Stealing a nation

[dipsydoodle]

For latest news see : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4760879.stm

For subject history see : http://www.irr.org.uk/2004/september/ak000014.html

Extract :

In the 1960s Britain secretly and brutally expelled the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - so that the US could build a military base there.
The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, is now America's biggest overseas military base and was a launchpad for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. With more than 4,000 troops, two bomber runways, thirty warships and a satellite spy station, the Pentagon calls it an 'indispensable platform' for policing the world. Located halfway between Africa and Indonesia, Diego Garcia is also home to a secret camp for suspected terrorists, part of a global network of prison complexes which includes Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Before the Americans came, more than 2,000 people lived on the islands which were, and still are, a British crown colony. But in the 1960s, the Labour government struck a secret deal with the United States to hand over Diego Garcia. The Americans demanded that the islands be 'swept' and 'sanitised'. Unknown to Parliament and to the US Congress, the British government plotted with Washington to expel the entire population - in secrecy and in breach of the United Nations Charter.

At first, they starved them of essential supplies; then rumours spread that the islands would be bombed; then the people watched their pets gassed to death before they were herded on to boats and dumped in the slums of Mauritius.

Now the Chagos Islanders, who are British subjects, are fighting for the right to return to the islands and compensation for their unlawful exile which began more than 30 years ago. Last year, thirty people from Diego Garcia camped out at Gatwick Airport in protest at their treatment by the British authorities.

For John Pilger's documentary on the subject :
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/guides/stealguide.pdf#search='pilger%20%20chagos%20islands'