British colonialism after Hong Kong
Alain Ah-Vee*
The 65 island British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) was separated from Mauritius in 1965, as an illegal condition for the main island's independence.!' The islands were cruelly "depopulated" by the British State.
An editorial in The Washington Post called it an act of mass kidnapping
Recently de-classified British documents" reveal the 1964 Anglo-American survey, and the United States insistence on getting "the whole Chagos Archipelago." These "defence" documents also reveal the price of the islands. Three million pounds "compensation", and a US guarantee of a quota of Mauritian sugar being allowed into the US market!
Britain rents the BIOT to the United States Armed Forces. They, in turn, use Diego Garcia island not as a "communications station" as the British government at the time pretended, but as a huge, full-scale military base, literally bristling with nuclear installations. Demilitarisation campaigns
One of the relative gains of the international peace movement has been the Treaty of Pelindaba, signed in June, 1995, which declares the Indian Ocean to be "nuclearweapon-free". However, because of the occupation of Diego Garcia, the British and USA insisted that dotted lines be drawn around the Chagos Archipelago, which is thus once again "excised" ' this time from this supposedly epoch-making anti-nuclearweapon pact.
Surely it would be in keeping with general anti-colonial sentiments and the commitments of the Labour Party that Britain at once begin a process of the return of this territory to Mauritius.
This would be particularly apt, as it was actually under Harold Wilson's Labour Government that the Chagos Archipelago was "excised" from Mauritius in 1965, by an Order in Her Majesty's Council. It was under a Labour Government that the shameful transfer of three million pounds was paid for the "resettling" of the residents. It was also under a Labour Government that, from 1970, hundreds of ilois (islander) families were tricked, then cajoled, and then removed forcibly from the islands. The last resisters imprisoned temporarily in Seychelles, which was also a British Colony. Had it not been for their demonstration on board the ship being used to deport them, they, too, would have been literally "dumped" in the slums of Port Louis, the Mauritian capital, to fend for themselves. Labour in Mauritius also responsible
By strange co-incidence, the Labour Party of Mauritius finds itself in power in 10 International Viewpoint #293
Mauritius for the first time (outside alliances) since 1982. Back in pre-independence days, it was a Mauritian Labour Party "Government" which made the illegal "deal" for the detachment of the 65 islands. This kind of agreement is specifically outlawed by international law, because a colony (or any preIndependence government) is not a separate entity, and is therefore unable to enter into any type of contract or treaty. In fact, what this kind of "deal" amounts to is the British state making a deal with a part of itself, its pre-independence Mauritian Cabinet.
Those on both sides of the illicit agreement are thus in power at the moment and are thus in a position to make historic amends.
As if to make the demand for re-unification of Mauritius all the more poignant, a Mauritian worker, Louis Cherry Anneea, is in prison in London, after having been tried in a BIOT court on Diego Garcia. He was working as a contract worker at the US base, and got into a fight with someone. Instead of being tried in Mauritius, he was tried by BIOT, and sent to prison in London. Economic value
The Cold War was at best a weak pretext for the dismembering of a nation state, for the exiling of a people and for a savage miliNigeria: Hunger strike