Islanders defeat UK over right to return

"People thrown off their Indian Ocean islands by Britain 40 years ago to make way for a US military base have won their legal battle for the right to return home."

Click here for the article.

The Appeal Court in London has upheld the previous High Court declaration that the expulsion of the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean by the British government was "repugnant, illegal and irrational". The Chagos Islanders are now free to return to their homeland.

(From here at 24/5/07)

Diego Garcia is America’s biggest military base in the world, outside the US. There are more than 4,000 troops, two bomber runways, thirty warships and a satellite spy station. The Pentagon calls it an “indispensable platform” for policing the world.

Before the Americans came, more than 2,000 people lived on the islands, many with roots back to the late 18th century. There were thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a railway and an undisturbed way of life. The islands were, and still are, a British crown colony.

In the 1960s, the government of Harold Wilson struck a secret deal with the United States to hand over Diego Garcia. The Americans demanded that the islands be “swept” and “sanitised”. Unknown to Parliament and to the US Congress, the British government plotted with Washington to expel the entire population – in secrecy and in breach of the United Nations Charter.

(From Stealing a Nation)