people whom we as citizens of the United States often find it all to easy to ignore, too easy to close out of our consciousness," Vine wrote. "The Chagossians' story forces us to consider carefully how the United States has treated other people from Iraq to Vietnam and in far too many other places around the globe."

He added: "The story of Diego Garcia has been kept secret for far too long. It must now be exposed."

For more information, contact David Vine at: vine@american.edu

This website also contain further information: www.letthemreturn.com

a m e r i c a n   s c e n e

WEEK-END --- dimanche 3 mai 2009