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   From: oO@oO.com   
      
   People of Diego Garcia finally get to visit home again   
      
      
   Submitted on 25 March, 2006 - 22:25. Diego Garcia   
   By Lindsey Collen and Ragini Kistnasamy of LALIT, Mauritius   
   After a life-time's banishment, on 30 March 2006 a group from amongst the   
   people originally forcibly removed, will finally be taken by ship to visit   
   their home islands and tend the graves of their ancestors. They are due to   
   visit Diego Garcia where the U.S.'s huge Indian Ocean military base is.   
      
   You will remember that thousands of Mauritians living on Diego Garcia island   
   were forced from their homes when all the Islands of the Chagos Archipelago   
   were dismembered from Mauritius by the British State in the late '60s to   
   make way for the infamous U.S. military base named, irony of ironies, CAMP   
   JUSTICE.   
      
   The British Government, the very State that forcibly removed the people, has   
   chartered a ship to take a hundred of the Chagossians for this brief visit.   
   In a diplomatic conundrum, the Mauritian State is co-operating with the   
   occupier, supplying its own vessel, "Trochetia", to the British for the   
   trip, so that Mauritian citizens can visit part of Mauritius while it's   
   illegally occupied by the British and US.   
      
   The visit will probably be in the news around the end of March beginning of   
   April. So, here is an update on this tragic saga directly caused by British   
   and U.S. militarism, and on the so long-awaited and so short "return" of a   
   group of the inhabitants.   
      
   Do you remember that Lalit and the Chagossian Refugees Group, in the run-up   
   to the World Social Forum in Mumbai in January 2004, were working on getting   
   a ship to take people back home to Diego Garcia to visit? As a form of   
   protest against the base and the forcible removals it exacted.   
      
   As the idea developed, smaller yacht owners asked to join in, and this had   
   become the planned PEACE FLOTILLA against the military base there. We were   
   drawing together the three interlinked struggles i.e. to close the base   
   (with environmental clean-up), to completely decolonize and reunify   
   Mauritius, the twin struggles of right to return of Chagossians and their   
   proper reparations.   
      
   What happened inbetween then and now was that the peace flotilla got massive   
   support from people all over the world in peace groups. The flotilla   
   captured the imagination of women's groups, environmental groups, political   
   groups, human rights groups, peace groups and especially anti-military-base   
   groups, and the peace flotilla brought them all together around this amazing   
   shared idea. It was becoming a reality. And the mobilization around the   
   flotilla, in turn, brought journalists from all over the world to make the   
   issue widely known for the first time. And John Pilger's outstanding   
   documentary, STEALING A NATION, then came and brought the issues quite   
   literally centre stage. Thousands of British people reacted in anger at   
   their Government's crimes.   
      
   When the peace flotilla gained ground, the British Government aided by the   
   Queen, issued a regulation banning all Chagossians from all the Chagos   
   Islands.   
      
   Feeling increasingly exposed, the British State began to negotiate. It   
   offered, itself, to take the Islanders on a visit to all the Chagos Islands   
   including Diego Garcia. It wanted a visit strictly under the control of the   
   British State.   
      
   So that is how this present planned visit has come about.   
      
   Another tactic of this cornered British State, after it suffered a defeat in   
   2000 in its own Courts in the initial case on the right to return to Diego   
   Garcia, is to assimilate the Chagossian community into the "metropole".   
   British passports were issued to the Chagossians and their descendants, and   
   the entire community is now in flux. From most families someone has left   
   Mauritius, is leaving or is planning to leave for the U.K., where they   
   believe work will be easier to find and the standard of education and social   
   services is higher. Some then find the going tough in the UK, and return to   
   Mauritius, as yet others are preparing to leave.   
      
   And meanwhile the case for reparations that the Chagossians have filed in   
   the U.S.against the U.S. government and private companies that run the Base,   
   came up for hearing on 14 February and will be continuing in March. The   
   judges heard arguments as to whether the case can be entered in the US   
   Courts. One interesting aspect of this case is that the U.S. law provides   
   that lawsuits are inadmissable if they put into question U.S. foreign   
   policy. This has, in turn, been a recent pressure on the leaders of the   
   Chagossians and their lawyers to repeat again and again, as a kind of   
   chorus, that they are "not against the military Base", even while ordinary   
   Chagossians criticise the US for using their land for "killing other people"   
   and even as Mauritians scratch their heads to understand what could be   
   behind such unusually servile language.   
      
   The military base used for B-52's to take off from to drop bombs on   
   Afganistan and Iraq, is still there, in all its concrete and tarmac horror.   
   It is still believed that prisoners are kept there or near there on ships,   
   and "interrogated" and/or "rendered" to other States. The UK Government says   
   that the U.S. could not use the base in this way without informing them, and   
   has not informed them. The U.S. spokesmen refuse to reply.   
      
   So, we, in Mauritius, find ourselves socially and politically responsible   
   for keeping the complete closing down of this much detested military base on   
   the agenda.   
      
   Today, the struggle to close the US military base and for reunification of   
   Mauritius, is for the first time becoming a struggle in which the   
   organizations of the Chagossian people are involved to a decreasing degree.   
      
   The U.S. and Britain have between them managed, for the meantime, to drive a   
   wedge between the Chagossians' right to return and their rightful struggle   
   for reparations, on the one hand, and the overall struggle against   
   militarism and against the capitalism that drives it, the very realities   
   that robbed the Chagossians of the islands they lived on.   
      
   We, in Lalit, are still working on all three fronts i.e. to close the base,   
   decolonize the entire country, and for the right to return & reparations.   
   And this in the knowledge that the struggle to close the base on Diego   
   Garcia is now united with the overall struggle to ABOLISH ALL FOREIGN   
   MILITARY BASES, and that this struggle is growing apace world-wide in a way   
   that was never even imaginable before.   
      
   One of our members, when taking the floor at the Asia Pacific Solidarity   
   Conference last year, on the basis of Lalit's experience, proposed a broader   
   slogan for the U.S. anti-war movement: not just BRING THE TROOPS HOME, but   
   BRING THE TROOPS HOME FROM THE FRONT AND FROM ALL MILITARY BASES ABROAD. The   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)