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Human
Rights
The Chagossians fate
Sean Carey
It was 25 years ago and I
was stood outside 25 Jean Baptiste Lamusse in Cassis, a slum
area in Port Louis, the Mauritian capital.
I wanted to find out what
had happened to the Chagossians, the descendants of African
slaves and indentured Indian labourers, forced out of their
home in the Chagos islands (part of the British Indian Ocean
Territory) by the British authorities.
Between 1965 and 1973, they
were dumped in Mauritius and the Seychelles so the US could
set up a military base on Diego Garcia.
In 1982, the British
government made a payment of £4 million in an attempt to
buy off the islanders and assuage international
condemnation. A financial package of a little over £2000
was paid to 1344 people in "full and final settlement
of all claims… with no admission of responsibility."
But what impact was the
compensation having on the lives of the islanders and did it
in any way make up for the loss of their homeland?
I spoke to a woman named
Rita David. Barefoot and dressed in a tattered blue floral
dress, she looked much older than her 35 years. As we talked
she leant against the peeling, pink-painted front of her
wood and corrugated iron shack looking tired and depressed.
"Life in Diego was
easy," said Rita in a story that has been repeated to
me countless times over the years by other Chagossian
exiles. "In Diego, whether I was jobless or not, it
made no difference because there was a lot to eat - we had
fish, vegetables, coconut. Everything was there for you.
Here in Mauritius from the beginning of the morning until
last thing at night you have to dip your hand in your
pocket."
She told me that she found
it very difficult to bring up a family of five children.
"There are no jobs in Mauritius and if you don't have a
job, you don't have a living."
She added that things were
considerably worse since her husband had recently deserted
her and the children.
How was she coping
financially? "Ah, that's where the problem is,"
she replied. "Before, I was getting a little social
security because of my family but now that I have had part
of my compensation they have cut it." She looked even
more depressed. "I just have to try my best. What else
can I do?"
The following day I visited
another Chagossian camp at Roche Bois, another slum area of
Port Louis. Conditions were even worse here. There were 20
one-room shacks in a quadrangle. The toilet was communal - a
hole in the ground a little distance away from the
settlement. It was just as well. The stench was
overpowering.
Some of the older men
squatted outside their shacks, drinking cheap rum and
smoking cigarettes on credit from the local Chinese-owned
store, while their wives and daughters did the washing and
prepared the food.
I asked one of the men if
he grew vegetables. He looked at me in disbelief, laughed
and pointed to the ground. It was rock hard.
I visited Francois and
Therese, a young couple living in a rented shack. They told
me that most of the initial money they had received from the
British government had been spent paying off debts to the
loan sharks who had moved in once talk of compensation
surfaced. They looked perplexed. They told me that they did
not know what their future would be as their money was
running out fast.
But the compensation
package craftily put together by the foreign office has come
back to haunt Britain. When the islanders signed the
documents which gave them some much-needed money (although
many state that they have never received any) they had no
idea that they were also signing away their rights to return
to their homeland.
It was the catalyst that
brought their political struggle to life.
Olivier Bancoult, a
Chagossian who observed the impact of the British
government’s action on his fellow exiles, set up the
Chagos Refugee Group in 1983. He later forged links with a
London-based legal team including Richard Gifford and Sir
Sidney Kentridge, who first came to prominence when he was
part of Nelson Mandela’s defence team.
Since 2000 it has proved to
be a formidable partnership achieving a series of victories
in the High Court and the Court of Appeal.
While other Indian Ocean
communities have benefited from economic growth, the
Chagossian community has been left behind -- their lives
blighted by high unemployment, poor housing and education,
and significant levels of alcohol and drug misuse.
Predictably these things have taken their toll -- only
around 750 of the original 2000 islanders are still alive.
Is it justifiable for
British citizens to be removed from a British overseas
territory without consultation and against their wishes, to
be thrown into abject poverty in the name of the defence
interests of Britain and the United States?
Dr
Sean Carey is Research Fellow at CRONEM, Roehampton
University
A
version of this article was published in New statesman,
UK,on 20 October 2008.
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