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| Beautiful, hidden paradise that is Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Island archipelago. The tiny atoll is situated in the middle of the Indian Ocean. To its North is India and Southeast Asian countries. To its east is Mauritius and Eastern Africa. To It's South is Antarctica. |
For fifty years the Chagossian people from Diego Garcia and across the Chagos Archipelago, who are also African people, have been waiting to go home. They are granted the right to return to their original homeland much like the Palestinians and the Roghinya people. Unlike the later two peoples' whose histories, resistance and suffering/trauma have becoming well known and championed globally for years, the Chagossians' plight has been swept under the rug by a combination of out of sight out of mind media blackout and government censorship. History books rarely focus on the immediate aftermath of World War II in the Pacific islands if it doesn't relate to the post war recovery of Japan, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. The UN court declared on February 25 of this year that Britain should immediately end its colonization and occupation of the Chagossian islands. That the Chaggosian people have a right to return to their island homeland immediately even. Britain and the United States turned the once populated islands into a deserted paradise with a lone US military base. The Chagossian people have been in legal limbo for over 50 years at the local and international courts demanding their rights to go home whether the U.S. or UK cares. They have been made refugees involuntarily. There was no war to send the islanders fleeing for safety. Much like the Native Americans and the Aboriginal Australians, the Chagossians were pushed off their lands under the guise of resettlement compensation. Britain claimed Chagos Islands as a UK territory in 1965 despite its illegality. Since then, like the Roghinya, the Chagossians have became persona non grata in their own country and have been forced to live in exile. Three generations of Chagossians have been fighting to return via protest and law in UK and Mauritius. Arrogantly, both United States and UK have denied both physically and politically any opportunity for Chaggosians to even fly to their home islands. It is a violation of International Law and the UN charter. Sound familiar? Palestinians living within what remains of historical Palestine can at least jump through hoops and loops to see their ancestral lands. The Chagossians have been dealing with the door to their paradise home slammed in their faces.
For the small Pacific islands that are rarely mentioned even by pundits or the so called, "experts" on Asia and Pacific, their post war experienced, trauma, pain and lost and dispossession of land merely gets a footnote.
Bases everywhere but no home for the exiled
In the 1950s, under the shadows of the Cold War and in secret, Britain and United States (these two work in tandem) dispossessed indigenous Chagossians on Diega Garcia and Chagos islands of their homeland to build a US military bases. The then 2,000 Chagossians were sent thousands of miles/kilometers from their homeland to ironically to the UK, Seychelles and Mauritius, which is the nearest country off the Southeast African coast to Chagos Islands. Being a former British colony itself, Mauritius claimed sovereignty over the Chagos Islands when it gained independence from Britain in 1968. Seychelles is still a French colony despite the euphemism of French territory. They are two of many African islands still under indirect French and British control long after decolonization. Both the US and Britain continue to ignore Mauritius' claim and treat Chagos Islands as their own property. Read Guam, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. The reasoning for snatching Diego Garcia where the military base is still located, of course was to fight the Soviet Union and Communism. It's the same excuse the U.S. and wider Western countries gave for colonialism and excessive use of military force in other Pacific islands and continual presence of military bases in Okinawa which is greatly and deeply despised by the Okinawans and Guam. Now the new justification to keep the Diego Garcia base is to challenge China rising as part of America's "pivot toward Asia." As been said before, the U.S. wants to remain the world hegemon and hates even the idea of a multi-polar world or any country challenging its financial, economical, cultural, military and trading power. Read China and Russia in Asia, Syria, Venezuela and African countries ie Djibouti and Ethiopia. It goes back as it has been said before the American superiority complex where Americans learn from the crib and through the media that they are God's chosen people. Sound familiar? It's little wonder that American sees itself as a blood brother to Israel and buys heavily into Israeli belief that Israeli Jews (if you ignore Palestinians, Christians, Muslims and Bahais) are God's chosen people first and foremost. No country can tell America and Israel otherwise. Much to American chagrin, the world is becoming more multi-polar with rising powers that challenge and surpass the U.S. ie China, Russia, Iran (yes, it is a big rival to Saudi Arabia across the Middle East and even in parts of East Africa), Turkey (somewhat a wannabe neo-ottoman regional power that's trying to make its case to be the non Iran/Saudi power across the Middle East), Nigeria (throughout Africa, is currently the unofficial super power of West Africa even a larger regional power than South Africa). The Chagossians will continue their decades long struggle to return home with and without the media pundits and the advocates.
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