Banished Chagos islanders insist: we are not at point of no return

People forced out of the Indian Ocean archipelago 40 years ago are now up against environmentalists and the British government.

Whatever joy Bernadette Dugasse felt about returning to the island she last saw as a toddler 52 years ago shrivelled the moment she saw the remnants of the coconut plantation.

"There was nothing there. It was all gone – only the big house where the manager used to live is there. And the church and the prison," she said. "I felt sad and depressed as if I wanted to shout, but I just cried."

The scene behind the white-painted walls of the plantation house was bleaker still. "Inside it was filthy and disgusting and broken everywhere. The roof is coming off, the kitchen is rusted and broken and there's an old broken wardrobe in there. You have to be careful where you put your feet otherwise you might have an accident.The chapel was filthy with pigeon poo."

Dugasse's parents met and married on one such plantation and, in the tumbledown house on Diego Garcia, their daughter, who is now 54 and lives in Surrey, saw what she considers to be the physical confirmation of a decaying promise.

The British government made assurances that the plantations – once the social and economic lifeblood of the Chagos archipelago – would be looked after following the eviction of the people who worked on them, but the islanders say not enough is being done to preserve them. Dugasse, who visited the archipelago last month, suspects they are being left to rot back into the tropical vegetation because the UK and US have no intention of ever letting the Chagossians return home.

"The British government say they are taking care of it and there are two people working there but I don't know what they're doing there," said Dugasse. "The British government are frankly liars: they tell you things, but it's not like they are telling you. You have to see with your own eyes."

The islanders were evicted 40 years ago to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia as part of a political and diplomatic process that saw the archipelago taken from the control of Mauritius before it gained independence and declared the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Some Chagossians settled in Mauritius and the Seychelles; others came to the colonial mother country to begin again in places such as Crawley and Manchester.

Over the past decade, they have embarked on a Sisyphean legal struggle for the right to return home.

But their plight has been frustrated by the increasingly strategic importance of the islands: Diego Garcia has served as a refuelling stop and a base for air strikes – most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq – and as a centre for the rendition of terror suspects.

Although the high court ruled 11 years ago that the Chagossians could go back to the islands – except Diego Garcia – they lost their bid after a highly unusual use of the royal prerogative in 2004. Three years ago, the law lords overturned the high court's decision and the matter is now before the European court of human rights.

Perhaps the biggest setback, however, came in April 2010 when the Labour government declared that most of the archipelago – excluding Diego Garcia with its strategically important base – would become a marine protected area (MPA) with a blanket ban on fishing. Its creation, the Foreign Office was careful to point out, was "without prejudice to the outcome of the current, pending proceedings before the European court of human rights".

The designation delighted some environmentalists but angered human rights activists. However, the controversy deepened last December when a leaked WikiLeaks cable revealed that a senior Foreign Office official had told his American counterparts the MPA would, "in effect put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago's former residents".

The official, identified as Colin Roberts, the director of overseas territories, noted that the UK's "environment lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians' advocates" and added that the British government felt there should be "no human footprints" or "Man Fridays" on any of the BIOT islands apart from Diego Garcia.

The WikiLeaks revelations prompted the Mauritian government to accuse the UK of having a "policy of deceit". It lodged a document with an international tribunal stating Britain was violating the UN convention on the law of the sea. Mauritius asserts that the UK cannot establish the MPA since it is not a "coastal state" in the region and Mauritius alone has the right to declare an "exclusive zone" around the archipelago.

The Mauritian government has also written to the Pew Charitable Trusts, a US-based not-for-profit trust which lobbied for the creation of the MPA, asking for a meeting to discuss the situation.

While the Mauritians accept that Pew, one of many environmental groups to push for the MPA, has made "significant and positive" contributions to marine conservation, they accuse the organisation of helping to undermine the Chagossians' right of return.

"It appears that the trusts have chosen to put the interests of purported conservation above the rights of Mauritius and the fundamental human right of forcibly displaced persons," the Mauritian ambassador to the UN wrote in a strongly-worded letter. "We regret that the trusts also appear to have chosen to lend their support to a last vestige of colonialism in the Indian Ocean."

Pew declined the offer of meeting, saying the marine reserve was "a diplomatic matter" between the UK and Mauritius.

Alistair Gammell, the director of the Pew Environment Group's Chagos campaign, told the Guardian that sovereignty and the Chagossians' right to return were political and diplomatic, rather than environmental, issues.

"We don't take a position on the right of return of the Chagossians," he said. "That is a question which is for the military and for the [British] government to answer and deal with. We don't say they either should return or shouldn't return."

Asked about the WikiLeaks' suggestions that the British government was deliberately setting the powerful environmental lobby against the Chagossians, Gammell said he remained dubious about the cable and its contents.

"[It's] a peculiar thing to have said because to believe that the environmental lobby is stronger than the military lobby or the financial lobby – both of which have proven extremely effective for 40 years – I find, as an environmentalist, almost laughable."

Some of the other conservation groups that supported the creation of the MPA have also pointed out that their backing for the reserve should not be taken as an endorsement of the British government's treatment of the Chagossians.

Richard Page, an oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, said that, while the contents of the WikiLeaks cable were "shameful", the organisation could not see how the creation of the MPA was the chief stumbling block to the islanders' return.

"The UK government evicted the Chagossian people and has kept them out for the intervening decades on account of the Diego Garcia military base. It is completely within the powers of the UK government to decide to right the historic wrong and agree for the right of the return to the Chagossian people," he said.

If that were to happen, he added, the UK could commit to a joint management plan allowing the returning Chagossians to carry out "sustainable subsistence fishing" in agreed areas.

David Nussbaum, the chief executive of WWF-UK, said the organisation still supported the creation of the MPA, and, were the Chagossians to return, the terms of the MPA would have to be revised to allow them access to fish for food and to earn a livelihood.

Nussbaum said WWF-UK was keeping a close eye on the matter in light of the "concerning elements" mentioned in the WikiLeaks cable: "If we were to find that our position was being misrepresented as supporting the UK's claim or supporting a view that the Chagossians should not be allowed back, we would have to review the situation again."

However, the environmentalists – like the islanders and the British, Mauritian and American governments – are not the only ones with an interest in what goes on in the Chagos Islands.

The legal charity Reprieve has profound concerns over the use of the base on Diego Garcia in the rendition of those accused of terrorism.

"Each revelation about the UK's dealings with Diego Garcia is more disgraceful than the last, and still the cover-up continues," said Clare Algar, the charity's executive director.

The Foreign Office has refused to comment on the leaked cable, but continues to oppose the return of the Chagossians because : "The arguments against allowing resettlement on the grounds of defence security and feasibility are clear and compelling." It admitted the plantations and buildings had "deteriorated", but said they were tended by volunteers and employees from the BIOT administration, while the British Marine contingent cleared graveyards and cemeteries of vegetation.

Like Dugasse, Sabrina Jean, who was born in Mauritius but whose father is a native of Peros Banhos, found the recent trip she made to the archipelago with her fellow Chagossians bittersweet. Once of the hardest things to accept was the presence of the Filipino staff who work on Diego Garcia. "It is not fair for us because we were not allowed to stay on our islands," said Jean, who works in a hospital in Sussex. "Many people are working on our islands and we are not allowed to do it."

And like Dugasse, Jean saw the buildings on her father's island in advanced state of decay. "They didn't take care of it," she said. "The church was still there, but you've got trees growing everywhere inside it. We felt so angry."

Others try to remain philosophical. Allen Vincatassin, who was proclaimed president of the provisional government of Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands in exile in January, believes the MPA could prove to be a good thing.

He says he cannot trust the contents of the WikiLeaks cable – "a person knowing the history of the islands can easily make their report a bit sexy to somebody else" – and accepts the FCO's assurance that the MPA was created without prejudice to the Chagossians' case.

"I don't think we should have a war because of the MPA and the issue of resettlement: these two things can be dealt with separately," he said. "I'm sure the UK will appeal if the outcome at the European court of human right is in favour of the islanders, but I think, if goodwill prevails, the government will have to have a policy on resettlement one way or the other."

Dugasse and Jean, however, are beginning to lose faith in the notion of goodwill. Dugasse says she will fight to return home "until the day I die". And just as a precaution, she has roped her four children into the struggle.

Jean, too, recognises that the fight to return home has become a generational battle.

"Before, our family didn't speak English, didn't understand anything, but now the children know how to speak, know how to do things," she says. "We will not let them down. We will never give up."

Source: The Guardian