Exiled Chagos islanders could return home under new plans

Conservationists and human rights campaigners are to discuss new proposals that may allow a group of exiled islanders to return to their tropical archipelago home after it was turned into a protected marine nature reserve.

The plans, which will be presented to the Foreign Secretary William Hague once they have been finalised, promise to end a long-running dispute between former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, the British government and environmental groups.

The islanders have been fighting to win the right to return to their ancestral home after they were forcefully evicted by Britain 40 years ago to make way for a US airbase, but had their hopes dashed when the British Indian Ocean Territory, as it is officially now called, was turned into the world's largest marine nature reserve.

Environmental groups involved in setting up the protected marine reserve have insisted that in order to preserve the pristine environment, which is rich with unspoilt wildlife, humans should not be allowed to move back to the islands.

Instead, the Chagos Islanders have been forced to remain exiled in small groups around the world in places including Mauritius, the Seychelles and Crawley in West Sussex.

Campaigners now hope that a new proposal to allow small numbers of the islanders to return to the Chagos Islands as wardens or stewards who can help to protect the marine reserve could provide a compromise.

The solution will be discussed this week at a conference in London that will bring conservation groups, scientists, government officials and the islanders together. The results from the conference, titled Chagos Regagné, will then be presented to Mr Hague.

Roch Evenor, who left the Chagos Islands when he was aged four, and is now chair of the UK Chagos Support Association, said: "What we are trying to tell scientists and environmental groups is that by allowing the inhabitants back onto the islands, they can work hand in hand with conservation.

"Now a days there are a lot of illegal fishing around the islands. With an indigenous population there, we would be able to stop them from coming."

The Chagos Islands were part of the British Empire along with Mauritius and her dependencies. When Mauritius was granted independence, the Chagos Archipelago remained in British hands.

A secret deal was then drawn up with the United States that allowed them to use the largest of the islands Diego Garcia, as an airbase for strategic nuclear bombers. This meant the 1,500 inhabitants living on the island were deported wholesale by Britain.

Hopes that the islanders would be able to go back were raised when in 2000, the then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook gave them permission to return to the islands, but that decision was reversed following the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York as the islands assumed a new strategic importance for the US.

The Chagossians have taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights, where it is still awaiting review.

In a final twist, however, last year the British government designated the Chagos Islands as a Marine Protected Area. The Chagos Environment Network, which pushed to set it up, insisted that allowing the islanders to return would put the pristine environment there at risk.

The Chagos Archipelago is home to more than 1,000 species of fish, sharks dolphins, turtles and countless seabirds. It also boasts the world's largest crab, the coconut-cracking crab. The coral reefs are virtually unspoilt and the water is among the cleanest in the world.

But many scientists and conservation campaigners believe the decision to exclude the Chagossians from their homeland to preserve the nature reserve is a breach of their human rights.

Ben Fogle, a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph, an environmentalist and patron of the UK Chagos Support Association, said: "We have to come up with a working model where both the environment and human rights work side by side.

"There is been a tendency recently for people to be blinded by environmental conservation to the detriment of people. The Chagos Islands are a classic example of that.

"We are trying to say that the islanders can become the wardens of their own marine sanctuary."

The proposals being discussed will see a research base being established on one of the islands to allow scientists to monitor what affect the new marine nature reserve is having on the wildlife there.

A small number of islanders would run the research base while maintaining and protecting the reserve. Patrols against illegal fisherman are currently performed by a single environmental protection officer.

A growing number of environmental experts now believe that involving indigenous population in conservation projects is key to their success. This approach has been hugely successful in tropical rainforest conservation projects in places such as Papua New Guinea and Peru.

Dr Sean Carey, a social anthropologist at Roehampton University who is speaking at the conference, said: "Older conservationists seem to have this view that human beings just mess everything up and so should be kept away.

"By not involving the local population they are missing out on a valuable resource that will care for their environment."

But Simon Hughes, secretary of the Chagos Conservation Trust, which was instrumental in setting up the marine park, said: "I think it is an unattainable aim.

"We want to conserve the fish, coral, flora and fauna of the Chagos islands, and experience is that humans are not compatible with that sort of conservation.

"The amount of infrastructure that would need to be put in place for anyone living on the islands would be extremely expensive and harmful.

In June a group of Chagossians are to travel to the island to take part in environmental work there.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said they were keen to continue such visits in the future but that they remained opposed to the islanders returning permanently.

Source: The Telegraph