The Price for Justice: Resettlement of the Chagos Islands

[unhappycamper]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29097-the-price-for-justice-resettlement-of-the-chagos-islands



The Chagossians are the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands (today called the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT) - a group of seven atolls comprising more than 50 small islands in the Indian Ocean. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Chagossians were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland by the UK and US governments so the land could be leased to the Pentagon for 50 years.

The Price for Justice: Resettlement of the Chagos Islands
Monday, 16 February 2015 10:35
By Alyssa Rohricht

In over 40 years, despite multiple court cases in two different countries (some lost, some won, some won and later overturned), hunger strikes, protests, media events, petitions to the UN, and even Kickstarter campaigns, the exiled people of the Chagos Islands, some 300 miles south of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, have yet to see justice.

Now, the hopes of the Chagossians are pinned to a study commissioned by the UK government - a study the Chagossians hope will be the answer they need to take them home.

The Chagossians are the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands (today called the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT) - a group of seven atolls comprising more than 50 small islands in the Indian Ocean. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Chagossians were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland by the UK and US governments so the land could be leased to the Pentagon for 50 years.

During the campaign to remove the islanders, British agents, with the help of the US military, rounded up the Chagossians' pets and gassed them. The people were then corralled onto a ship and dropped on the shores of the nearby Seychelles islands and Mauritius with no homes, food, money or support. A US military base was established on the island of Diego Garcia in Chagos. Today, the Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, ironically nicknamed the "Footprint of Freedom," is one of the most strategically important US military bases in the world.