Paradise cleansed

[dutchdemocrat]

Not sure how many of you are aware of the invasion and deportation of the people of Diego Garcia... they were stripped of their land and shipped off their land for a military base. Let's hope the European Court will do what the British Courts snaked out of... give justice to these people.

Paradise cleansed

Our deportation of the people of Diego Garcia is a crime that cannot stand

John Pilger
Saturday October 2, 2004
The Guardian

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia. The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defence in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."



Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it. During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitise" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents." What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".



<SNIP>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1317945,00.html

[donkeyotay]

1. Wow. Another story about winning hearts and minds

snip:

As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win."

end

[donkeyotay]

2. think I'll reply to myself

You know, Mr. Bancoult, when you say "The world is changing: we will win," you make an interesting point. This is a battle between the rule of law and gangsterism. Now, I know some say it's not the same when governments do it, but isn't it still really a question of whether might makes right or the rule of law applies to EVERYONE?

...even Tom Delay.

[skygazer]

3. This is a sad story

But, sadly, not a surprising nor a new one. I am uncertain of the number of military bases the US has around the world but I know there are a number of stories just like this. It is, more or less, an empire, built without the bother of having to fight and pacify the people before setting up installations. Like the Romans, the US military contributes to the local infrastructure, improves sanitary conditions or roadways or whatever, provides jobs for many of the inhabitants (when they allow them to stay) and, at the same time, infuses much of its culture and values into the area, which allows it to become, eventually, vital to the cultural and economic health of the surrounding area. It also allows it to influence the politics and alliances of the host nation.

In many, of those areas, there is no viable need for a military presence. Many of the bases we established after WWII have little strategic value now. They're still there as are many in Japan. And now we're building 14 of them in Iraq. Makes you wonder if anyone in office remembers what happened to the Roman Empire.

[kayell]

4. Our real work begins January 21st

To return this country to a semblance of what the founders intended.

[dutchdemocrat]

5. Hmm...

Think Globally
Act Locally

I hope America can regain some semblance of sanity and escape the corporate-come-fascist state that has being hammered into place.

I refuse to step foot in the US until Bush is gone... and many people around the world feel the same way.

Homeland=das Vaterland
Shock and Awe=Blitzkrieg
9-11=Reichstag Fire
Patriot Act=Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State

etc.