Another "Right of Return" That Will Not Be Honoured. posted by Richard Seymour

"Maintaining the Fiction"

The rightful residents of Chagos are not to be allowed to return. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has decided to legislate against it , despite a clear ruling from the High Court in November 2000 that the Chagossians had a lawful right to return, without conditions. The previous position of the UK government was that the Chagossians could not return without a permit - and even those who were allowed to return were barred from civilian employment . Now, the UK government (in the person of Bill Rammell, Foreign Office minister) claims that, although Chagossians have the right to return, they cannot permit it because "feasibility studies" show that it would not be sustainable for them to return.

Staring blankly at the screen? Yeah, well, the plight of Chagossians cleansed from their land has not exactly been at the top of the news agenda these past thirty-odd years. So, let me fill in the blanks. In 1968, the British turfed the citizens of the Chagos Archipelago (the Foreign Office website says they were "relocated"), among which family of islands resides Diego Garcia, off the land on which they had been working. The plantations on which they had been working were run down, and they were sent to live in Mauritius and Seychelles. The government explains that "The territory was created to provide for the defence needs of both Britain and the United States of America", and indeed Diego Garcia has been a base used for the bombardment of Iraq and Afghanistan. It hosts a large US base, and there is a thriving military economy there. Since this time, the British government has been eager to present it as a move of "contract labourers" back to their country of origin - not a displacement of a settled population. Hence, Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart wrote to Wilson in a secret 1969 note that "we could continue to refer to the inhabitants generally as essentially migrant contract labourers and their families" and that it would be helpful "if we can present any move as a change of employment for contract workers…rather than as a population resettlement". They could "deny, if necessary, the competence of the United Nations to concern itself with a territory which has no indigenous population." [Emphasis added]. It was, of course, entirely untrue - hence, a Whitehall document was subtitled "Maintaining the Fiction" . That very paragraph announced that:

"As long as only part of BIOT [British Indian Ocean Territory] is evacuated the British Government will have to continue to argue that the local people are only a floating population. This may be easier in the case of the non-Chagos part of BIOT... where most of the people are Seychellois labourers and their families. However, the longer that such a population remains, and perhaps increases, the greater the risk of our being accused of setting up a mini-colony about which we would have to report to the United Nations under Article 73 of the Charter. Therefore strict immigration legislation giving such labourers and their families very restricted rights of residence would bolster our arguments that the territory has no indigenous population."

But since 2000, the British government has been obliged to concede that there was a "settled population", but they still will not be allowed to return. Why?

"Erroneous in every assertion".

Bill Rammell's official explanation in The Guardian today is that:

The feasibility study on resettlement of the islands, highlighting the longer-term difficulties for a resettled population, was produced by independent, expert consultants and not the Foreign Office. We therefore had to make a judgment as to whether repopulation was realistic or feasible. Our judgment was that it is not.

This "feasibility study" included no input from the Chagossians, and is, according to Harvard resettlement expert Jonathan Jeness "erroneous in every assertion". The environment in the Chagos Archipelago is "benign" - there is no history of major floods, there has been only one earthquake, there is little risk of a tsunami. He concludes that it is "fatuous to imagine that the islands cannot be resettled. They were settled, successfully for several generations, before the population was forced to decamp. The Ilois want to return and have a right of return. The Archipelago is in any case already 'successfully settled' by the military and BIOT Administration in Diego Garcia".

What is the more likely reason?

Jeremy Corbyn noted one particular problem with allowing resettlement in a November 2001 parliamentary debate :

There are clearly problems over the right of return to the largest island, Diego Garcia, because the British Government have signed a lease agreement with the United States, which has another 13 years to run. There are serious questions about the legality of that lease arrangement, which may well be challenged in the American courts in the near future.

Bill Rammell, informing the Chagossians solicitor Richard Gifford of his decision, noted that there were crucial "defence interests" involved, "especially in the light of recent developments in the international security climate since the November 2000 judgment". We have too many places to bomb to give up such a vital base right now, it seems. Gifford explains:

"I was obliged to inform the Minister that he was acting irrationally and in all probability illegally, and there would undoubtedly be a legal challenge to the validity of the Order in Council. We are already advised by Queen's Counsel that an Order in Council of the Queen is susceptible to Judicial Review. The Islanders, who have been treated in the most heartless way for a generation are desperate to get back to their homeland. Many of the older folk who were removed are dying, and it is a cynical disregard of their human rights to delay their resettlement
in the hope that those with memories on the islands or ancestors buried there will die before they can go back home.

"There can hardly be a more shameful history of mistreatment of a population in modern times. It is impossible to reconcile the Government's keenness on
applying Human Rights in the Overseas Territories with this cavalier disregard of basic human values."

This would be bad enough in itself, but it has also been suggested - by Tom Brake MP - that Diego Garcia is possibly the site of an interrogation centre known as "Camp Justice" , which he claims to have seen sattelite imagery of. Well, perhaps. But the enduring crime here is that hundreds of human beings were forced from their homes, prevented from entering them, lied to and about for decades. Now that they have legal recognition, the British government arrogantly dismisses its responsibility and enforces legislation which will prevent Chagossians from returning to any of the islands (not just Diego Garcia, the only one presently in US use).

Just one of the many shameful episodes in Britain's disgraceful foreign policy.