Tiny eye of the hurricane - Currents - United States military base results in displaced island habitants - Brief Article

New Internationalist, April, 2002

The US navy call it 'the rock'.

Diego Garcia is a beautiful 27-square-kilo-metre atoll of coral and sand -- and the most important strategic US air-base in the Indian Ocean. It's been used for US bombing raids on Iraq, and in October 2001 B-52 bombers began flying from their base there to bomb Afghanistan.

Once a British protectorate, Diego Garcia was leased for 50 years (in exchange for a $14-million discount on a missile programme) to the US to use as a military base in 1964, and thc entire indigenous Ilois population was moved off the island between 1965 and 1973.

Ilois who had left were refused re-entry, Britain cut' supplies to the island to 'encourage' emigration, and those that remained were forced onto ships which took them to Mauritius, 2,000 kilometres away. There was no resettlement plan: on arrival they wandered through the streets of Part Louis, lost. In 2000 the British High Court found that the Government had acted unlawfully and had misled the UN about the inhabitants' rights of residency.

While the US built its massive military base with imported labour, the original inhabitants were forbidden the right of return. In January 2002, a class-action suit was filed in Washington by three of the original inhabitants of the island against the US Government. Defendants include several former US defence secretaries -- including Donald Rumsfeld -- and the Halliburton Company, an oil corporation formerly headed by Dick Cheney. The Ilois are suing for the right of return and compensation. Charges include torture, genocide and forced relocation.