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“I WAS TWO years old when they forced us leave our home,” recalls Bernadette Dugasse of the day more than six decades ago she and her family were forced from their home on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, “but I will never forget it.
“My father was a furniture-maker and my mother was pregnant with my sister when they told us we had to go.
“We didn’t understand why but they told my father that he didn’t have the right to make furniture for the Chagossian people any more. We had to pack our things and take a boat to the Seychelles. We didn’t have a choice.”
“They” were the British authorities who were in charge of Diego Garcia, the island — a three-day boat ride from Mauritius — where Dugasse was born and spent her first carefree years. For the next four decades she eked out an existence in Mahe, the capital of the Seychelles where she married and eventually had four children. But she never forgot her “real home.”
Nor have the other Creole-speaking members of the Chagossian diaspora who, like Dugasse, eventually found their way to Britain. As British citizens Chagossians have the right to travel to Britain — but did not, until relatively recently, have he right to assistance such as is offered to asylum-seekers or refugees. This meant that many arrived with just a suitcase, a few words of English and nowhere to turn.
As recently as this summer, more than 50 adults and children were sleeping on emergency camp beds in a Sussex community centre.
It was the desire to please the United States which wanted to establish a military base — now the largest in the Indian Ocean — that was behind the shameful decision to empty the archipelago of its human inhabitants, leading a civil servant of the day to perpetrate the lie that there was no indigenous or settled population that might impede US plans.
In return, the US offered a discount off Polaris missiles — a submarine-based nuclear weapons system — and the deal was done.
What started with the ousting of Bernadette Dugasse’s family ended with the dispersal of more than 2,500 peaceful islanders, many of whom died without the chance of seeing their parents’ graves in the tiny island cemetery again.
Bernadette Dugasse’s story is not unique. She is one of many who have recounted how they were forced from their homes. Threats of violence were not uncommon and many families — especially when members were off island for medical treatment then refused permission to board a boat back to Chagos — were split up with no thought for what we would today call duty of care.
Approximately 3,500 Chagossians — sometimes also referred to as Ilois — and their descendants now live in Britain, the majority in and around the Sussex town of Crawley. Many arrived by air — after scrimping and saving for decades — at Gatwick Airport. Crawley is the first stop off the plane.
Most had spent their savings on a flight and would spend the next decades campaigning for recognition from a succession of British governments, both Labour and Tory, who treated them first as a dirty secret and, once word was out, as an embarrassing reminder of a faded empire now more trouble, and maybe more expensive, to maintain than half a century ago.
It is a complex relationship as many Chagossians saw, and see, Britain not just as a colonial usurper who stole their home, but as a motherland, one that had and should continue to take responsibility for the exiled islanders and their descendants.
As in any community, there is a range of deeply held opinions on the best way forward. The vast majority wish to be able to exercise their right to return and are resolute that they want to go back to live on the archipelago where, apart from the base, there is little in the way of infrastructure.
Some are campaigning for a right of return but wish to remain resident in Britain where they have brought up children and grandchildren; while some have other dreams — like father of four Jen Francois Nellen, who was born in Mauritus and lives in Derby with his British-born family, but who ultimately wants to go to live permanently on Diego Garcia where his grandparents and their parents are buried.
Mauritius has sought to claim the islands for many years and in 2019 the International Court of Justice declared that Britain had acted illegally by carving the archipelago out of an agreement that saw Mauritius gain independence. The ICJ ruled that the islands should be handed to Mauritius and it was this ruling that Foreign Secretary David Lammy acknowledged and flagged as a existential risk when he gave a statement to Parliament this week.
In spite of having previously tied itself in knots fighting the ICJ ruling, with hawks on both sides of the political divide warning that once in Mauritian hands, the base would be at risk of falling under Chinese control, the British government now says the agreement it has reached with Mauritus — that would see Britain ceding sovereignty to Port Louis, with a caveat that ensures the base remains under the administration of the British for the next 99 years — is the best outcome for everyone.
While it is no secret that Beijing has been expanding its footprint across the region, a former Royal Navy officer and legal adviser who is familiar with the base says that these concerns are likely “wide of the mark.”
Last week’s announcement presumes that a treaty which Lammy told Parliament was “yet to be ratified” (and may yet need to be written) will clarify a number of unknowns, which Jen Francois Nellen, part of the Chagossian Voices coalition, is worried will not prioritise Chagossian people.
“Firstly it seems unlikely we will be allowed to return to Diego Garcia unless we are able to secure jobs on the base which have been done for years by a Filipino workforce.
“Where is the infrastructure? Why is the announcement saying Chagossians can go to the islands? Is that all Mauritians or will there be genuine support for Chagossians or will we be ignored again? Who will manage the trust fund they mentioned? There are so many things that are unclear and we have not even been consulted. This is a deal between the UK and Mauritius. It is not a good deal for all Chagossians.”
Those who are cautiously welcoming the deal include supporters of campaigner Olivier Bancoult, who has moved between Britain and Mauritius calling for the right of return and compensation for many years.
Alongside Nellen, Bernadette Dugasse joined a demonstration of around 50 who travelled from all over Britain on Monday to raise their concerns outside Parliament regarding the decision which they say was reached without proper consultation with the Chagossian community.
“Our voices have, yet again, not been heard or listened to.”
Top of their worries is that, based on what little information has so far trickled out, only Mauritian nationals of Chagossian descent will be allowed back to the island of Diego Garcia. How long they can stay — or not — has not been clarified. While more than 1,000 US military personnel live on the base which is serviced by around 200 Filipino workers, it is unclear what other infrastructure is in place.
As far as other islands, such as Perros Banhos, are concerned there is, says Iain Orr — the retired head of the British government’s now-defunct Environmental Policy Department and a long-time supporter of Chagossians who wish to return — a need for an environmental impact study as the area is fragile.
The establishment of a vast maritime protection zone was he suggests was not purely done for conservation reasons.
“So much time and money was spent keeping people away from the base.”
Bill Bowring, barrister and professor of law at Birkbeck College, agrees: “Everyone knows this was all about the US having a torture point outside US jurisdiction.”
Clive Stafford Smith, director of the British non-profit Justice League, was one of the first people to highlight the use of the base on Diego Garcia as a centre for extraordinary rendition. He welcomes the decision to cede to Mauritius but thinks “it is about 59 years too late.”
“Ships anchored in the surrounding waters were likely used as torture centres because, at that time, “the UK had not asserted the full ‘Law of the Sea’ rights that would have given a 12-mile territorial jurisdiction.”
In addition to last week’s announcement, he thinks Britain “should be admitting its liability for some of the Guantanamo detainees who were held there.”
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time supporter of the Chagossians’ campaign to for a right to return, is the chair of the newly reconstituted all-party parliamentary group on Chagos. He once referred to the “legal gymnastics” undertaken by the British government to avoid relinquishing the islands or allowing the Chagossians a full say in their own destiny (a small group including Jen Francois Nellen was flown back for three days in 2020).
In the meantime, the Chagossians are watching and waiting. They are all too aware that there was pressure from the Prime Minister, according to chief negotiator Jonathan Powell, to “get this sorted before the [Mauritian and US] elections,” which are due to take place in the next few weeks.
The cost of this shameful episode has surely run into billions. Chagossians claim that Britain paid an estimated £40 million — the same amount set aside to compensate them in a previous move — to lawyers dealing with the case of some Sri Lankan fisherman who claimed asylum after straying into territorial waters and who have been confined to a corner of the base for several years.
How ironic that the their island home is occupied by US naval forces, foreign workers and refugees from elsewhere. Meanwhile they remain in exile and wait, still at the mercy of their former and future colonial masters.