I originally published this in 2021. It since fell off the Internet, but it’s important enough to me to re-draft and bring back.
This article describes animal abuse, ethnic cleansing and suicide.
Out in the middle of the Indian Ocean lies the small coral Chagos Archipelago.
With the coastlines of Africa, Asia and Antarctica thousands of kilometres distant, the archipelago is amongst the most isolated on the planet. The islands are tiny, too, with a total land area of 56 km²; about half the size of Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
But despite the archipelago’s size and isolation, it was home — for a time — to a thriving community.
A short history lesson
The first Europeans to stake a claim to the Chagos Archipelago were the French. They settled the nearby Isle de France in 1715. By 1793, a French coconut plantation housed the first permanent settlement on the archipelago’s largest island, Diego Garcia.
This being an 18th Century European settlement, of course it was built on the backs of slaves. The colony was French, but the people were Malagasy and Mozambican.
After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the French ceded Isle de France and its dependencies to Britain. Britain reinstated the isle’s Dutch name – Mauritius – and continued to govern the archipelago and its plantations from there.
After the abolition of slavery in 1835, many now-freemen chose to stay on the archipelago and were joined by labourers from India. Beautiful people being beautiful people, they were fruitful and multiplied. New families made the archipelago their home, and an integrated Chagossian society blossomed for generations. By the 1960’s, the archipelago was home to some 2,000 people.
In the incredible documentary “Stealing a Nation“, journalist John Pilger asked Charlesia Alexis about her fondest memories of Diego Garcia:
“We could eat and drink everything, we never lacked for anything. And we never bought anything, except for the clothes we wore.”
In that same documentary, Rita Élysée Bancoult reminisced:
“I had dogs which I brought to the beach with me. At low tide they would go out and catch fish and bring them in and lay them at my feet.”
While the islanders relied on their governing island Mauritius for trade and medical treatment, they were largely and comfortably self-sufficient. Life was, by their own accounts, good.
Conspiracy
The end of World War II in 1945 led to the start of the Cold War. Soviet influence grew across Europe and Asia, and the United States of America sought to expand too.
And she had just the spot in mind.
No matter where in the world the next inevitable war was to break out, those idyllic coral islands smack in the centre of the Indian Ocean would be the perfect staging platform for attacks against a dozen countries’ supply lines, communication hubs and military targets.
But how could the United States acquire the archipelago? The land was Mauritian territory, and – even though Mauritius was a British territory — Britain had no claim over the islands. No matter what the United States’ offered her war-time ally, the land wasn’t legally Britain’s to trade.
And so, Britain traded the land illegally.
On November 8th, 1965, the British Foreign Office redrew the map. Public servants in London created, on paper, a new British territory — the British Indian Ocean Territory — which encompassed the Chagos Archipelago, then transferred governance of the islands from Mauritius directly to London.
By the Foreign Office’s reckoning, the islands were now British. And in exchange for a $14 million discount on a nuclear missile, the British Indian Ocean Territory was leased to the United States of America.
But what about the Chagossian people living on those islands?
Terror
The American military-industrial complex was not amenable to sharing the islands.
The people were removed; first by terror, then deceit, then force.
Robin Mardemootoo, lawyer for the Chagos Islanders, explained the opening strike against the people:
The British and American authorities implemented a policy decision that was aimed at depriving that community — in the Chagos — from basic supplies. No milk, no dairy products, no oil, no sugar, no salt, no medication, no more of the things you use in life.
When the blockade didn’t scare enough Chagossians away, Sir Bruce Greatbatch — Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, Member of the Order of the British Empire, Governor of the Seychelles and interim administrator of the British Indian Ocean Territory — ordered all the dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed.
Almost a thousand pets and hunting animals were rounded up and gassed with the exhaust fumes of American military vehicles. The people were threatened with the same if they didn’t leave.
When terror didn’t work, Britain resorted to deceit. Islanders who left the archipelago were denied return. Many, like Charlesia Alexis, had no idea when travelling to Mauritius for medical treatment that they’d never see their homes again.
And finally, when terror and deceit hadn’t been enough, the islanders were removed by force.
Exile
At 1pm on October 15th, 1971, the remaining people of Diego Garcia were summoned to the office of Sir Greatbatch’s magistr
