The Foreign Service Journal, June 2010

14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 0 brandished fears of terrorism as a rea- son to continue the exclusion of the is- landers from their homes. Serious people understand that a critically important naval and air facility in the middle of the Indian Ocean might create legitimate security con- cerns. But even a glimpse of the elderly community leaders of the Chagossians should allay any fears about their being anything other than a harmless, dis- placed people. And if U.S. andU.K. of- ficials are so worried about incursions by unauthorized personnel, why — as SimonWinchester describes in The Sun Never Sets: Travels to the Remaining Outposts of the British Empire (Pren- tice Hall, 1985) — do they tolerate the regular presence of “yachties” from the international leisure sailing crowd? The Quest for Justice What’s next? The Chagossians and their supporters speak of an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, possibly this summer. In London and Washington, officials who cannot countenance the notion of a “native” presence on the islands no doubt will take comfort in this actuar- ial fact: by the time the current lease comes up for renewal in 2016, many of the surviving exiled Chagossians will be in their 80s. HMG and the U.S. gov- ernment have stalled for this long; what’s another few years? Meanwhile, from out of left field comes another threat in the form of an ambitious plan to turn the Chagos/ BIOT waters into the world’s larg- est marine nature sanctuary. In April, British Foreign Secretary David Mili- band announced the creation of a 250,000-square mile sanctuary, which presumably would also protect the sta- tus of the only current human resi- dents of the islands — those at the U.S. Naval Facility — while putting yet an- other obstacle in the path of the Chagossians’ return home. As important as protecting the co- conut crab and the masked booby (a seabird) might be, it should not be al- lowed to prejudice the case for that en- dangered two-legged species, the Cha- gossians. In the words of the U.K.’s Chagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group, which sees a role for repatriated islanders in protecting the environment, “conservation and human rights must go hand in hand.” The Obama campaign put “human security” and human rights at the fore- front of its change agenda, and since January 2009 the administration has shown concern for other downtrodden peoples, from Haiti to Tibet. The plight of the Chagos Islanders also cries out for justice, especially from the country that insisted on their removal. On a continent that increasingly equates U.S. interests in Africa with the existence of the U.S. Africa Com- mand, a humanitarian gesture to repa- triate the Chagossians would go a long way toward showing that the U.S. mil- itary can coexist with civilians — in this case Anglo-Africans, British citizens all. All it would take would be an Amer- ican admission that a few hundred for- mer copra workers and their depend- ents on islands 100 miles away from Diego Garcia would not jeopardize the security of the West. One word from Washington would let the British gov- ernment off the hook, putting an end to its excruciatingly long, rear-guard legal action. As Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagos community-in-exile said to The Guardian after the disappointing October 2008 verdict: “How can we be expected to live outside our birthplace when there are other people living there now?” Don’t expect the octogenarians — or their children and grandchildren— to give up. These “Palestinians of the Indian Ocean,” as they’ve been called (though their sole weapons have been the law and appeals to conscience), are not quitters. In the United States and Great Britain, we might ask ourselves if this sorry saga is worthy of the world’s two oldest democracies. And if this were unfolding today — if we had to do it over again — would we dare treat the Chagossians as they were treated in the 1960s and 1970s? I would hope not. So I also hope that justice can finally be done, as befits the birthplaces of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. ■ Gerald Loftus served in Port Louis, Mauritius, from 1987 to 1990, as em- bassy action officer for military flights from Diego Garcia and made arrange- ments for civilian contract workers for the U.S. naval facility there. A retired FSO, he lives in Brussels, where he pub- lishes the blog, “Avuncular American” (http://AvuncularAmerican.typepad . com/blog). S P E A K I N G O U T Both London and Washington continue to play pingpong over responsibility for the plight of the Chagossians.