Diego Garcia Forum at Port Louis Municipal Council Mobilizes Different Political Currents
01.06.2023
On 31 May, the Port Louis Municipal Council Chamber was filled with people from all over the Republic of Mauritius to listen to six speakers – each from a different political current. There were young people, older people, women and men, people from Chagos and from the rest of the Republic. The Mauritian Press, including Radio, was present, as well as a team from Reunion. The Forum over-ran its time limit, as the half-hour of questions and comments was lively. Everyone went home with a copy of the Common Declaration, either in Kreol or in English. It is still being signed up to. (Please read it in the Documents Section of our website www.lalitmauritius.org, where you will see the impressive collection of organizations already signed up, and do contact us to adhere to the Common Declaration.) Some people who attended the Forum signed up afterwards to give a hand with future actions.
The documentary that LALIT screened for 25 minutes just before the Forum created the atmosphere for the entire Forum. It was the excellent Irish TV film called “The Islands are Closed” by Peadar King, a film that brilliantly manages to unite all three aspects of the imperialist crimes that need to be kept linked in all our struggles: the creation of a US military base on territory stolen by the UK, the illegal breaking up of the colony of Mauritius so as to build the base upon part of it, and the forcible removal of all the inhabitants of the Chagos so as to make way for the nefarious military base.
Alain Ah Vee presiding for LALIT introduced Cassam Uteem to speak first.
Mr. Uteem is not only a former MMM MP and Minister, but also the most beloved, most respected, of all Former Presidents of the Republic. His speech was a blistering attack against the USA’s military base on Diego Garcia. It was a call for Mauritius to have no military bases on its territory. He said there were two guilty parties – the USA and UK’s state apparatus – and another party that was “responsible” for the dismemberment of the country and the forcible displacement of the Chagossians i.e. the political parties representing Mauritius at the pre-Independence negotiations. The delegation from Mauritius, however, he said, was headed by the colonial secretary, Sir John Shaw Rennie. (Sir John Shaw Rennie, as Governor and thus head of the colonial government, was “the agent” of the imperial (British) government.) This made a mockery of these supposed “negotiations”. Cassam Uteem’s speech was structured around four vital dates: these 1965 pre-independence negotiations, the forcible expulsion of all the Chagossians completed in 1973, then the 2019 International Court of Justice at The Hague statuting on the illegality of the continued UK colonization of the Chagos under the infamous name “British Indian Ocean Territories”, and finally the UN General Assembly massive vote against the UK-USA continued military occupation of part of Mauritius. Mr. Uteem called for the secret “negotiations” that Pravind Jugnauth is having with the British authorities to be made public, and he criticized the US under-secretary of State, Richard Varner, for laying the foundation stones for a monstrous Rs14 billion new US Embassy in Mauritius. Later, when she spoke, Lindsey Collen, for LALIT, criticized both this secrecy and this massive expansion of US diplomatic presence, too. Cassam Uteem commended LALIT on being amongst those who have constantly kept the issue on the political agenda throughout that time. He was one of the original signatories of the Common Declaration which was the basis for the Forum.
Vijay Makhan, a former MMM candidate for the National Assembly, and also former elected Commissioner at the African union, added his voice to Cassam Uteem’s in expressing recognition of the constancy of LALIT’s position. He explained why he had signed up, as an individual, to the Common Declaration. Some LALIT members had expected him to talk about the important contribution of the MMM, when it was in Government in 2004. Paul Bérenger, when Prime Minister, had announced that, since the UK did not accept binding decisions by the ICJ for cases brought by any country that was a member of the Commonwealth, Mauritius would leave the Commonwealth and file a case. The effect of these words was dramatic. The UK Prime Minister Tony Blair gave immediate instructions to his ambassador to the UN to change the “exclusion clause” for a binding ICJ case so to include all “former members” of the Commonwealth as well as “members”. The importance of the MMM move was that it showed that the UK knew very well that its actions in breaking up Mauritius as a condition for Independence and expelling people from Chagos were unlawful. Anyway, Vijay Makhan’s speech included reports of what he personally witnessed at the OUA and then African union and their constant positions on the need for the complete decolonization of Mauritius by the re-integration of Chagos into Mauritius. He also spoke of being witness to the Non-Aligned Movement’s constant support for this, and for what he believes until today, i.e. that the Indian Ocean must be a Peace Zone. He referred to an important anecdote, responding to the fine contribution of the late former Chief Justice, Rajsoomer Lallah in “The Islands are Closed” documentary. Once, Rajsoomer Lallah had told him a true story. When he, Mr. Lallah, was on the Chagos Outer Islands circuit in Diego Garcia as Magistrate, he had picked up a Camel cigarette packet littering the beach. He asked the then Island Manager, who was strolling alongside him, whether Chagossians smoked Camel cigarettes. The reply was “No!” The manager explained that an American mission had come by on a visit. Rajsoomer Lallahs’ tour of the Chagos circuit was a few years before the 1965 dismembering and before the beginning of the displacement of all Chagossians around the same time.
Alain Laridon, former MP and Ambassador to Mozambique, spoke of the contribution he had witnessed of Mauritians to the Chagossian struggle from the very early days of their banishment from their homes, including by Dev Virahsawmy when he was an MMM MP, elected in the 1971 by-election. Again, some in LALIT thought he might talk about the contribution of the Labour Party under Navin Ramgoolam, which in 2010 put in the first legal challenge. It was what in chess is called “a country move”, moving something in order to perhaps strengthen your position later. Navin Ramgoolam, when Prime Minister, and Arvin Boolell, when he was Foreign Affairs Minister, went to the Permanent Arbitration Tribunal under the Convention on the Law of the Sea and won a key, binding judgment, that effectively paved the way for the ICJ opinion. The judgment found that Britain’s setting up of a Marine Protected Area in Chagos waters was not legal, and while three of the five judges said it was not in their power to decide this, two of them even handed down minority arguments that Mauritius had sovereignty over Chagos.
Olivier Bancoult, President of the Chagos Refugees Group, spoke on how the Chagossian women, in particular, alongside the Muvman Liberasyon Fam, had marked the struggle, and how he had been a student of people present, when he was a child, in the Lekol Koperativ, and he named Ram Seegobin, Lindsey Collen and Kisna Kistnasamy as having been amongst his mentors. He said how hard it was to be banished from the place of your birth. He spoke of his recent meeting with the Captain of the Nordvaer, the ship that brought the last of the Chagossians by force to Port Louis docking on 1 June 1973, “exactly 50 years ago tomorrow”, he said. He invited all present to attend the events being organized in Baie du Tombeau on 17 June to commemorate this sad day. The Captain told Olivier the touching story of how when they were ready to set off for Mauritius on this final voyage, they discovered that one old man was not on board. He was sick and had not wanted to move. The Captain had to send men out to fetch him and physically carry him on to the ship in his chair. The Captain will speak at the events in Baie du Tombeau, Olivier said.
Jean-Claude Bibi, former Attorney General and Ambassador to Australia and then Madagascar, presented a fine denunciation of 500 years of criminal behavior, in the name of superior “civilization” of the whole “Western” colonial enterprise, that the UK-USA actions over Diego Garcia are part of. He said it was a question of power. Jean-Claude Bibi, during the 1970s, was in LALIT DE KLAS, LALIT’s precursor. Jean-Claude Bibi quoted Nelson Mandela as having said, "If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings." He was referring to the USA dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. What happened around the excision of Chagos from Mauritius, banishing the people from Chagos, and building the base on stolen land, forms an integral part of this pattern of criminal violence, he said. He referred to the disgrace of the G7 countries meeting at Hiroshima recently, with the USA present, even as its imperialist designs continue. He also said that it ought not to be forgotten that it was the Soviet union, the union of Soviet Socialist Republics – for all its faults, which Jean-Claude Bibi, like us in LALIT, are well aware of, having been in political currents influenced by the great anti-Stalinists like Leon Trotsky and Victor Serge – for all that, it was the USSR that ushered in de-colonization. Even the South African Apartheid regime, which was supported by the West, if we need reminding, was only gotten rid of with the aid of the USSR. That was the pattern of decolonization over the 50 years after the end of WWII. This history, we add, includes USA’s guilt in the assassination in 1961 of the Congolese elected independence leader, Patrice Lumumba. Jean Claude Bibi said that today, there are strong forces, whole states, that are no longer so totally under the control of Western economic, military and political power. He referred in particular to China and all the BRICS countries. He said that military bases – of which the USA has about one thousand outside of its own borders – are part of this continued “Western” domination. That, he said, is what makes it not a surprise that Russia finally attacked Ukraine – to defend by attacking – in a war that they pretend started a year ago when it has been on-going since 2014, and Russia continues to be totally surrounded by USA’s and NATO’s military bases that encroach ever-closer to its borders. He said that it is political action by political parties in Mauritius and elsewhere that has the hope of stemming Western domination, whether the domination is caused by economic or military factors. The political leaders in the USA and UK – whether Biden or Sunak or anyone else – are acting on behalf of “the state”, and these are “states” that have this long history of colonial and imperialist criminal violence.
Lindsey Collen’s speech can be heard on Video-recording on our website or our FB page.
Questions and comments were lively. And there were still a dozen hands up, when it was time up. The contribution that may have been most memorable was by Suzelle Baptiste of the Chagos Refugees Group. Disguised as severe criticism, it was high praise: “Why has this kind of Forum not been held long ago!”
