Exiled islanders lose London court fight over US air bases

[dutchdemocrat]

Exiled islanders lose London court fight
Thu 9 October, 2003 12:22 BST

LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of Indian Ocean islanders forcibly removed from their homes at the height of the Cold War to make way for a U.S. military base have lost a court fight in Britain for financial compensation and the right to return.

Up to 2,000 people from Britain's Diego Garcia and other islands in the Chagos chain were uprooted from their homes and shipped to the Mauritius islands in the early 1970s after a deal was struck to build an American air base.

Diego Garcia remains a strategic U.S. military base, its airfields and long-range bombers recently called into action for the attack on Iraq that removed Saddam Hussein from power.

In delivering his decision, Justice Duncan Ouseley said there was no legal basis to argue that the islanders had been subjected to "unlawful exile".

He dismissed their calls for financial compensation from the British government but also chastised the government over its treatment of the islanders:

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=385750§ion=news

[rooboy]

1. That's disgusting.

Of all the things that the western powers have done to the powerless, the story of the Diego Garcians is one which makes my blood boil the most.

Preserving peace and freedom my ass.

[dutchdemocrat]

2. Background pretrial

Diego Garcia islanders await call to go home

Exiled from paradise, a whole community has fought for 30 years. Now their struggle is waged from Crawley

Paul Harris and Martin Bright
Sunday July 27, 2003
The Observer

Clemencia Cherry smiled as she remembered the last time she saw her island home of Diego Garcia. It was a glimpse of a palm-fringed atoll receding on the tropical horizon as a steamer took her on holiday to Mauritius. She was 22.
Now Cherry is a grandmother, whose careworn face speaks of a lifetime in exile. She never saw her homeland again. When she tried to return, British officials would not allow her on a boat. Diego Garcia was to become a US military base and a permit was now needed to go there, she was told. She did not qualify for one. No islander did. Cherry and her husband and young family were exiled. 'It was my home. It was where I belonged,' she said.

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.

For more than three decades the Diego Garcians, who call themselves the Ilois and inhabited the Chagos archipelago of which Diego Garcia is the largest island, have dreamed of going home. Now they are on the move again. And their destination is the unlikely target of Crawley in Sussex, now home to more than 100 Diego Garcians.

After a long court battle, the community won the right to full British citizenship several years ago and, after saving for one-way tickets, the Ilois are starting to arrive in Britain. The first group came last September, a second group came in June and a third group arrived suddenly two weeks ago.

The community numbers some 5,000 and, faced with poverty and racism in Mauritius, few want to stay there. Crawley was chosen because Gatwick Airport sits nearby. Now the town is the new home of a thriving community of Diego Garcians strung out in hotels and council estates.'If we were allowed to go back, then none us would ever want to come here,' said Allan Vincatassin, their unofficial representitive.

The Diego Garcians who have made it to Crawley have often sold off all their possessions to pay for the tickets or have worked and saved for more than a year at the poorly paid manual jobs that are their lot in Mauritius. But behind the exodus is simply the desire to go home.

SNIP

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1006618,00.html

This is truly a tragedy and one that should be handled by the world court in the Hague, not by some old crony white-wigged judge in London who has political friends who probably had a hand in the whole affair.

[dutchdemocrat]

3. Tossed out on the streets... Disgraceful

Islanders march on Westminster Sep 17 2003




By Maheesha Kottegoda


EXILED islanders spent the night sleeping rough on the streets outside Parliament after they were turfed out of a town hotel.

The 10 Diego Garcian men slept at Westminster on Monday demanding to be returned home if housing could not be found for them in Crawley.

Spokesman for the islanders, Gabriel Valentin, said: "These people do not have money, they have no place to go and no food to eat.

"They are all destitute. These people do not know where their next meal is coming from.

"We will sleep outside Parliament for as long as it takes.

"We want to be returned to our island. We don't want their money, we want our money and our island."

The Diego Garcians, who hold British passports, have travelled from Mauritius and France, where they have been living since the British Government forced them from their homeland in the 1970s to make way for a military air base.

A total of 72 Diego Garcians were given their marching orders when West Sussex

County Council stopped paying for their rooms at the Premier Lodge, in Gossops Green, on Monday.

SNIP

http://icsurreyonline.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0400crawley/content_objectid=13419233_method=full_siteid=50101_headline=-Islanders-march-on-Westminster-name_page.html

[dutchdemocrat]

4. This case really has me infuriated!!!!

Most of the islands' displaced residents, known as Ilois, were agricultural workers and fisherman, unequipped for work in their host countries' economies. Those sent to Mauritius, more than 1,000 miles from their homeland, now live in poverty in urban slums.

The Ilois are also suing the US

============

I hope they kick ass in a US court!!!!!!!!!

[dutchdemocrat]

5. Bump

See some severe injustice taking place in the world circus.