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Refusal by the United Kingdom and the United States to allow the people of the island of Diego Garcia to return to their ancestral land
Doc. 10269
2 September 2004Written Question No. 452 to the Committee of Ministers
presented by Mr Masson
Mr Masson wishes to point out to the Committee of Ministers that the Diego Garcia atoll belongs to the United Kingdom. However, a secret agreement of 1961, signed by Harold McMillan and John F. Kennedy, designated it as an Anglo-American "point of strategic support" against the Soviet Union in the Indian Ocean. Washington wanted to establish a communications and refuelling centre there on the dual condition that the Chagos archipelago should be excluded from the decolonisation process London was implementing and that its inhabitants should be evacuated "for security reasons". In exchange, the United States offered a USD 14 million reduction on the price of Polaris missiles the United Kingdom was purchasing.
The "transfer" of the native inhabitants began in the greatest secrecy in the early 1970s with Mauritius and the Seychelles as their destination. London informed the "deportees" that they had no territorial claim on the islands, to which their ancestors had come from other African countries or Indian Ocean islands as "contract workers". The 426 families, who lived from vegetable farming, coastal fishing, livestock rearing and copra production, found themselves stripped of their possessions and without any assistance in the slums of Port-Louis in Mauritius and Victoria in the Seychelles. Alcoholism, drug abuse and poverty ravaged their community while the United States transformed Diego Garcia into a fortress.
For 35 years the "Ilois" have been fighting to reclaim their atoll, a struggle which, in 2000, won them recognition as full British subjects. In November 2000 the London High Court ruled that their "transfer" was "illegal" and recognised as founded their claim to a "right of return" to their ancestral land. However, Tony Blair's government did not understand things that way. Under the pretext of conducting a feasibility study on resettling a community of some 8,500 "Chagossians" it dragged out the inquiry. Its experts have now concluded that the population would be exposed to "natural events of a nature to make their survival difficult". In the longer term, global warming and its consequences on sea levels will allegedly make their lives impossible. This attitude is clearly dishonest, since if rising sea levels are a threat why do the United States cling to their strategic base?
On the basis of this pretext, a legal decree was discreetly promulgated on 10 June 2004, prohibiting the natives of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago, to return there.
Mr Masson accordingly asks the Committee of Ministers to serve notice on the United Kingdom to respect the rights of the former inhabitants of the island of Diego Garcia and, failing that, to consider whether the matter should not be referred direct to the European Court of Human Rights.
Signed:[1]
MASSON Jean-Louis, France, EDG
SOC
EPP
EDG
LDR
UEL
NRSocialist Group
Group of the European People’s Party
European Democratic Group
Liberal, Democratic and Reformers’ Group
Group of the Unified European Left
Not registered in a group