Stealing a Nation

Watched Stealing a Nation, A Special Report by John Pilger last night on ITV (this documentary was previously shown last October 2004).

In the Indian Ocean, lies a group of islands near Mauritius, called the Chagos Islands. These islands was a British Crown Colony, much the same as Hong Kong once was.

In the 1960's, the British Government made a deal to lease these islands to the US government - the US wanted to convert the island, Diego Garcia into a military base, and this base is now its biggest overseas installation.

Unfortunately for the British and the Americans, over 2000 people lived on these islands.

The Americans wanted the islands to be "swept" and "sanitised" (in other words, the people removed).

After several attempts to remove them, they were eventually hereded onto boats and dumped into the slums of Mauritius.

John Pilger and producer Christopher Martin have acquired hundreds of astonishing official documents which, in the words of officials and ministers, reveal how the conspiracy was hatched, then covered up.

“The documents show clearly that the conspiracy to expel the population rested on a big lie,” says John Pilger. “This claimed that the population were itinerant workers, when the government knew this was a population that went back generations. Most had never left the islands.

“One Foreign Office document is headed, ‘Maintaining the fiction’. Another says, ‘We propose to certify these people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else.’ We have secret memos that propose how the government should lie to the world. I have never read anything like them.”

Here's a quote from a report in the Guardian.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

So basically, in order to crush the judgement made in 2000 which deemed the expulsion illegal, the government use the Royal Prerogative to overrule this judgement.

The actions of the government, in order to appease the Americans is just amazing. You can't help but feel anger at the treatment that these people have suffered at the hands of the British, and the Americans.

Its all very well, our government bleating on about human right abuses in Iraq or China, when in fact, they've trampled all over the rights of the Chagos islanders. And to think, that these islanders are in fact, British citizens.

Its a sordid story, which makes me ashamed of Tony Blair and his government.

If anyone wants to watch this documentary, give me a shout.

Further reading can be found here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3177682.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3583927.stm

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1027.htm

http://pilger.carlton.com/

http://www.irr.org.uk/2004/september/ak000014.html