Lindsey Collen* argues that the struggle to close the uS military base at Diego Garcia represents a coming together of a range of anti-globalisation struggles, and calls on militants and movements to support the campaign.
Diego Garcia, a beautiful Indian Ocean Island in the Chagos Archipelago, a part of the Republic of Mauritius, today represents a place where a whole range of struggles against globalisation, militarism and human rights intersect. The struggle of the people of Diego Garcia for the return of the island is a struggle that brings together many strands of our struggle today. The intersection of the struggle to close the US military based on Deigo Garcia unites many peoples. Us in Mauritius, including the Chagossians, the people of Britain and the USA whose Governments are so bellicose, and the people of the States that are suffering the catastrophe of war, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Human Rights, the Right of Return and Reparations
Diego Garcia is host to one of the biggest military bases in the world, and probably the biggest outside the USA. The people of Diego Garcia, Chagossians, were forcibly removed from their beloved land. They were tricked off the Islands first, then those who were not tricked, were frightened off. Their 1,600 dogs were gassed in front of them as a warning to them, and the rest of them were starved off Diego Garcia and the other Islands. Two thousand Chagossians, who had lived there for generations, were forcibly removed over the period 1965-1973, and dumped on the dockside in Port Louis, Mauritius. They were left homeless, workless and disoriented.
This history of human rights abuse and forced removals has led to the intersection of two other struggles: the struggle for the right of return and the struggle for dignified reparations to be paid to them and their descendants for the unspeakable harm they have suffered.
In their quest for the truth to be out and justice to be had, the Chagossians now have a reparations case in the US Courts. Some of those being sued, in addition to the US State itself, include Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Some of the reasons cited for damages include human rights abuses and genocide. One of the most important struggles of our age is to show up the links between the military machinery and private business and mainstream politics in the USA. And to show how war, poverty, environmental damage, human rights abuses, genocide, women’s oppression, virtual colonisation, are all causally related to this complex of war-mongers, armament producers, private enterprise corporations and mainstream politicians. The Diego Garcians’ court case against the US and US personalities highlights these links in all their crudity.
Another struggle that intersects with the main human rights one is the one for the right to information. For example, for 30 years the forcible removal of the Chagossians was kept “secret”, mainly through the “Official Secrets Act” in the UK, thus hiding the formal proof necessary for legal actions. Only in the year 2000 could the Chagossians finally win their landmark court case in the UK courts for the right to return. Although a later court judgement went against the Chagossians, they will not give up and the struggle for return continues.
The struggle against imperialism and colonialism
The torture that the Chagossians suffered was inflicted on them by the United Kingdom, the coloniser, and the United States of America, the military base owner. It is these states that must be exposed for what they did. And they are, at this moment in history, with the Bush-Blair axis in power, the most belligerent states on the planet. The human rights struggle of the Chagossians is part of the struggle against the USA-UK political project, which seeks to recolonise the world.
When the Chagossians were being forcibly removed, Diego Garcia, a part of Mauritius, was illegally severed from all the other islands of Mauritius by the British colonial state. Diego was put together with some Seychelles islands, and made into the newly invented colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory or BIOT. This was done prior to granting Mauritian independence and as an illegal condition to independence. The Seychelles, when it became independent much later, negotiated its islands back out of the BIOT. But Mauritius has never been re-united, despite the British flouting of the United Nations Charter when it “stole” Diego Garcia.
What this continued occupation of Diego Garcia means is that 20th century decolonisation is not yet complete. So, Diego Garcia is the center of the struggle for the re-unification of Mauritius, something important to Mauritians, Chagossians, Rodriguans, Agalegans. And, just like all the struggles for decolonisation, it is the concern of everyone that no one be colonised.
The link between old colonialism and the new imperialism, globalisation, can also be seen in the case of Diego Garcia. On of the main reasons why Mauritius did not get re-united in the same way that Seychelles did is because successive Mauritian governments have used the Diego Garcia issue in order to extract “trade advantages” from the UK and the USA. Continued US occupation of Diego Garcia is exchanged for sugar and for textiles quotas or price guarantees. So this is how trade- related issues, so important today with the World Trade Organisation and free trade agreements, also intersect with the Diego Garcia struggle.
Diego Garcia and the international women’s movement
As in many other instances of struggle today, women have not only been the worst affected by war, neoliberalism and human rights abuse, but they are also emerging as the active sectors of our movement. Diego Garcia has an important historic significance for the women’s movement. In their struggles for their rights, amongst the Chagossians, it has always been the women who have been in the vanguard. Why was this? On Diego Garcia there was a matri-central society. The company that ran the islands treated men and women equally at work, for its own reasons, and organised for the older people to look after the children. This equal treatment means that the women of Diego Garcia have powers that other people brought up in patriarchy do not have, and they have shown these powers in the struggle. They have transmitted this experience of strength to the women ’s movement in Mauritius as a whole. The struggle of the women of Chagos is a beacon for the worldwide women’s movement.
The struggle against militarism and nuclear arms
Diego Garcia is a key base to the US armed forces, when it attacks Iraq and Afghanistan. B-52s take off from there. Supplies and men lie in wait there. Aircraft carriers huddle in the shelter of the bay. Diego Garcia is being used for interrogations of prisoners of war. Diego Garcia has, in this way, been Guantanamo-ised. Diego Garcia is also a key element of the world-wide Global Positioning System, so vital for the US armed forces when they aim guided missiles and other war-heads in their new re-colonisation of the globe. Diego Garcia is the head of the U.S. Pacific and Indian Ocean Command. All this points to how the closure of the Diego Garcia military base is also central for all of us working against militarism.
Another struggle that intersects with the Diego Garcia struggle is the anti-nuclear struggle. In order for the Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear-Arms Free Africa to be signed, the treaty had to contain the infamous “dotted lines” around Diego Garcia, suspending Chagos from its rightful place, as part of Mauritius, in Africa. The struggle for a nuclear-arms-free Africa goes through the struggle to close down the US base on Diego Garcia. This struggle for a Nuclear-Free Africa also serves to emphasis the pressing need to re-kindle the old UN Resolution for an Indian Ocean Peace Zone. And with the next Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) in the USA now fixed for 2005, we can aim to get it closed down, as part of an aim to close all the US bases.
The environmental struggle
Another important struggle that intersects with the Diego Garcia struggle: loving care for our planet earth and all its waters. We want to see the islands inhabited by those who love them and who have fought so hard against the biggest, most heavily armed institutions in the world. We want to see the lagoons, the coral and the land itself back in the hands of nature and those caring human beings who believe they belong there, the Chagossians. We are demanding an independent environmental assessment. And we are demanding to know how many fishing licenses the British Indian Ocean Territory has issued in exchange for how much money, and what impact this has made on fisheries.
Our Call
We, in Lalit, who have shared all the hardest times with the Chagossians since 1977, are now calling on you to join us in the struggle. Together with the Chagossians and all those in solidarity with Chagossians we intend to go to Diego Garcia to confront the US armed forces at their base. We intend to get the US to close the base down, and the UK to return its stolen islands. We stand by the people of Chagos to be granted the unconditional right to return to the whole of Chagos, including Diego Garcia, and for their right to lifetime compensation and full reparations for the damage they have suffered.
We call on all progressive people and organisations to please signify your support by a short e-mail, letter, telephone call or fax to us. We want a sort of list of well-wisher organisations and individuals, and people who can follow our confrontation with the U.S. armed forces when we go to Diego Garcia. We will soon be making a public announcement about our plans. Meanwhile, please raise the issues in this letter with your elected members of Parliament, Congress, and National Assemblies. Put the issue on agendas of trade unions and associations. With our march on Diego Garcia we can bring together all the different lines of struggle, and strengthen them all, here and worldwide.
Please send your emails, letter to: LALIT, 153 Main Road,
Grand River North West, Port Louis, Republic of Mauritius, Tel: 230 208 2132; e-mail: lalitmail@intnet.mu
*Lindsey Collen is an activist in Lalit, a leftwing party in Mauritius.
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