World- Banned from the "Footprint of Freedom"(04/16/08:50)
By Ed HarrisPOINTE AUX SABLES, Mauritius (Reuters)
- In the nearly 40 years since she was turned her out of her home on the Chagos Islands, 81-year-old Rita Isou has concluded: "The British can do anything they want with the law."Now a grandmother, she is one of a shrinking group of Indian Ocean islanders still fighting in the courts to relive the memories of plentiful fish and mangoes in the home she was forced out of to defend British and American military interests.In the 1960s and 1970s the UK destroyed houses, slaughtered animals, and turfed out some 2,000 inhabitants from the Chagos islands to Mauritius and the Seychelles, to make way for a U.S. military base, on the island of Diego Garcia.Isou had been visiting Mauritius with her mother in 1968 and when they tried to go home, were told their islands had been sold: "It was like getting a knife in the heart," she said.Described in 1975 by The Was hington Post as an "act of mass kidnapping", the stealthy explusion of the islanders by the UK -- then the colonial power -- has since been subject to legal wrangling so protracted that people like Isou may be dead before it is resolved."My heart is burning," Isou said, as she waited for the latest judgement, this time from the High Court, which held a hearing in February.The base, which has been used to support the West's Afghan campaign, became fully operational in 1986 and was intensely involved in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, according to an official U.S. navy Web site.From tight-knit communities on the archipelago's six atolls and hundreds of individual islands, many islanders were exiled to a life of crime and poverty in Mauritian suburbs, among barking dogs and the occasional burnt-out car."We were dumped in the slums of Port Louis, facing many problems like drugs, alcohol, joblessness, prostitution, bad education," said Olivier Bancoult, Isou's son and chairman of the Chagos Refugees Group.The Chagossians won court cases against their former colonial power in 2000 and 2006, but the government's appeals and exceptional legal procedures have so far blocked their return.Isou said she had lost at least two of her 11 other children to drugs: "We knew we would be miserable in Mauritius.""FOOTPRINT OF FREEDOM"The UK and American governments are fighting to protect the base, arguing Diego Garcia should remain totally out of si ght and reach of any potentially prying civilian eyes."Diego Garcia became the only U.S. Navy base that launched offensive air operations during Operation Desert Storm and Diego Garcia remains a vital link in our defence structure," says the U.S. navy Web site, http://www.dg.navy.mil/web."From the air, Diego Garcia takes on the rough outline of a footprint on the ocean surface - thus its nickname 'Footprint of Freedom'," the Web site adds.Describing the living coral atoll 55 kilometres long by 25 km wide, with an enormous lagoon in the centre left by an ancient volcano, the site says "all life forms, including live shell fish, are protected by British law".Some observers doubt whether the protection of Diego Garcia really requires the continued absence of Chagos islanders from other islands in the archipelago.But defence analyst Paul Beaver told Reuters that hostile or terrorist groups might use the other islands as a base to attack the Americans, and from other islands it would be possible to see U.S. aircraft as they take off and land."It's all to do with operational security," he said. "It is a valid argument from that perspective."NEW GENERATIONBancoult said the Chagossians are set to return immediately. They have a resettlement plan, technical support from ecologists and sociologists, and offers of support from non-governmental organisations: "If we win, we will start to move."But not everybody is so determined. The younger generation seems to have little attachment to the now almost fabled Indian Ocean archipelago.Armando Lamb, 24, for example, buying crisps at a kiosk in Pointe Aux Sables on Mauritius, said he would like to see the Islands: but in 2000, the UK said Chagossians would be eligible for British passports, so he is preparing for a life in the UK."My brother and sister are there," he said. His grandmother travelled to the Chagos islands last year on an officially sanctioned visit."She tells us about it, and there are videos," he says. "But I don't really have any impressions, no."A Chagossian woman selling Coke and crisps by the beach is more explicitly doubtful: "What will we do there? There's nothing," she says. "The islands are finished."Michael Medor, 24, Chagossian and former Olympic boxer, once lived in the same Mauritian suburb as Rita Isou where jobs were badly paid and unemployment was rife.He said one day, he might return to the Chagos islands -- but his children need healthcare, running water, and education.For now he is living in Crawley in southern England and working hard as a cleaner at Gatwick Airport to support his mother, his Mauritian wife, and their children: "It's a very nice country," he said.Bashir Khan -- who represents the Chagos Refugees Group in the UK and has been helping Medor negotiate the complications of immigration -- believes the legal delays are a deliberate part of the strategy."More and more eld erly first generation Chagossians are dying," he said. "In the next five to 10 years, how many will be left to go back?"