Diego Garcia: Whose Homeland Is It?

Jon Castle and Pete Bouquet are currently under arrest (that's not the first time those words have been written over the years) for sailing into the waters of Diego Garcia uninvited. Those waters are off limits not only to Jon and Pete, but to the people who lived there generation upon generation, and were evicted in the 60s and 70s as part of a secret deal between the US and the UK. The US would get to use the Chagossian Islands (Diego Garcia is the biggest) as a military outpost in their cold war with the Soviet Union. The UK would get knock-down prices on Polaris submarines. And the indigenous people of the islands, who the UK government described as having “little aptitude for anything except growing coconuts,” would simply be kicked out.

As told at the People's Navy website:

The Government split the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, which was heading toward independence, and created a new colony – the British Indian Ocean Territory. It proceeded, in violation of the UN Charter, to remove the islanders through trickery, intimidation and force, by encouraging them to take trips then refusing to let them back, by shutting down the plantations and stopping supply ships.

Some were taken to the Seychelles. The rest were consigned to a life of poverty and unemployment in Mauritius. Many turned to alcohol, drugs and prostitution. Some died from malnutrition. Several committed suicide. They staged demonstrations and hunger strikes, but to little avail. In 1982 the Government awarded the exiles a paltry £4 million – less than £3,000 a head – in compensation, provided that they renounced their right to return. Few could read the documents that they signed with thumb prints.

Since then, UK courts have repeatedly decried the displacement as illegal.