Chagossians - Deportation From Homeland

Deportation From Homeland

In 1965, as part of a deal to grant Mauritian independence, the Chagos Archipelago was split off from the Colony and came to form the British Indian Ocean Territory. The territory's new constitution was set out in a statutory instrument imposed unilaterally without any referendum or consultation with the Chagossians and it envisaged no democratic institutions. On April 16, 1971, The United Kingdom issued a policy called BIOT Immigration Ordiance #1 which made it a criminal offense for those without military clearance to be on the islands without a permit.

Between 1967 and 1973, the Chagossians, then numbering some 2,000 people, were expelled by the British government, first to the island of Peros Banhos, 100 miles (160 km) away from their homeland, and then, in 1973, to Mauritius (For the relationship between the Chagos Archipelago and Mauritius, see Chagos Archipelago). A number of Chagossians who were evicted reported they were threatened with being shot or bombed if they did not leave the island. One old man reported to Washington Post journalist David Ottaway that an American official told him, "If you don't leave you won't be fed any longer." BIOT commissioner Bruce Greatbatch later ordered all dogs on the island killed. Marcel Moulinie, who was in charge of managing the island, carried out this task by using raw meat to lure them into a shed for drying copra, gassing them with exhaust from U.S. military vehicles, and then setting their carcasses ablaze. Meanwhile, food stores on the island were allowed to deplete in order to pressure the remaining inhabitants to leave. The forced expulsion and dispossession of the Chagossians was for the purpose of establishing a United States air and naval base on Diego Garcia, with a population of between 3,000 to 5,000 U.S. soldiers and support staff, as well as a few troops from the United Kingdom.