**Diego Garcia: Fighting for the right to return

They call the US military base at Diego Garcia the "footprint of freedom." The base is strategically located in the Indian Ocean, where its naval fleet and B-52, B-2, and B-1 bombers have recently been used to attack Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Government and the UK Government that controls Diego Garcia and the rest of the surrounding Chagos Archipelago have called the base crucial to the war on terrorism and to fighting for the human rights of Iraqis.

But for almost 40 years these nations who are supposed to be the champions of human rights have been violating human rights in their own backyard-and they have been doing it against the UK's own people. Between 1965 and 1973, the U.K. and U.S. governments forcibly removed the people of Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos Archipelago from our native lands, dumping us in poverty with no resettlement planning almost 2,000 km away in Mauritius and Seychelles.

We are called Chagossians and for more than five generations we had been living in Diego Garcia and the rest of Chagos, working and enjoying lives of peace and happiness. We are the citizens of what the UK calls the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), but unlike other peoples, we have no right to live in our homelands.

Our nightmare began when the UK Government decided to lease our motherland to the US to build a base on Diego Garcia. The US paid the U.K. $14 million to create the BIOT in Chagos (in violation of two UN resolutions) and to remove us from our homelands. With dirty tricks, deportations, and the extermination of all our pet dogs in front of our eyes, we were exiled to foreign lands.

In Mauritius and Seychelles we have found lives of poverty and misery. We live in the poorest regions and face many difficulties including unemployment, poor health and education, dangerous housing conditions, drug and alcohol abuse, and prostitution. Meanwhile the US has spent billions of dollars to build the base on Diego. They even employ Mauritians, Filipinos, Sri Lankans, and others on the base, but never any Chagossians. While foreigners live and work and enjoy our beautiful islands, we are trapped in exile, prevented even from visiting our islands to pay respects to our ancestors' graves. (Now we learn with sadness that the US Government may be secretly and illegally detaining prisoners on our island as well.)

The UK Government collects millions of pounds sterling each year in fishing rights for the bountiful waters that we once fished. With its other overseas territories, like the Falklands, St. Helena, and the Isle of Man, the UK provides abundant financial and educational opportunities and other social benefits. We as the descendants of slaves from Africa are forgotten and ignored, left to live with no assistance as Britain's forgotten people.

For decades we have struggled to regain our rights through demonstrations, hunger strikes, arrests, and jailings. In 1998, we initiated legal proceedings against the UK Government to challenge the legislation that denied us access to Chagos. On 3 November 2000, the High Court in London delivered a landmark ruling in our favour, giving us the right to return to our islands. On the strength of this ruling, in 2001, we lodged claims against the UK and US governments for compensation as a result of their wrongdoings and to rebuild our society in Chagos to allow our return.

In 2003, the British High Court said that we have been "treated shamefully by successive UK governments," but ruled against us. In June 2004, the British Government made matters worse by shockingly announcing the Queen's enactment of two royal orders in council overturning our 2000 victory and our right to return to Chagos. With the help of lawyers and supporters in Europe, Mauritius, and the United States, we are now contesting the orders in UK court and launching new suits against the UK in European courts.

All that we ask for is to be treated as human beings, to be given our fundamental human right to live in our native lands, to put an end to our discrimination. Unfortunately the great protectors of human rights have not yet been able to see that to be uprooted from one's homeland and one's way of life and to be left in impoverished exile is a denial of a people's fundamental rights.

Maybe the UK and US governments will pay more attention to the definition of "Crimes against Humanity," found in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: "'Crime against humanity' means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread of systematic attack directed against any civilian population…a) Murder, b) Extermination, c) Enslavement, d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population."

We hope that international courts in Europe will soon consider this question, to judge once and for all if the treatment the Chagossians have received has been lawful, and whether we deserve the right to return to our native lands and reparations for the wrongs we have suffered.

* Louis Olivier Bancoult is Chairman of the Chagos Refugees Group

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