Diego Garcia: US blocks return home for exiled islanders

Ewen MacAskill and Rob Evans
Friday September 1, 2000
The Guardian

The US is exerting intense pressure on the British government to block a return home by evicted Diego Garcia islanders, according to a state department letter obtained by the Guardian.
The confidential letter, sent to the Foreign Office on June 21, adopted an uncompromising position, saying that resettlement of the islands "would significantly degrade the strategic importance of a vital military asset unique in the region".
The US also disclosed that it intended to expand its Diego Garcia military base, already one of the most strategically important in the world.
The Chagos archipelago, a British overseas territory, was cleared of its inhabitants in 1973 to make way for the US base. The exiles, most of whom now live in Mauritius, want to repopulate two islands, Salomons and Peros Banhos, about 140 miles from the base, but the US has made it clear this option should be ruled out.
The US stance leaves the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, in a bind. The islanders have turned to the high court in London, demanding the right to return to the islands and a judgment early in October is expected to find in their favour.
This would create an awkward stand-off between the islanders and the British and US governments.
Mr Cook, though he supported the islanders while he was in opposition, must uphold treaty obligations with the US.
The letter, from a senior state department official, Eric Newsom, to Richard Wilkinson, director for the Americas, at the Foreign Office, left Mr Cook with no room for manoeuvre.
Mr Newsom, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said: "I would like to take this opportunity to express the United States government's serious concern over the inevitable compromise to the current and future strategic value of Diego Garcia that would result from any move to settle a permanent resident population on any of the islands of the Chagos archipelago."
It added: "In carrying out our defence and security responsibilities in the Arabian Gulf, the Middle East, south Asia and east Africa, Diego Garcia represents for us an all but indispensable platform. For this reason, in addition to extensive naval requirements, the USG is seeking the permission of your government to develop the island as a forward operating location for expeditionary air force operations - one of only four such locations worldwide."
Diego Garcia, which is a base for B-52 bombers, was used extensively in the Gulf war in 1991, in further attacks on Iraq in 1998 and for operations elsewhere.
Mr Newsom identified the main benefits of Diego Garcia as both its strategic location and its isolation and anticipated further US investment in the base on the island.
He added: "If a resident population were established on the Chagos archipelago, that could well imperil Diego Garcia's present advantage as a base from which it is possible to conduct sensitive military operations that are important for the security of both our governments but that, for reasons of security, cannot be staged from bases near population centres."
Terrorists could use the islands as a base to launch attacks, he said.
He added: "Settlements on the outer islands would also immediately raise the alarming prospect of the introduction of surveillance, monitoring and electronic jamming devices that have the potential to disrupt, compromise or place at risk vital military operations."



Deceit in Diego Garcia

Former Diego Garcia islanders launch legal action against British government

By Julie Hyland
18 July 2000
Back to screen version

Islanders removed from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean in the 1960s by the British government launched a legal action in the London High Court on Monday. Between 1966 and the early 1970s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson evicted approximately 1,500 inhabitants of Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Salomon, in a deal struck with the US military.
In return for the islanders' removal and exclusion from the British colony, London reportedly received an $11 million discount on the purchase of the US-made Polaris nuclear weapons system. The main island, Diego Garcia, became a strategic base for the US military during the Cold War and was used to supply its forces in the Red Sea and Vietnam. B-52 bombers were also stationed on the island during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq.
Former islander Louis Bancoult, chairman of the Chagos Refugee Group in Mauritius, is bringing the legal action. Bancoult contends that the removal violated the human rights of the islanders, officially British subjects, and was illegal under the terms of the 13th Magna Carta prohibiting the banishment of citizens of the realm. Many of the islanders were taken to Mauritius, more than 1,300 miles away. He is demanding the right of return for the remaining 500 islanders and their 3,800 descendants. The Blair government has said that it will contest the action.
The US first expressed an interest in the islands to Britain in 1964, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. At the time, the Chagos islands were part of Mauritius, then a British colony. To facilitate their use as a military base, Britain granted Mauritius independence in 1965, on condition that it handed the islands over to its control.
The Chagos islands?together with those of Aldabra, Desroches and Farquhar?were formed into a new colonial entity, the British Indian Ocean Territory. Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Salomon were then leased on to the US military for 50 years.
Washington had stipulated that it did not want a gpopulation problemh on the islands, so British officials organised what was described as gthe complete sterilisation of the archipelagoh. The islanders say that Britain did this by withdrawing essential services and stopping the provision of supply ships. Those who left the islands for a short period were not allowed back. Many were taken away by ship to Mauritius, which reportedly received ’3 million in return. To ensure United Nations backing, Britain argued that there were no indigenous inhabitants with a right of self-determination on the island, and that the island's population consisted of gcontract labourersh.
The islanders reject this, saying that they were never consulted about their removal and that the action condemned them and their families to a lifetime of poverty. Many only received minimal compensation after waiting seven years. Fully 90 percent of the island's former inhabitants are now unemployed and living in Mauritius's slums. They argue that, as only the western side of Diego Garcia is used by the US military, they could live on the eastern side and on the two remaining islands.
Press reports have put the focus on the government's embarrassment as its gethical foreign policyh is called into question yet again.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook will represent the government should the High Court rule that the case can go to trial. In the 1970s, when the islanders' eviction first came to light, Cook was one of the most outspoken critics of the action within the Labour Party.
The case sheds light on a particularly contentious period in British post-war politics. Secret documents recently released to the Public Records Office indicate that the British government did receive a discount on its Polaris nuclear weapons system and ’5 million from the US. According to the Independent newspaper, the documents contain a memo from Labour's Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart to Wilson in April 1969, which confirms that the agreement was kept secret from parliament and the US Congress.
Polaris became a political scandal for the Wilson government. In opposition, Wilson had attacked the development of a supposedgindependent nuclear deterrenth for Britain and pledged to scrap the nuclear submarine programme if Labour were elected. Within days of entering office in October 1964, this stance was reversed. Claiming that the programme would prove too costly to abandon, Labour went on to further develop Britain's nuclear weapons programme, running up military spending to more than ’400 million a year.
For the British ruling class, Polaris was crucial on several fronts.
Britain's humiliating withdrawal from the Suez Canal in 1956, at US insistence, had shown that it lacked the military capability and political clout required to defend its remaining imperial possessions.
Its gindependent deterrenth was aimed at rectifying this?it initially refused to integrate its nuclear weapons into the NATO system?reinforcing Britain's claim to gGreat Powerh status.
In reality, the Polaris programme was entirely dependent on the US, both technologically and financially. The contradiction between Britain's global ambitions and its resources meant that the Polaris deal was only one of a number of arrangements made between the US and the UK during this period. In return for US help in trying to strengthen the pound in September 1965, an informal agreement was made that the Wilson government would tighten spending, control wage rises and also support American intervention against Vietnam.
Guardian (UK)

Islanders exiled by Britain now face US military might

John Madeley

Sunday November 5, 2000

Islanders who won a historic legal victory over the British Government last week now face two huge challenges - to overcome American objections to their return, and then re-establish the Indian Ocean island homes they were evicted from 30 years ago.
The US Defence Department insists it still has a strategic interest in its base at Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago. It was to make way for the base that the Ilois people were removed. The US lease runs until 2016.
There are 65 islands in the archipelago, but only three were inhabited - Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and Salomon. The islanders accept that return to Diego Garcia is for the moment impossible but hope to resettle the other two.
A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: 'We have consulted the Americans. We will observe our treaty obligations.' The Government surprised observers after the judgment when it said it would not appeal against the verdict that the islanders' removal had been unlawful. It said it would complete a feasibility study on resettling the exiles.
About 450 of the 2,000 people who were removed from the archipelago are still alive. They, and most of the 3,800 children since born to them, want to return to their life of fishing, harvesting coconuts, growing vegetables and rearing poultry.
Most were removed to Mauritius, where 90 per cent are unemployed and living in the slums of the capital. Others live in the Seychelles.
Olivier Bancoult, 36, in whose name the legal case was brought, was one of three islanders allowed by the Foreign Office to visit his home island, Peros Banhos. He was exiled in 1968 at the age of four. They found 30 years of tropical island growth, derelict houses and an infrastructure in ruins. 'But we were not deterred,' said Bancoult.Bancoult's lawyer, Richard Gifford, said the US government had filed a statement during the hear ing opposing the islanders' return, on the grounds that it would be a 'threat to national security', despite a distance of more than 130 miles between the air base and the nearest other island. In June, the US sent a confidential letter to the Foreign Office saying resettlement 'would significantly degrade the strategic importance of a vital military asset unique in the region'.
But Gifford said: 'The islands are already open for anyone to land. When I visited Salomon this year a dozen boats were there. There's even a sign saying "please put your rubbish in a bin".Surely it would help the security position if you have a friendly island people living there.' The Chagos islands were separated from Mauritius in 1965 and became a new colony called the British Indian Ocean Territory. The Wilson government negotiated independence for Mauritius three years later.
The territory was leased in 1966 to the US for use as an air and naval base for 50 years.

People of the Chagos Islands Claim Their Right To Go Home

a report from Shirley DeWolf

The regional committee of Southern African Churches in Ministry with Uprooted People assigned Bishop Gerard Mpango and myself to visit the churches of Mauritius in June 2000. Mauritius was the last of 13 countries in our region to be paid a visit by delegates from our regional committee for the purpose of encouraging the churches' ministry with uprooted people and linking them with regional and international networks for information exchange and advocacy work. It was the Presbyterian Church of Mauritius that extended us the invitation to come, hosted our stay, and introduced us to some of the uprooted people in their country, including the Chagos Islanders.
The following is an extract from the report of that visit and focuses on the Chagossian people, giving a brief background to their identity, extracts from our discussions with them, and some of the advocacy issues which need to be taken up by the international ecumenical family in their support.
The Chagos Archipelago lies in the Indian Ocean about halfway between Mauritius and India. It comprises 65 small islands over an area of 60 square kilometres. The largest of these is the island of Diego Garcia. During the 1700's a handful of French colonialists settled on the uninhabited islands and developed coconut plantations for the production of oil. To carry out the labour required for this business they imported slaves from various parts of Africa. Because the original names and origins of these men and women were not recorded, it has been difficult to trace their ancestry, but it is conjectured that some originated from Madagascar, some from Mozambique and some from Senegal. Others were the descendants of slaves and colonialists living elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, refered to as "Creoles". A small number of Tamils were also taken to the Chagos Islands from southern India.
At the end of the Napoleonic Wars when French administration in the Indian Ocean was replaced by British, the French colonists abandoned the Chagos Islands. Their former slaves took over the coconut oil business and developed their own economy. From the time of the first arrivals on the islands around 1760, five generations of Chagos islanders developed a common heritage, a culture, language, history and identity of their own. They became the indigenous people of the Chagos Archipelago.
Britain grouped the Chagos Archipelago and several other islands together with Mauritius for administrative purposes. In 1965 when Mauritius negotiated its independence from Great Britain the latter paid 3 million pounds to keep Chagos and a few other islands out of that settlement and established the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The United Nations condemned the dismembering of the Mauritian Territory in this manner, but their plea went unheeded and a year later Britain signed a lucrative agreement with the U.S.A. giving the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, to the Pentagon on a 50 year extendable lease for use as a military base.
Under Cold War conditions the U.S.A. considered it a strategic site from which they could keep check on the Soviet Union. The 3000 Chagos Islanders were never consulted or informed of any of these administrative changes. Nor were they aware that once a U.S. military base was established on Diego Garcia their presence would no longer be tolerated on any of the 65 islands.
Between 1965 and 1971 several underhanded methods were used to remove the islanders from their homes until none of them remained.
Fernand Mandarim told us his own memories of being evicted from his home on the island. "In 1966 my wife and I were newlyweds and came to Mauritius by ship. It was common for people from the outer islands to travel to Mauritius for shopping, business, medical needs, holidays, and for other needs. People from Mauritius used to come and work in the copra business in Chagos and we would visit back and forth. There were ships going both ways all the time. But in 1966 when my wife and I started home after our visit to Mauritius was finished we were told that the ship we were to have boarded was no longer carrying passengers. We decided to wait for the next ship, but as time went on we kept seeing more Chagossians arriving but none of us could get back home. It took a while for us to realise that there was a deliberate scheme behind this. Only as Mauritian independence began to unfold did we realise that other islands connected to the Mauritian territory received their independence but the Chagos Islands remained under British rule. And when we saw the U.S. military begin to arrive in 1971 and our fate became clear."
A Chagossian woman told us her similar experience. "We were playing Bingo afternoon and my two year old picked up one of the plastic tokens and got it lodged in his nostril. There was no doctor in the archipelago so I had to go with him to the hospital in Mauritius. When the treatment was finished we found there was no way to get home because the ships stopped carrying passengers to Chagos, they would only carry them away from Chagos. Eventually my husband had to join us in Mauritius - we had no choice, we were shut out."
More Chagossians were forced into economic migration when Britain bought the copra companies which were their source of livelihood and immediately closed the companies down. With only fishing to rely on and no food supplies coming into the islands since the close of the sea route from Mauritius, islanders were forced to migrate. Even then a small number of people continued stubbornly to cling to their island homes. Fernand's grandmother and sister were among them. "At first they were allowed to remain on Pacos Banhos, the islands furthest from Diego Garcia. There were only 48 families left when the British military arrived and told them they would have to go to make way for the US military base. The people protested but were forced to leave on a ship waiting to take them to the Seychelles. They attempted to carry with them the records of births and deaths of the islands people, but these were confiscated. During that voyage some of the Chagossians committed suicide. Our family has has been divided ever since between Mauritius and the Seychelles."
Like other Chagossians stranded in Mauritius, Fernand and his wife found themselves dependent for their survival on the sympathy of individual Mauritians who gave them shelter and food. Although they had been systematically removed from the Chagos Islands, there was no organised resettlement assistance and no plan for their integration into the fast life of a highly urbanised Mauritius. They found their fishing and oil pressing skills redundant and as one journalist put it "The might as well have been abandonned on the streets of New York". Fifteen years later, forty percent of them still had no jobs. Britain gave the Mauritian Government some financial compensation which was not issued until 1978, some 12 years after the first of them had been brought to Mauritius. The compensation was meted out in the form of small plots of land which many had to immediately turn their pieces of land into cash to pay back their debts to the Mauritians on whom they had been depending for over a decade. In return for the compensation each recipient had to sign a document renouncing his/her right to return to the Chagos Islands, a document they did not fully understand.
One afternoon Rev Rodney Curpanen, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Mauritius, took Bishop Mpango and me for a visit to Cassis, an area of the capital city which is one of several scattered slum settlements where most of the Chagossians now live. We found the people crowded into small structures wedged between the docks of Port Louis and the city cemetery. There were many signs of poverty. A group of community members met with us in one of the homes and we asked what they did for a living. One elderly woman had been a house maid ever since arriving in Mauritius; there was a man who said he did piece work here and there; someone else had a temporary job in a factory; another woman told us she was unwell so could not look for work and sent her children out instead. "Today I did not eat," she told us. "I have to give the food to the children because they need the energy to do the work."
We asked, "Do you face any discrimination here, being from Chagos?" One woman replied, "Yes 100%! People say to us 'Go back home'. At school they call our children 'les ilois' ('the islanders') and taunt them. It is not a racial thing but an economic thing. Our children don't have what others have."
Another woman explained, "In Mauritian society there are several social layers and people are discriminated against according to economic standing. Even the Mauritians on the lowest economic scale look down on us."
Another woman: "I work in a factory and yesterday when we all came out of the building for our lunch break we saw a man in the street who was drunk. One of my fellow factory workers said, 'He must be a Chagossian.' That's the attitude we face every day."
Another: "The government of Mauritius does not notice that we exist, even though they accepted to have us brought here. It's like dumping someone in the sea and saying 'Swim if you can, and if you cannot, so what.' "
Another: "We do not hold Mauritian passports, we hold BIOT passports. We are therefore not legally Mauritian subjects. On the other hand, the British Government also seems not to recognise us, because with a BIOT passport you still have to apply for a visa to visit Britain. So it seems we are not citizens of anywhere."
The Chagossian Social Committee was established to maintain the cultural identity of the people and also to campaign for their return to the Chagos Islands. But by now it has been 35 years since the first Chagossians left the islands. Children have been born to them in Mauritius and have grown up without first-hand experience of their homelands. Only 500 of the original island dwellers remain. Is it only the older generation who who want to return? we asked.
A young Mauritius-born Chagossian replied. "We do not fit in here," he said. "We all want to go home. We are a matrilineal society with our own culture and our own identity. The Mauritian system is not conducive to our integration. I see a lot of social problems setting into our community because we cannot integrate such as alcoholism and violence, signs of a breakdown of our traditional values. We want our birthright and the freedom to be ourselves."
Another Mauritius-born Chagossian youth: "Both my mother and my father died this year. They died with sadness in their hearts. When I look at the elders' faces I see sadness in their eyes and hear it in their voices. In their own land there would have been plenty of food for the elderly. Here there is not. It hurts me to see that. Even if some of us do not go to settle permanently on the Chagos Islands, we want our families to have the right to be there."
Bishop Mpango asked where they observed the churches to be with regard to the Chagossians' plight. Under Napoleonic law the slaves on the Chagos Islands had been forced to take on the religious affiliation of their French masters which was Catholicism. Most of today's Chagossians are therefore at least nominally Catholic, but younger generations are now moving to the pentacostal churches. When we asked the Chagossian community where the churches stood in relation to all they had experienced, they were very frank in their responses to us.
"The churches were around when this crime was committed against us, they saw it all and did nothing."
"I am a member of my parish committee and I have attended church faithfully these past 30 years. But I have never once received a pastoral visit to my home. It seems that my church does not know that this part of the city exists."
Other Chagossians told of similar experiences. "This is the first time we have had a pastoral visit from any church," they said. We explained that while the three of us represented Anglican, Presbyterian and United Methodist churches in our personal capacities, we also represented the ecumenical family locally and regionally. We asked them therefore to say to us whatever they wanted to say openly to the church. Again they were frank in their responses and we were thankful for that.
"I believe the church should have life in it and stand for life, but from our perspective the church seems to be dead." "The church should not exist only for meeting and worshipping. The church seems to be leaving to the politicians the work which is rightfully their own. 'The Chagos Issue' has been treated only as a political matter. The politicians come to us before elections and seek our votes, but we know they are not interested in our welfare. What 30 years of political deceptions have done to our society and to our spirit as a people has never been considered. Surely the churches should have been the first to recognise that."
"We are in a critical situation here. Sit down with us and help us." Rodney was deeply moved by the people's testimonies. He explained that many Christians in Mauritius were aware of the injustices done to the islanders and were concerned, but they had made the mistake of assuming that the needs of the Chagos people for pastoral care and community were being met. He pledged his own denomination's support and said he would campaign for the involvement of other denominations. Bishop Mpango and I promised them we would do what we could at an international level to back up the efforts the Mauritian churches' efforts. If it had not been for his responsibility to his diocese back home in Tanzania, I think the Bishop was ready to give up everything and stay right there in Port Louis with Rodney as a volunteer pastor! The community members said they were greatly encouraged by our assurance that they would not be alone in their struggle.
Herve Lassemillante is a lawyer with the Indian Ocean Institute for Human Rights and Democracy who has been helping the Chagossian Social Committee with their case. He generously shared with us some of his background documentation and told us that the Chagossians are asking for the following: That their right to live in the archipelago be restored. Even if the U.S. military were to remain, they are only occupying the largest of the Chagos Islands, Diergo Garcia, which is situated more than 100 kilometres from the nearest of the remaining islands in the archipelago. That the former infrastructure, particularly that related to the copra industry, be rehabilitated for the returnees' use. They estimate that within 10 to 15 years after their resettlement the coconut plantations can be made commercially viable once again.
That the United Kingdom make adequate compensation for the suffering inflicted on the Chagossians. This proposal includes a component of basic education and skills training for both children and adults.
That any environmental damage that has been done to the islands be repaired. Studies by environmental groups show that an effort has been made by the British and the US governments to protect the local flora and fauna, but that many of the smaller islands have been over-run by rats which are causing damage.
Monsieur Lassemillante explained that the strategy of the Chagossian Social Committee is to pursue these demands solely as a human rights issue through the Government of Mauritius, as well as the United Nations in view of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the establishment of a UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Affairs. An important part of Lassemillante's case has been to show that the Chagossians do indeed come under the definition of 'indigenous people'.
In addition to the indigenous rights angle there appear to be several other possible entry points to this case about which we have learned since our visit to Mauritius.
One of these is the sovereignty issue pertaining to Britain's separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritian administration. Originally the BIOT included a number of other islands, but these were eventually ceded to the Seychelles Government when it gained its independence in 1976. Only the Chagos islands now remain to form the BIOT and there have been calls from within Mauritius for the return of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritian rule.
Indeed the constitution of Mauritius states that Mauritius includes the Chagos Islands. Over the past two decades calls for retrocession have come mostly from the political opposition parties, which in July this year won an 87% electoral victory to take over leadership of the Mauritian Parliament. But it remains to be seen whether Chagos will be a priority issue for the new Mauritian Government, given the uneasy equilibrium between social-ethnic strata currently obtaining in Mauritius and the potential which this issue has for sparking off unresolved issues within that situation.
The retrocession of Chagos has also been an on-going demand of the Non-Aligned Movement. The OAU expressed its concern at its July 1980 summit in Freetown, where respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each of its member states was affirmed as one of the fundamental principles of the OAU. A resolution was passed at the time affirming Diego Garcia as an integral part of Mauritius. While little active interest has been shown since then, the OAU has most recently demonstrated its attitude on the territorial integrity of the Indian Ocean islands by preparing for military intervention to prevent a split-up of the Comoros. This could conceivably create a precedent that would work favourably for the Chagossians.
Closely related to this concern is the matter of confusion over the citizenship of the Chagos people. There is currently a legal case being conducted against the British Government by the chairman of the Chagos Refugees Group in Mauritius, M. Louis Olivier Bancoult. The British High Court is considering a charge by M. Bancoult that by forcibly removing the Chagossians to independent Mauritius the British Government was in breach of the Magna Carta as well as international laws which forbid the banishing of British citizens from British soil. Britain's stand has always been that there were no indigenous people on the islands, only economic migrants. In 1974 a spokesman for the British Ministry of Defense is on record as claiming "There is nothing in our files about inhabitants or about evacuation." A verdict in the High Court case is expected in October this year.
Another angle on the sovereignty issue comes to focus in the use of the Indian Ocean islands for foreign military manoeuvres, which includes the potential use of nuclear weapons. Indeed there is some speculation that since Diego Garcia played a key role in the support of US operations during the Gulf War and the Somalia intervention, it has already been used by air and marine craft fitted with nuclear devices. In 1996 the Treaty of Pelindaba and its protocols were signed by OAU member countries and major nuclear weapons producing countries to create a nuclear free zone around Africa. The definition of that zone included the Indian Ocean and its islands. Britain objected to the inclusion of the Chagos Archipelago in this description of Africa on the basis that the BIOT was a part of Britain. The US insisted that as long as the region was a British colony the treaty did not apply in the region of Diego Garcia. However, the OAU stood by its Diego Garcia resolution of 1980 which would make the OAU responsible for ensuring that the Chagos Archipelago remains nuclear free. This point of contention was never resolved in the negotiations at Pelindaba. Moreover, the treaty allows for the transportation of nuclear devices into or through the area to be left to the discretion of the 'host country'. Therefore as along as any nuclear weapons producing country maintains a major military base within the zone and that nuclear power considers itself free of the obligations of the treaty, the definition of Africa as a nuclear-free zone does not have meaning.
Sheilah Keetharuth, a Mauritian lawyer with Amnesty International who has worked on the Chagossian case, encourages churches both in Mauritius and at international level to take a more lively interest. Her assessment is that the international atmosphere is now more conducive than ever before to having the Chagos islanders' case heard seriously, despite the length of their struggle in Mauritius. She believes that if the international church networks took up responsibility to advocate for this cause they could make a real difference. Towards the end of our visit to Mauritius, I had the privilege of attending the Annual Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Mauritius where the leadership committed themselves to ministry with uprooted people as a major focus in the forthcoming years. They will establish a 'ministry of accompaniment' with the people of Chagos. And they will increase their already considerable services to the youthful migrant workers who come to Mauritius in groups contracted by the clothing industries (see my separate report). We also had the opportunity to share our observations and concerns for uprooted people in Mauritius with the Anglican bishop and I held a half day workshop with the ecumenical Fellowship of Churches in Mauritius on "Becoming the Church of the Stranger". A similar workshop was held with church youth. Bishop Mpango and I left Mauritius with the strong impression that the churches there are fully committed to engaging themselves in this important ministry.
At southern Africa regional level we agreed to share this report first within our 14 member network and the various denominational and interdenominational fellowships that group together churches in the Indian Ocean area. The insights and advice of these regional churches will be sought.
The number of Chagos Islanders may be small, but the implications of their struggle are far-reaching and require an international approach. The report will therefore also be shared with the AACC and the Continental Committee for Ministry with Uprooted People, WCC International Affairs (Geneva), the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, the UN ecumenical office, the Council of Churches in the UK, and the Washington Office on Africa as the US churches' lobby focal point. As the ecumenical connection with the Southern Africa Development Community, of which Mauritius is a member, the report will also be shared with the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa.
In sharing this report we welcome any relevant information and ideas for action that can be shared through this office with our regional committee and with the Mauritian churches and their Chagossian colleagues.
Shirley DeWolf, Regional Coordinator for Southern African Churches in Ministry with Uprooted People
Bo926 Mutare, Zimbabwe // tel 263 20 66923 // fax 263 20 60494 // email:sacmup@aloe.co.zw