US Terror - Chagos Islands 1968
by Luís Garcia
The Chagos Islands are an archipelago located in the Indian Ocean exclusively inhabited by US military personnel (and allies), although it is a British colony from which NATO combat aircraft depart to bomb countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen. One of the most strategic US military bases in the world is located in this archipelago, in the Diego Garcia island.
But this was not always the case in the Chagos Islands. Until 1968, the archipelago was inhabited by its native population. At the request of the US military empire, the United Kingdom agreed to rent the archipelago where the Americans could set up their bases. To make this possible, the United Kingdom forcibly deported the entire population of Chagos to Mauritius. As they never became independent from the United Kingdom, the inhabitants of Chagos were, for all intents and purposes, British citizens who were kidnapped by the British armed forces and abandoned in the slums of the capital of the newly created state of Mauritius.
The British government tried to pass the false idea that the abducted people were in fact workers under temporary contracts returning to Mauritius. But no, those thousands of human beings were born in Chagos and had never left there, just like the many previous generations of Chagossians.
Later, using a series of studies and analyses, the US tried to prove that the archipelago, in the long run, would not be habitable, thus portraying the kidnappings as a humanitarian action. In reality, today, more American soldiers than there used to be Chagossians live in the archipelago, who by the way show much higher levels of consumption. Unsurprisingly, they are still alive, evidence that the islands are definitely habitable!
As a result, from 1968 until the present today, thousands of de facto UK citizens survive as refugees in the slums of the capital of a third country. In that same capital, there is a UK embassy and also the ambassador's palace where £5 million are spent each year. Very undemocratic measures creating drastic differences between the lives of white Britons and non-white Britons somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Chagossian refugees in Mauritius have been fighting for their rights in British courts for decades. After decades of bureaucracy, they ended up winning the case in the supreme court. However, unlike the widespread myth, the UK is not a democracy. On the contrary, it is a constitutional monarchy with remnants of absolutism. Queen Elizabeth II for the first time in her reign used her undemocratic power to overturn a supreme court decision with a simple signature. In addition, the British government passed a decree in 2004 banning Chagossian refugees from returning to the archipelago forever.
And so the case remains the same, except for a large percentage of Chagossians who have simply opted for suicide, tired of being robbed, humiliated, and abandoned, tired of these genocides in slow-motion fully ignored by our Western media.
This is probably one of the reasons why the governments of genocidal and barbaric nations like the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US spend so much money, energy, and resources making up genocides and cultural genocides that are NOT taking place in China.
John Pilger, the great independent journalist ignored (when not bashed) by Western media is among the very few who dare to seriously denounce this act of terror by the US and its British vassal. In 2004 he produced the appalling yet very informative documentary Stealing A Nation. Watch it!
Luís Garcia
