A sordid tale

July 29, 2003 10:12 AM

Diego Garcia islanders await call to go home. 'Cherry and thousands of other islanders were the victims of a brutal depopulation strategy by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s which sought to hand over an empty island to the United States for use as a key military base. The depopulation campaign ended in 1973 with the removal of the last islanders, who were dumped on the quays of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis ... '
The Chagos Islands: A sordid tale. 'The story involves "bribes" from the United States, racism among senior civil servants, and the UK Government deceiving parliament and the United Nations.'
The Chagos archipelago: Decolonisation and human rights., by the Southern African Human Rights NGO Network, includes a brief history of the islands from original settlement by French settlers and African slaves. 'For a people as a whole to be actually victimised by the act of forced eviction from their homeland must be the most humiliating, supreme injustice and degrading treatment any people can be made to undergo. '
posted by plep (4 comments total)

A Chagossian website at chagos.org.
Recent photos of the Chagos Islands. 'The islands are uninhabited but cruising sailboats stop for months on end. '
Friends of the Chagos, 'whose aims are to promote conservation, scientific and historical research, and to advance education concerning the Chagos Archipelago', has a site with more images.
A previous thread on the Chagossians.
posted by plep at 10:15 AM on July 29, 2003

That's the first time I've heard about this sad affair. I hope they get the compensation they deserve and the chance to return to their home. When will my government stop being such wankers?
posted by jamespake at 10:44 AM on July 29, 2003

Diego Garcia photos
Navy Diego Garcia site also with pictures
posted by euphorb at 10:46 AM on July 29, 2003

I notice that Prussia was not included in the list. A reasonably liberal democracy forced to join Nazi Germany through treachery, it was "dissolved" with the complicity and agreement of the US at the end of WWII.
posted by kablam at 1:34 PM on July 29, 2003