Paradise cleansed (this is very upsetting)

[cool user name]

An example of US & UK crimes against humanity (ethnic cleansing and right of return). I heard of tonight for the first time. I'm sickened by the initial conspiracy by the US and UK and the justification and so called "Feasibility Reports" that will not allow these people to learn.

... and yet we'll happily spread freedom to Iraqis and others ... fucking bullshit.

If you have LinkTV, you can view the documentary by John Pilger LinkTV website for showings. Article by Pilger follows:

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".



More here:

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

EDIT: COPYRIGHT. PLEASE POST ONLY 4 OR 5
PARAGRAPHS FROM THE COPYRIGHTED NEWS
SOURCE PER DU RULES.

[Selatius]

1. What can any of us say?

The original criminals are long dead. Johnson and Nixon did some horrible things, but neither of them ever really saw the inside of a prison, and I doubt any British officials did either. The US and the UK are likely not going to give up the island easily, and they probably won't.

[cool user name]

3. Which doesn't make it any less wrong ...

Just because the US & UK have the power to disregard the law and human rights doesn't mean that it's right.

I, personally, am fucking sick and tired of finding another story about how my government is fucking over other people everyday in my name using my tax dollars.

I'm also fucking sick of being told that whatever we do abroad is for noble reasons and that the ends will always justify the means.

I'm pretty fed up. I posted this story to make sure people are aware of it. Maybe we can make a change for these innocent people we have fucked over.

[Selatius]

I'm not saying it isn't wrong; it is

But the fact is people have failed over and over again to hold the government accountable. It's upsetting, but the nature of the state is the nature of raw force. Through both Democratic and Republican administrations, this government that claims to represent us has raped dozens of nations across the globe in the name of profit and power.

I hold more faith in educated individuals operating collectively directly than I do with a bunch of people exercising power over others claiming to do things for our benefit.

The state has always and will always be a tool of oppression of people. This is why I generally lean more towards left libertarianism/libertarian socialism than I do with traditional liberalism. The state should be feared, and its powers should be chained and bottled up as well as any other threat to freedom such as corporatism or otherwise known as fascism.

[cool user name]

14. On this, I whole-heartedly agree ...

As a lefty anarcho-socialist, I totally agree with your post.

[WildEyedLiberal]

23. What on earth is an anarcho-socialist?

I'm not trying to be insulting; that term just makes NO sense whatsoever.

You can't simultaenously believe in the elimination of the state and state-controlled economy.

[cool user name]

24. There are different strands of anarchists and there ...

are different strands of socialists. Not everyone agrees in either camp. I don't believe in the total elimination of the state - only that it should be required justify its existence continuously, and failing that, then should be abolished and replaced with a more democratic structure.

The government should exist to serve the people.

But that's a different topic.

I'd prefer to stay on topic.

[alfredo]

2. I remember that time.

Didn't know about the inhabitants.

[cool user name]

4. Please kick this page so that others will see the story.

Thanks.

[UndertheOcean]

6. Yes ... and please recommend it !

n/t

[cool user name]

16. Thank you, yes ... please recommend this! n/t

[alfredo]

27. Sure, will do.

[cool user name]

32. Kick ...n/t

[UndertheOcean]

5. Criminals...

sigh ....

[hopeisaplace]

7. thanks for posting...this has to go the highest court,

"what we want we take"...hmmmmm, I don't think so.
What a horrible horrible thing for these families.
Can you imagine if this were any of us...someone *ahem*,
comes along and just TAKES everything from you and ships
you away somewhere and then claims they were righteous in
doing so...while you sit on a boat with nothing but panic
on your mind.
Holy crap, the world is lacking empathy. I'm pissed too.



edit: typo

[cool user name]

8. It went to the highest court in England ...

They ruled it as wrong.

So the Blair government circumvented that ruling by having the Queen issue a decree (read: fatwa) giving the British the right to refuse the right of return.

Fucking asshole.

[hopeisaplace]

9. At the end of the article it said,

"Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. 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." "



---
I hope they are taking it to the court of human rights.

[cool user name]

12. I hope so too. n/t

[UndertheOcean]

13. The bastard ...

:(

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

28. In May, the High Court ruled the Government's action unlawful

However, the Government announced it would appeal (last month IIRC) & that's where it currently stands.

edit - Pilger did a documentary on it in 2004 called "Stealing a Nation". Here's a Real media download of it: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/stealing_a_nation.rm

[cool user name]

29. Ahh .. yes, I saw it last night on LinkTV but ..

Thank you for providing a video. This is something that everyone needs to watch.

[cool user name]

10. One of the "Feasibility Studies" said:

That it would cost about 5 million pounds for the initial startup to have the Chagossians returned and another 5 million pounds in maintenance fees.

The British Ambassader's home in Mauritius is worth 5 million pounds repleat with Jaguar, tennis courts, security fence, and swimming pool.

The Chagossians live in utter poverty.

I'm fucking livid. The US has their largest base located there with civilian and military personnel. They even have a "Fantasy Island" resort.

Fucking bullshit.

[Sinti]

11. I read about this a while back - it made me sick

The more you know about what's been done by your own in days gone by, the more you understand what's going on now. They don't really see most of the world as "people" in the same way they are "people."

This happened a few decades ago, but don't kid yourself, the thinking behind it continues to this day. For all intents and purposes, they were sitting on our land :cry:

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

[cool user name]

15. Yes, it is still happening in our name.

It is our duty to stop it in whatever manner we can.

[kittykitty]

17. k&r

[cool user name]

18. Further information at LinkTV

The title of John Pilger's documentary is The Stealing of a Nation

More information can be seen here:

http://www.worldlinktv.org/programming/programDescription.php4?code=stealing

Program Details Stealing a Nation
Length: 01:00 Type of program: Documentary

Broadcast Times
Saturday, August 12 11:00 PM
Sunday, August 13 5:00 AM
Sunday, August 13 11:00 AM
More
Stealing a Nation is an extraordinary film about the plight of people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - secretly and brutally expelled from their homeland by British governments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to make way for an American military base. The base, on the main island of Diego Garcia, was a launch pad for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Diego Garcia is America‚s largest 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. 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. 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.

To learn more, or to purchase this film, visit Bullfrog Films. (link to Bullfrog Films)

http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/steal.html

[madrchsod]

19. i saw that and i was stunned

a must see for anyone who has link tv.check the link tv website

[cool user name]

22. Kicking again ... n/t

[undergroundpanther]

20. Empires run by sociopath pigs

This is what happens when we the people are NOT Watching OUR government every little action and keeping them on a VERY SHORT LEASH. They deserve NO privacy ,no privacy for backroom corporate deals,no secret military anything..if they want the power They gotta give privacy up....Just saying..If the governments had no privacy and we were watching and whistle blowing and scrutinizing,and all up in their faces 24 7,demanding they behave and serve our needs first, ..What could these thugs get away with?

[cool user name]

21. They hate us for our freedom!

:eyes:

Good post!

[unhappycamper]

25. cool user name:

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to six paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

In the future, please insure your posts adhere to this standard.

TIA,

unhappycamper
DU Moderator

[cool user name]

30. My apologies.

Thank you.

[converted_democrat]

26. K&R.n/t

[cool user name]

31. Kicking again ... n/t