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01:33That government was a British government whose policies are continued today.
01:39This report is about a faraway people most of you will have never heard of,
01:44and yet the lies covering the injustice done to them will be all too familiar.
02:11This is Diego Garcia, the main island of the Chagos Group in the Indian Ocean.
02:17It was once a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace, a paradise.
02:25Today it is one of America's biggest military bases in the world.
02:32There are more than 2,000 troops, two bomber runways, 30 warships and a satellite spy station.
02:42B-1 and B-52 long-range bombers extended their reach from the British base at Diego Garcia in the
02:48Indian Ocean.
02:49From here the United States has attacked Afghanistan and Iraq.
02:58The Pentagon calls it an indispensable platform for policing the world.
03:04This will launch right 3 o'clock.
03:06There are more than 2,000 troops, and 2,000 troops.
03:23The United States fights a British colony.
03:26This is the British colony and the British colony.
03:27It lies midway between Africa and Asia.
03:29one of a group of unique coral islands.
03:38This is rare film taken by missionaries before the Americans came in the 1960s.
03:452,000 people lived in the Chagos Islands, a gentle Creole population,
03:51originally from Africa and India, whose communities dated back to the late 18th century.
03:56They were thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a jail, a church, a railway,
04:03and above all, a benign, undisturbed way of life.
04:26My mother told me that they had their children there.
04:29My mother gave me a good souvenir.
04:33We ate, we ate, we ate, we ate.
04:37My mother didn't miss anything.
04:39My mother didn't miss anything.
04:42We had a lens to put it in.
04:47There were cows, cows, pork.
04:53I had a lot of fish.
04:55When the river was dry, I would take others to the river with me.
04:59I would have caught fish.
05:02I would have to devour me.
05:07Unknown to the islanders, all this was about to end.
05:11A conspiracy was underway between the governments of Britain and the United States.
05:21The year is 1961.
05:23In this film, never seen before,
05:26the man on the right is Rear Admiral Grantham of the US Navy.
05:30His visit to Diego Garcia marked the beginning of a top-secret Anglo-American survey of the island
05:37for a military base so vast that it would cost over a billion dollars.
05:44The Chagos Islands were then governed from Mauritius, a thousand miles away.
05:52When Mauritius got its independence from Britain in 1968,
05:56it was on condition that it would lay no claim to the Chagos Islands.
06:05Hidden from Parliament and the US Congress, the deal was this.
06:10The Americans wanted the island, in their words, swept and sanitized.
06:16An entire population was declared expendable.
06:20All of them were to be deported.
06:24The British and American authorities implemented a policy decision
06:30that was aimed at depriving that community in the Chagos from basic supplies.
06:38No milk, no dairy products, no oil, no sugar, no salt, no medication,
06:45no more of the things you use in life.
06:50The effect of the policy was to terrify many of them into leaving.
06:55They were also told their islands might be bombed.
07:00In the spring of 1971, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, KCVO, CMG, MBE, Governor of the Seychelles,
07:09gave the order that all the dogs on Diego Garcia were to be killed.
07:16These were much-loved pets, and the horror of their killing
07:20was taken as a warning by the islanders.
07:24Almost a thousand pets were rounded up and gassed,
07:27using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles.
07:39I mean, the relationship with our pets should be the same,
07:45whether you are Chagosian or whether you are British.
07:47And they were absolutely destroyed by the fate reserved to their dogs.
07:58And many of them told me, in no uncertain words,
08:05they were told that any objection to the depopulation,
08:10they would suffer the same fate.
08:15Perhaps the lowest trick was that those islanders needing to go to Mauritius
08:19were prevented from returning home.
08:24Aye they would pass.
08:27At the same time they wanted to go to town.
08:31I had to wait to see their parents here,
08:33and then they were coming to the lower room.
08:33they took my hand out of the top,
08:34and they took my hand out of the leg,
08:36and my husband refused to sell them,
08:40they didn't come up to the embassy,
08:40My parents came to the sofa and the other one.
08:45They had to get me through the figure,
08:47and I was going to get them under the ΠΊΡΠ°ΡΠΈΠ² movies.
09:04The remaining population was summoned to the administrator's office and told that their
09:09homeland had been sold and that those who remained will be loaded onto ships and expelled.
09:20In this photograph, people are standing in silence, stunned.
09:48They were forced onto this vessel, the SS Nordwehr.
09:54They were allowed to take only one suitcase.
09:57Sir Bruce Greatbatch insisted that the horses took pride of place on deck.
10:02The women and children were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of bird fertiliser, birdshed.
10:30The first port of call was the Seychelles, where they were herded from the boat.
10:41This is a rusting monument to their agony.
10:51From here they were marched up the hill to a prison that has since been demolished.
10:57They were kept in cells until they were transported to Mauritius.
11:13This is Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius.
11:16Here they were dumped on the docks, bewildered and terrified.
11:25Some of them stayed on the docks, waiting for the next ship to take them back home, you see.
11:31And there was never to be a ship to take them back home.
11:39They were taken to this housing estate, which was then derelict and had been taken over by animals.
12:05It was hell.
12:07I went to see them, literally hell.
12:10What way was it hell, do you think?
12:14It was the filth.
12:20No water in those houses.
12:23And no sanitation.
12:26Oh, it was really easy.
12:27And the children, they had no clothes.
12:29The children were absolutely, you know, as if they'd been rolled over in ash and earth.
12:34And then when it rained, it was water everywhere.
12:44The islanders began to die, not only from poverty, but from what they call sadness.
12:51Lizette, now in her 60s, lost two children.
12:57They would sing their children.
13:01They would sing their children.
13:03They would sing their children.
13:23They would sing their way through life.
13:27Here, I mean, they wept their way through life, and they're still weeping, you see.
13:31And there were, as you mentioned, so many cases of suicides.
13:34But there were so many cases of children, you know, not receiving proper care and dying in hospital.
13:40I know the case of one lady who lost two children within two or three months, and she wasn't able
13:48even to perform the funerals of her child.
13:55Because she didn't have the money necessary for that.
13:58And it was the state who took care of it.
14:00The hospital, from the hospital, the child was taken to the cemetery, you see.
14:05Do you realize what sort of a trauma, what sort of experience this is for an old lady?
14:11And this old lady is still weeping to be able to go back home.
14:15By the end of 1975, the secret expulsion of the people of the Chagos Islands was complete.
14:22A survey of their conditions in exile told of 26 families that had died together in poverty.
14:29Of nine suicides.
14:31Of young girls forced into prostitution in order to survive.
14:36The report gave these examples.
14:38Elaine and Michelle Musa, mother and child, committed suicide.
14:43Leone Rangasamy, prevented from going back, drowned herself.
14:49Terrine Chateau, no job, no roof, committed suicide.
14:54This was a glimpse of the suffering inflicted by the British government.
14:59And yet, in a letter dated 16th of August, 1976, a Foreign Office official wrote, and I quote,
15:06Although we have no information about deaths, some deaths are bound to have occurred in the normal course of events.
15:31This is how most British people know Mauritius, as an exotic holiday destination, especially for honeymooners.
15:41They almost never see the slums of the exiled people of the Chagos, who are also British citizens.
15:55This is a film taken in 1982 of a family of Chagos Islanders in exile in Mauritius.
16:03Here, all 25 of them sleep in shifts in one squalid room, with the baby in a cardboard box.
16:14We found the same family living in the same shack, in the same terrible conditions.
16:21They still sleep on the floor.
16:23The rain still pours in.
16:25The toilet is still a hole in the ground.
16:28They are still so poor that they often go hungry.
16:34What was done to these people is today defined in international law as a crime against humanity.
16:43What has changed since they were last filmed, 22 years ago?
16:52Your wife, she died, is that right?
16:55Yes, she died, yes.
16:57Yes, she died.
16:59Yes, she died.
16:59She died, she died, and after that, she died too.
17:02She died.
17:06It's not nostalgia, it's more than that.
17:08It's like missing even the air that you breathe, missing the environment that you're used to,
17:14missing your home, missing your cats and your dogs, your pets, which were all destroyed.
17:25The breath you live in Diego..
17:28The breath you live in Diego..
17:31The breath you live inζ± ..
17:33The breath you live in common
17:34The breath you live in rocks city..
17:43The breath you live in Looking from lengthβ¦
17:45The breath we live in GraviOT
17:50The breath we enjoy as arator anddrive Porco follows the sustenance
17:56Don't let me, my friend, don't let me go to the world.
18:25This is Olivia Bancor, leader of the Chagos Islanders in exile.
18:31When he was a boy, he promised his mother, Rita,
18:34that he would lead the fight for justice for his people.
18:38Olivia knows all too well their suffering.
18:43So you've lost a sister and three, four brothers?
18:47Four brothers, yes.
18:48Tell me what happened to them.
18:50I have one brother who died with hard drugs.
18:56I have two other brothers who died with alcohol.
19:01My sister just put fire on her.
19:05She had been very discouraged with the life.
19:08She committed suicide? Yeah, yeah, suicide, yeah.
19:13In 1982, the Chagos Islanders, now desperate,
19:17demonstrated in the streets of Mauritius.
19:20This embarrassed the British government
19:22into giving them a derisory compensation,
19:26which came to less than Β£3,000 per person.
19:31This didn't even pay their debts,
19:33and to get this money,
19:35many believed they were tricked into signing away
19:37their right to return home.
19:40They needed to sign their children,
19:43to get back and play those who.
19:46The other family wanted to sign their head
19:47to get back and get back,
19:49and then they couldn't sign their children.
19:53They didn't.
19:53and then they were at home,
19:54but I couldn't accept that they wanted me,
19:57they didn't even to get my children here.
20:00Even if the teacher was telling me,
20:01I could sign my children,
20:02I couldn't accept it if I went to the hospital.
20:05When I was a mother,
20:06this is my mother's parents.
20:10It was entirely improper, unethical, dictatorial to have the Chagossians put their thumbprint
20:24on an English legal drafted document where the Chagossians, who doesn't read nor speak
20:33any English, let alone legal English, is made to renounce basically all his rights as a human being.
20:44Renouncing their rights was precisely what the British government wanted them to do.
20:51They could then be forgotten.
20:55That same year, the government spent Β£2 billion defending the rights of the Falkland Islanders
21:02who are white.
21:06My people, the Queen would say, in a Christmas broadcast.
21:13So you send them 2,000 inhabitants of the Falklands, and you've got 2,000 people at Chagoss.
21:22One, out. The other one, we come to your rescue. Come on.
21:27Come on. You are all English. You're all British. Come on.
21:32What's the difference? Where's your sense of fair play, my fellas?
21:36Where's your sense of fair play?
21:39That could be a breakthrough. Of course.
21:42From a tiny lock-up in the porous section of Port Louis, Mauritius,
21:46Olivia Bancor, an electrician, has taken the struggle across the world.
21:52And here you're with Nelson Mandela.
21:55Yeah, I am with Nelson Mandela, an example of human rights fighter, you see.
22:03We compare our struggle to the struggle of Nelson Mandela who had been...
22:09In the 1990s, the islander's struggle took a dramatic turn with the discovery of these documents
22:16in the Public Record Office in London.
22:21Here was the evidence that they and their supporters were looking for.
22:25These long-forgotten secret official files revealed the full scale of the conspiracy
22:31and the cynicism that drove it.
22:45The conspiracy got underway with the creation of a fake colony
22:49called the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT.
22:57The sole purpose of creating this colony was to kick the people out.
23:02And to do it, the Foreign Office invented a fiction.
23:07They said the islanders didn't really belong to the Chagos,
23:11but were merely temporary contract workers.
23:18Foreign Office Memorandum, July 1965.
23:22People were born there, and in some cases their parents were born there too.
23:27The intention is, however, that none of them should be regarded
23:30as being permanent inhabitants of the islands.
23:34So how would they be regarded?
23:38The legal position of the inhabitants would be greatly simplified from our point of view,
23:43though not necessarily from theirs,
23:45if we decided to treat them as a floating population.
24:01This long-forgotten British government film, shot in 1957, reveals the duplicity.
24:09Clearly, the Foreign Office knew the people of the Chagos were anything but temporary workers.
24:17Out of a total of 100 or more little islands,
24:20only some half a dozen are permanently inhabited,
24:23partly by people from Mauritius and the Seychelles,
24:25but mostly by men and women who have been born and brought up on these fragments of land.
24:30It is the story of their lives which this film tells.
24:35The British tried to claim, and I just quote one of their documents,
24:41that the Chagos had no indigenous or settled population.
24:45They lied.
24:49My father was there, my grandfather was there, my grandmother was there,
24:54my grandmother was there, my mother was there.
24:55They lied.
24:57They lied.
24:58They lied.
25:02Back in London, some officials began to worry about being caught out.
25:08Foreign Office Memo, November 1965.
25:12There is a civilian population.
25:15In practice, however, I would advise a policy of quiet disregard.
25:22In other words, let's forget about this one
25:25until the United Nations challenges on it.
25:30One can only say that they were looking at another prize,
25:33and this was considered a price that was worth paying,
25:39because in reality there would be no objections,
25:43and they would get away with it.
25:45And all they were concerned about, the documents show this quite clearly,
25:49all they were concerned about was whether they'd be found out.
25:52In that same month, the British representative at the United Nations, F.W.D. Brown,
25:59was instructed to lie to the General Assembly that the Chagos Islands were
26:04uninhabited when the United Kingdom first acquired them.
26:09I must remind you that this has been done in violation of the United Nations Charter.
26:16This is why it was done so in absolute discretion and using lies.
26:25I'm not minting my words. They were lies, damned lies.
26:30What the official documents show is not just a trail of lies,
26:35but an imperious attitude of brutality and contempt.
26:39In August of 1966, Sir Paul Gore Booth wrote,
26:44We must surely be very tough about this.
26:48The object of the exercise was to get some rocks which will remain ours.
26:53There will be no indigenous population except seagulls.
27:00At the end of this is a note handwritten by Dennis Greenhill,
27:05later Baron Greenhill of Harrow.
27:09Unfortunately, along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays,
27:15whose origins are obscure,
27:17and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius, etc.
27:23When you look at the documents,
27:26here you've got some of your former colleagues talking about,
27:29well, we just need some rocks because in all that's on it
27:32are a bunch of Tarzans and a few Janes and all that.
27:38Well, yes, I mean, I know the person that you're referring to
27:43and the minute that you're referring to.
27:46And I have the greatest respect for him.
27:49He's dead now.
27:52And I'm sure that if he had any clue that his throwaway remarks
27:58would have become public, he would never have written that.
28:02Because I don't believe he's that sort of person, frankly.
28:05You know, people put things in minutes on official papers
28:10that they don't really mean.
28:16The conspirators now began to get the wind up.
28:19A senior official wrote,
28:22This is really all fairly unsatisfactory.
28:26We propose to certify up to 240 islanders, more or less fraudulently,
28:32as belonging somewhere else.
28:35This all seems difficult to reconcile with the sacred trust of the United Nations Charter.
28:43The sacred trust he refers to obliges Britain to safeguard the human rights of its citizens in a dependent territory.
28:52His warning counted for little.
28:55One official offered a way round the problem.
28:57He wrote,
29:00We do not regard the United Kingdom as bound by such a rule.
29:04In this respect, we are able to make up the rules as we go along,
29:09and treat the inhabitants of BIOT as not belonging to it in any sense.
29:20This same official summed up the whole charade in the subtitle of one of his reports,
29:27maintaining the fiction.
29:33Do you think they were aware of what they were doing to the people,
29:37the trauma that was about to descend on the Turgossians?
29:43These boys in the colonial office, did they really care very much about...
29:48Come on!
29:50No.
29:51You had your standard of living, you kept to it.
29:53You had your pink gin at lunch time.
29:58So they were just the natives?
30:00The natives, yes.
30:02Unfortunately.
30:06The cover-up went right to the top of government.
30:10It was drawn up by the Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart
30:14in the form of a secret minute sent to the Prime Minister on July 25, 1968.
30:21In this document, Stewart reveals that he is fully aware that Diego Garcia has a population going back at least
30:30two generations.
30:32He proposes that the government lie to the world that there is no indigenous population.
30:42On April 26, 1969, Wilson's private secretary wrote to Stewart saying that the Prime Minister approved the plan.
30:53The documents show that it was decided at the highest level by the Prime Minister, most particularly Harold Wilson.
31:00He knew very well that there was a population and they were going to be removed.
31:04The problem is that this is policy made almost on the back of an envelope.
31:09There's no democratic input.
31:12Nobody was asking questions.
31:14Nobody was knocking on the door.
31:15Nobody was there to represent the interests of the islanders.
31:18They just didn't exist as a political factor to take into account.
31:23Dennis Healey was defence secretary in the same government.
31:27When we asked Mr. Healey for an interview, he replied,
31:30I fear I have no memories of the Chagos Archipelago. Sorry.
31:36Lord Healey's a letter about not remembering the Chagos Archipelago.
31:42Bollocks.
31:44Absolutely.
31:47He's an acute and intelligent man.
31:52On May the 6th, 1969, Healey's private secretary wrote this letter to 10 Downing Street.
31:59It confirmed that the defence secretary had read Stewart's plan and agrees with its recommendations.
32:10In Washington, a parallel conspiracy was taking place, also in high secrecy.
32:18The object was to keep the expulsion of the islanders from Congress.
32:22So payment for the lease of the islands was disguised as a $14 million discount
32:29on a Polaris nuclear missile about to be supplied to the Royal Navy.
32:35Is there ever a time when people in power consider the consequences of the imposition of that power?
32:44Because the consequences for the population of Diego Garcia were disastrous.
32:54The circumstances involved how many?
33:002,000 people.
33:012,000 people.
33:02Who'd been living there since the end of the 18th century.
33:05Well, a fair number of them, if I remember, were external labourers.
33:10Well, that's been shown to be untrue.
33:14The British government tried to represent them as that.
33:17They were an indigenous six, three, four generations.
33:21As I said, I went through this record some years ago.
33:26And at that time, it was said that these were imported labourers to some degree.
33:36We found in the National Archives in Washington this letter from the American ambassador in Mauritius.
33:44February the 1st, 1972, Ambassador Brewer to Washington.
33:50It is, of course, absurd to imply that Diego Garcia had no fixed population.
33:56There is no question that the island has been inhabited since the 18th century.
34:02I don't think there's any doubt at all that the Americans who visited the islands to reconnoitre as to whether
34:09this was a suitable base area.
34:11They saw that there was a functioning civilisation on the island.
34:16They could not have been unaware of the settled human communities that they found.
34:24So when Schlesinger said they didn't know, they'd looked into it, that just...
34:30Amnesia, at best.
34:33That's all you can say to that. It was not true. They knew.
34:38There's another...
34:39And they collaborated together on how do we get rid of these people?
34:42How do we lie that they're simply contract labourers?
34:47When many of them, their fathers, their grandfathers, perhaps even further back, were in the cemetery.
34:53If you take a decision in Washington and London and it devastates the lives of several thousand people on the
35:01other side of the world,
35:02isn't that something that should be called to account, no matter how long?
35:10Amongst the various activities of the British and the American government in the 20th century, not to mention the 19th
35:20century,
35:20this was a relatively small matter.
35:26If one goes back to British behaviour, for example, in World War II, the attack on Dresden,
35:35the attack on the French fleet, all under Winston Churchill, whom we so much admire, and rightly so,
35:42this is a very small matter. It is being pinpointed now for reasons that I cannot ascribe to anything other
35:55than the quest for a certain publicity.
36:00Well, I think it's from their point of view, for one thing, the Chagossian Islanders are not the Nazis.
36:07And from their point of view, it's a quest for justice.
36:15And what is your motivation, if I may inquire? Purely the quest for justice, I'm sure.
36:20Yes. Yes, it is. Yes. Do you not think these questions are valid in asking you about consequences of the
36:34imposition of great power on peoples?
36:36I think that the questions are based upon a refusal to acknowledge the context of the times and the attitudes
36:47of the times,
36:49and that it is based upon a willingness 35 or 40 years after a set of events to go back
36:59and critique them
37:01when they had become, what shall I say, far less relevant.
37:09Far less relevant, the High Court in London found it extremely relevant.
37:14In November 2000, it agreed with the people of the Chagoss and handed down a shaming rebuke to the British
37:22government.
37:23The court ruled that the expulsion of the islanders was illegal.
37:27After more than 30 years, they had won and were finally going home, or so they believed.
37:57The victory in the High Court gave Olivia Bancourt and his people the right to start their lives again.
38:07It's something which I will never forget when just coming out of the court with this,
38:15to ask that it is a victory for the Sagotian people, the small people upon a big power.
38:22The first time we all kept our gladness together, all the time we were.
38:28In the English we had one thoughts.
38:32If I was given to victory, there was a feeling of peace.
38:36In which I thought that I could provide the whole country of my first family,
38:39theΓ©m frontier in common with great families,
38:42I thought that one time I would have to have a goodwill,
38:45and our mother to make the root of birth, when we would not have a right to hear.
38:51However, the Foreign Office had other ideas.
38:55Within hours of the High Court judgment, it announced that the government would not allow
39:00the islanders back to Diego Garcia, the main island where most of them came from.
39:07Robin Cook told me that he said it would have been politically impossible to allow the Tregossians
39:13to go back to Diego Garcia because they had a treaty with the United States.
39:19Well, the first thing to point out there is that this is British sovereign territory.
39:25The British have a duty to their own citizens.
39:28They have the legal power to tell the Americans what policy and what immigration law they're
39:35putting in place on the islands.
39:37But in the meantime, we've signed a couple of pieces of paper with the Americans.
39:41And we now regard our obligations to them as paramount.
39:45I just don't see the logic of that.
39:48And to keep the people from the rest of the Chagos Islands, the Foreign Office invoked something
39:54called a feasibility study, which would question if people could survive in this idyllic place
40:01where they had lived for six generations.
40:04This study consulted not a single inhabitant of the Chagos Islands.
40:14After the High Court victory, the government promised the islanders that at least they could visit
40:20the graves of their families.
40:22Boats were chartered here in Port Louis, Mauritius, but they never set sail.
40:31Barroness Amos, Tony Blair's leader of the House of Lords, explains why they never went back.
40:38We chartered a vessel.
40:40Unfortunately, the vessel was not made available.
40:44We are happy to reinstate any such visit, but it would not include Diego Garcia because
40:50of the reluctance of the US government.
40:52The President of Mauritius, Kassamu Team, took her up on this.
40:57So I said to the Baroness, I said, Britain has no objection.
41:03She said, no, Britain has no objection.
41:04She said, do you allow me to take the matter up with President Bush?
41:07She said, by all means.
41:08And this is what I did.
41:09I wrote to President Bush.
41:12The reply came, I'm sorry to say.
41:14We don't deal with the Mauritian government, we deal only with the British government.
41:19And the British are not agreeable.
41:21It's black and white.
41:23The British are not agreeable to this visit.
41:26And we agree with the British.
41:29So they've been playing table tennis, ping pong, with the Chagossians.
41:35When we go to London, we are told it's an American problem.
41:38When we go to Washington, we are told it's a London problem.
41:42It is an arrangement between them to, you know, treat this problem as a ping pong ball.
41:52And it's terrible because by the time the ping pong game is over, well, there will be
41:56no Chagossians left.
42:00By June this year, the Blair government had run out of excuses.
42:04But there was still one more trick to play.
42:08Have you ever heard of something called an Order in Council?
42:12It's a royal decree using archaic powers, which unknown to most of us are still invested
42:18in the Queen.
42:19It's a cosy arrangement.
42:21The Queen rubber stamps what in many cases politicians know they can't get away with democratically.
42:27On November the 5th, 1965, an Order in Council was issued by the government of Harold Wilson.
42:35The aim was to secretly expel the population of the Chagoss Islands, all of them loyal subjects
42:42of the Queen.
42:44In June this year, the Blair government used the same powers to bypass Parliament and the
42:50High Court in order to ban the Chagoss Islanders from ever returning home.
42:56Dictators do this, but without the quaint ritual.
43:02The quaint ritual takes place here at Buckingham Palace.
43:07The public never sees it.
43:09Parliament is merely told about it.
43:13The orders in council, they go through without discussion.
43:17They're read in title only.
43:18No reason is given for them.
43:20No contents are spoken.
43:21The Privy Council never even sits down.
43:23They all stand around.
43:25The clerk to the council reads the thing in title.
43:27There were two orders and the Queen says, agreed.
43:30And that's it.
43:32That is it.
43:33It's a decree.
43:34It's a decree.
43:38And with that royal decree, the people were banned forever from going home.
43:43It was June the 10th, 2004, election day in Britain, when they thought no one would notice.
43:58The High Court has ruled that the expulsion of the Chagossians was illegal.
44:04The Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations has called on your government to return
44:12them to their homeland.
44:13Why has this government denied this basic human right of return?
44:20Firstly, the feasibility study, which was drawn up by independent experts, which told
44:25us that the only population of the islands that would be possible is short term on a subsistence
44:31basis.
44:32Longer term would be precarious given the climatic conditions, given that in some cases some
44:39of the islands are barely two foot above sea level and would be very costly.
44:42It is true that the Foreign Office has conducted, I think now, three feasibility studies, as
44:49they call them, about resettlement.
44:52Their contents have nothing whatever to do with the resettlement of the islanders, who
44:57had lived there for 200 years.
44:59Page after page after page is devoted to establishing that the beaches are made of sand.
45:06Take your shoes and socks off and walk across them.
45:08You know what sand is.
45:12They then go on to say human interaction on global warming will make occupation of the
45:21islands precarious for a resettled population.
45:25But that's a very strange statement, because there is a settled population, there's hundreds
45:30of American military and thousands of civilian workers.
45:34They're all on Diego Garcia.
45:35They're not going to sink under the waves.
45:42Far from sinking, they're sailing on it, swimming in it, playing in it, and having a Barbie next
45:51to it.
45:56And what do they call this unlivable place?
46:00Fantasy Island.
46:03Nobody takes those conclusions seriously, and in so far as the government repeats them, I'm
46:08afraid they're just opening themselves up to ridicule.
46:12At the moment, on Diego Garcia, there are 4,000 US servicemen and contractors.
46:18There are two bomber runways, each two and a half miles long.
46:21There are anchorages for 30 ships and two nuclear cleared berths.
46:26There are space tracking domes and weapon rages.
46:29It's the biggest American base outside the United States, which the US Navy describes as indispensable,
46:35the living conditions as outstanding, the recreational facilities as unbelievable, and the US wants
46:42to extend the least past 2016.
46:45And you're asking us to believe these islands are uninhabited or they're sinking?
46:49No, no, no.
46:50Of course they're inhabitable, but at a cost.
46:52The United States does have concerns about the climactic conditions longer term in respect
46:56of Diego Garcia.
46:57And has exactly the same concerns that were formulated in our independent study.
47:03But what the independent study told me, there was no fresh drinking water, there was real
47:08concerns in the outer islands about the sea levels and the danger of flooding, and there
47:13would be a need for substantial expenditure on actually building a liveable infrastructure.
47:20One of the chief things was, what is the water supply going to be like?
47:24Oh my God, we can't guarantee it.
47:26But these islands, and I published this in 1971, are respectively the third, Peros Benhas,
47:34and the fifth, Salomon, wettest islands in the world.
47:38Peros with four metres of rain a year, and the other with 3.5.
47:44When it rains, the water tables are so high, the rain remains on the surface for days.
47:50So what does that make these feasibility studies?
47:53Worthless.
47:54Waste of time.
47:55Waste of time.
47:57Let me ask you, does this government, do politicians in this government, because this
48:02story has shocked most people, do you not feel any shame for these actions?
48:07I've said to you at the beginning, I am not seeking to justify the decisions that were
48:10taken in the 60s and 70s.
48:12I mean shame now, because you use the same powers to ban them.
48:15No, I don't feel ashamed, because I took what I believe, and the government took, a responsible
48:20decision in the circumstances almost 40 years after the last Chargossian lived within these
48:25islands.
48:25And I was being asked, and the government and the British taxpayer was being asked, to
48:29pick up the financial tab to allow, almost on an exploratory basis, for people to go back
48:35to the islands.
48:36You can't manufacture money, you actually have to make choices about how you spend your money.
48:41Only the other day, the minister was asked by a member of parliament, what is the anticipated
48:46cost?
48:48And the answer was five million pounds to set up and five million pounds a year to run.
48:53Well, that's peanuts.
48:55Five million pounds is the cost of an embassy building in London.
49:01This is an embassy building in Mauritius, home to Mr. David Snoxell, the British High Commissioner.
49:08It has tennis courts, lavish gardens, security fences, a swimming pool and a Jaguar car.
49:17All paid for by the British taxpayer.
49:25Minutes away, these are the British citizens who are less worthy of taxpayers' money.
49:38The reason the government won't allow the islanders to go home is not money, it's power.
49:46American power, and its self-given role to dominate.
49:52Might is right, and the great powers have the might, and therefore the right to do anything
49:59they want, wherever and whenever they want.
50:04They wanted the Chagotian islands, in particular Diego Garcia, for a base.
50:11They take it, they grab it, it's their right.
50:15However, the islanders are not giving up their right of return.
50:20Today they're getting ready to demonstrate outside the British High Commission in Port
50:24Lewis.
50:26So these are all going on the demonstration to the High Commission?
50:29Yeah, of course.
50:30This is a particularly relevant one, isn't it?
50:35Yeah, yeah.
50:36When you...
50:37I mean, that's quite a serious indictment.
50:39What...
50:40Yeah, of course.
50:41We should...
50:41But you're referring to the High Court found in your favour that you could all go home,
50:46and the British government has prevented you from going home.
50:49This is why we...
50:50It's true.
50:52It's something that everyone must know about.
50:55The British government seems to be using all of its powers to even capture the law, and
51:03using it for its own political ends.
51:04You know, by overturning the High Court ruling and saying that, you know, this is no longer
51:08on.
51:09That our...
51:10By referring to the Crown prerogative and going back to these medieval laws and overturning,
51:16you know, the legal decision to allow these people back to the outlining islands.
51:19That, to me, is a capture of the legal powers of the state that really only happens in totalitarian
51:26regimes.
51:30The struggle and the dignity of the Chagos Islanders were displayed here by elderly ladies
51:37having to stand on the street and shout for their basic human rights.
52:01You know, these are a lot of very spirited old ladies, who you won't allow to go home, where
52:12they want to go home and die.
52:14That's basically...
52:15These are the people who are leading the charge among the Chagossians.
52:19Isn't that shameful?
52:21Of course I've got sympathy for people based upon what happened to them and their families
52:25in the past.
52:27But this is today, almost 40 years after that event.
52:30And for us and the British government and the British taxpayer to be asked to finance that,
52:36when that money could actually alternatively go on leaving aid and poor people throughout
52:42the world.
52:44But that is a choice.
52:45That you ask me whether I'm ashamed of the decision that I've taken.
52:48No, I'm not.
52:49I believe in the circumstances, and it was a difficult decision.
52:52I believe we took the right decision.
52:53No human being would treat another human being the way the British administration treated
53:01the Chagossians people.
53:03In this part of the world, except if we go back to the days of slavery and to the days
53:11of
53:12indentured labor, I can't remember anything of the sort happening.
53:20Jesus Christ, how low can you get?
53:26How intellectually dishonest, how morally duplicitous can you get?
53:34I've spent my life, 40 years now, with this.
53:38And every single thing sickens me.
53:41Sickens me.
53:42And it goes on, it goes on, it goes on.
53:45Conservative.
53:46Labor.
53:49Year after year, Olivier and Rita, Lisette and Charlesia, come to this monument in Port
53:57Lewis Harbour.
53:58It commemorates those Chagoss Islanders who died in exile.
54:01From sadness.
54:31And all the time that I was here, I lived with my mascot.
54:34I didn't want to leave.
54:36I didn't want to leave.
54:37I didn't want to leave.
54:39I didn't want to leave.
54:39I didn't want to leave.
54:46The film you've just seen is not only the story of a single injustice.
54:51It's a rare glimpse of great power at its most ruthless.
54:56What was done to the people of the Chagoss raises wider questions for those of us who
55:02live in powerful states like Britain and America.
55:06Why do we continue to allow our governments to treat people in small countries as either useful
55:13or expendable?
55:15Why do we accept specious reasons for the unacceptable?
55:20Four years ago, the High Court delivered one of the most damning indictments of a British
55:25government.
55:26government.
55:26It said the secret expulsion of the Chagoss Islanders was wrong.
55:31That judgment must be upheld and the people of a group of beautiful, once peaceful islands
55:38must be helped to go home and compensated fully and without delay for their suffering.
55:45Anything less diminishes the rest of us.
56:15It is a living in our country.
56:18It is very difficult.
56:20It is a living in our country.
56:21Because it is the nature of the world, the world, the world is the average of a living
56:30and in our country, the world is the world.
56:32One is where the people who are living in need is a living, from the world is the world.
56:35You
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