Nairobi, 15 Feb. The forced displacement of all people living in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean in the 1960s and 1970s by the US and UK governments was a crime against humanity, Human Rights Watch said. (HRW) today.
“Both governments must provide full reparations to the people of Chagos, including their right to return to live in their homeland,” the human rights organization, which investigated how US authorities, with the collaboration of the United Kingdom, expelled these communities to build an American military base.
Since then, HRW said, the UK “has prevented Chagossians from returning home”.
“By treating all Chagossians as people without rights, the UK is now committing a heinous colonial crime,” added HRW chief legal adviser and research author Clive Baldwin.
Although British authorities announced last November that they would hold talks with Mauritius “on the future of the Chagos”, there has still been no “clear commitment to meaningful consultation with the Chagossians to guarantee their right to reparations, including their right to return (to the archipelago)”.
The Chagossians are mainly descendants of slaves brought by force to this archipelago under French and then British domination in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Their forced displacement from the Chagos began in the 1960s, when the UK and the US agreed to build a military base on the island of Diego Garcia.
Chagos residents were forced to move to Seychelles and Mauritius, where many “died of economic hardship” and even, according to some witnesses interviewed by HRW, “emotional devastation”.
Some later moved to the UK, after British authorities granted them citizenship.
The Chagos Archipelago belongs to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), the last British colony in Africa.
According to documents analyzed by HRW, the United Kingdom also facilitated the expulsion of Chadians from their islands to avoid having to explain to the UN the maintenance of their colony in a territory populated by local communities.
“The UK and US governments should right their wrongs, starting with the political and financial commitment to bring the Chagossians back to their homeland with dignity,” Baldwin concluded. ECE
pm/pa/jac