WHAT’S THE STORY?

OVER the weekend, five people who were forcibly exiled by the UK from the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean returned to their homeland for the first time in 50 years.

Olivier Bancoult, Lisbey Elyse, Marie Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert went ashore on a beautiful beach on the Peros Banhos atoll, and dressed in t-shirts with the motto “Chagos My Home” and “Everyone has a right to live in his birthplace” they held hands and prayed before moving to clean up the island’s ruined chapel.

Their message was avowedly political, however. Bancoult told The Observer: “The importance of this trip is that we can send a message to the world – about the kind of injustice the UK Government, with the help of the US government, inflicted on our people. If we were white people with blue eyes, maybe we would have had better treatment?”

TELL US ABOUT CHAGOS

An archipelago of seven atolls with some 60 islands in all, Chagos’ misfortune is that it is in a strategically vital position in the centre of the Indian Ocean about 310 miles (500km) south of the Maldives.

It is just 21.7 sq m (56.1 sq kms) in area with more than half of the land being taken up by Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands. The Great Chagos Bank is the most noted of the geographical features as it is the world’s largest coral atoll.

Small earthquakes are frequent in and around the archipelago, but even though low-lying, the Chagos Islands are not thought to be in danger from climate change causing the raising of sea levels.

The National:

READ MORE: The UK should not get away with colonial skulduggery in Chagos

Explored by the Portuguese and settled by the French, the Chagos Islands officially became British territory in the Treaty of Paris at the end of the Napoleonic war. For administrative purposes they were attached to Mauritius until 1965 when the UK bought the islands from Mauritius for a reported £3m and created the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

Over the next eight years the population of just over 3000 were quietly removed, often forcibly.

WHY DID THE UK ACT AS IT DID?

To keep the USA happy, as usual. The largest BIOT island, Diego Garcia, was to be transformed into a giant military base, mostly for long range bombers. Technically a joint UK-USA installation, the USA was paying for most of it and demanded an island cleared of its people.

In 1966, Foreign Office senior civil servant DA Greenhill wrote in response to an official who wanted only seagulls left on the islands: "Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are being hopefully wisked (sic) on to Mauritius etc. When this has been done I agree we must be very tough."

The Labour and Tory UK governments of Harold Wilson and Ted Heath duly obliged and the coconut plantations which were the islands’ main economic activity were closed down, forcing contract workers to go mainly to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

They suffered discrimination and extreme poverty – though some of the native inhabitants settled in the UK, with an enclave of them in Crawley, West Sussex, where the majority of the 3000 Chagossians in Britain now live.

They have mostly been refused British citizenship, but the Foreign Office has occasionally permitted Chagossians to return to the islands for an accompanied visit, and successive UK governments have paid some compensation to the deported people – a pittance, usually.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

A most interesting question, not least because of the pesky intervention, as the Tories would see it, in British and American imperialism by the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, both of which have ruled the UK Government to have acted illegally.

In May 2019, the UN said the islands should go back to Mauritius which has maintained for decades that it was forced to give up Chagos as the price of independence.

The five Chagossians who went home over the weekend were conveyed to the islands by the Mauritian government, which is ramping up the protests against the UK and USA – real David and Goliath stuff, but remember who won that particular duel.

The Foreign Office has stated: “Successive UK governments have expressed sincere regret about the manner in which Chagossians were removed from BIOT in the late 1960s and early 1970s … and we are currently delivering a £40m support package to Chagossians over a 10-year period.”

IS THERE A LESSON FOR SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE CAMPAIGNERS?

Yes, and it’s not a pleasant one. If the UK Government can battle against a minuscule population and ignore the International Court of Justice and the UN General Assembly over a tiny territory thousands of miles away, how much harder are they going to fight to hold on to a rich country with plentiful human and physical resources next door to England?

And don’t forget, Scotland has its own Diego Garcia in the shape of the Trident nuclear submarine base at Faslane and plenty other British military installations which the English empire will not let go easily.