UK-USA: Old Plot in New Disguise for Diego Garcia Illegal Occupation
30.01.2024
Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron was quickly made a “Lord” so he could be an unelected Minister of Foreign Affairs or “Foreign Secretary” in Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government. This was a desperate appointment made in an effort for Britain to prevent total disorder in its international affairs. In particular, the NATO war in Ukrainewas, and still is, stuck in a bad place, the Israeli genocide is embarrassing the great white colonialists that bankroll, arm and prop-up the Netanyahu regime now “plausibly” committing genocide, and the Truss and Sunak’s failed attempts to set up some “legal framework” that could pretend to give a veneer to UK’s supposed respect for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgment on Chagos and Diego Garcia and UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution for the UK to end its colonization of part of Mauritius and get right out of the whole of Chagos at once. On all three issues, Cameron finds himself in the position of shoring up a discredited USA-UK empire that goes headlong into its dangerous death throes.
As we look, in this article, at the Cameron “plot” for the USA and UK to hang on to Diego Garcia despite the ICJ judgment, we will see just how desperate it is.
28 January is the deadline for the UK’s latest ploy: an “enquiry”, a so-called “call for evidence” from Chagossians. But, the UK is in such a bad place, that Cameron has had to jump the gun. Let us look at where this enquiry comes from, and how it is pure hoodwinking. It sure sounds familiar.
On 19 December last, we learnt from the UK Parliament’s website that the strangely named “Foreign Affairs Committee’s Sub-Committee on Overseas Territories” is launching an “enquiry” amongst Chagossians in the context of gathering evidence on Britain’s commitment to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This is ridiculous. The ICJ and the UNGA have declared this entity, the BIOT, illegal. So, why does Cameron think he can just go around gathering evidence on people’s views on Britain’s commitment to the BIOT? Conveniently for Cameron, the NGO Human Rights Watch, being blind as single-issue NGOs tend to be, called for such consultations with the illegal BIOT and refuses to include military base closure in its demands.
What does this BIOT enquiry even mean? What does it even imply”? With Mauritius’ 60 or so years’ of experience in this particular series of imperialist conspiracy to stealing and sub-let Diego Garcia, we know that it is a continuation of all the old lies, conspiracies and trickery. The history of the UK’s role on Diego Garcia is replete with lies, conspiracies and trickery. It is not LALIT that says so, but the highest British Courts and the ICJ. The fact that the documents proving the lies, conspiracies and trickery tend to remain top secret for 50 years, under the Official Secrets Act, means that it is always difficult to expose the tomfoolery while it is actually being perpetrated. But let us try this time. It is in plain sight.
The BIOT, remember, is the new colony illegally fabricated by the Mauritius’ colonial masters as they decolonized Mauritius, in order to steal some 60 islands of Mauritius, the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, which is what the UK wanted because the USA wanted it for its “full spectrum dominance”, or whatever the USA calls its now fast-crumbling hegemony. So Britain illegally cut off the Chagos from Mauritius in 1965 just before Independence in 1968, and set up its brand new “colony” called BIOT, while the world was decolonizing everywhere else. As Britain was doing the thievery, it, all the while, forcibly displaced the totality of the Chagossian population, dumping them most cruelly by the shipload on the dockside of Mauritius. The displacement to Mauritius came at the very time that Mauritius had internal refugees from the “race wars” that took place in the reaction’s attempt to prevent Independence by causing communal mayhem. Anyway, the BIOT was always illegal. It was never recognized by anyone other than the UK and USA.
To cut a long story of struggle very short, by February 2019, we got to the point where the ICJ actually decreed the BIOT illegal/ This was in an ICJ Advisory Opinion, after the UNGA had called for it, on the basis of a Resolution put forward by the whole of the African union, in the spirit of the decolonization of Africa. This means the highest court in the world decided that the BIOT is an illegal institution. So, we can take that as fact. It is illegal.
The UNGA then told Britain to get out of Chagos, including Diego Garcia.
So, successive British Prime Ministers – as the British State was shaking after its Brexit shock and going through Boris Johnson’s mad rule – hoodwinked the Mauritian State led by Pravind Jugnauth into a series of endless “negotiations”. During this time, inexplicably, the Mauritian State, like a dog conceding by not just putting its tail between its legs, but by actually rolling over on its back as well, offered to allow the USA to continue its illegal military occupation of Diego Garcia, while extending a begging hand for both rent money and the Chagossians to go back to only the other Chagossian islands, not Diego Garcia. So, another four years have passed, under the UK-USA’s illegal occupation and military occupation. And, of course, Britain was doing no more than time-wasting by hoodwinking the Mauritian State. As usual. And the Mauritian state was only losing its dignity. And along with it, we see that Human Rights Watch has lost its credibility, too, by working with the illegal occupier of Chagos, the BIOT. We wrote them not to do so. They replied as if they could not understand, or refused to contemplate, our reasoning.
And now when we get to January 2024, Britain comes and persists with its BIOT being the dictator of the whole of Chagos. Cameron just announces it. He does not even have the presence of mind to wait for the deadline of his supposed “enquiry”.
Of course, that was what was always going to happen. But, it has happened with indecent haste, as the whole West goes into wild turmoil after the ICJ last Friday put the UK and USA on a warning list for complicity with the crime of genocide by Israel.
Yes, Cameron comes along and says that all negotiations begun under the November 2022 agreement are over. Bad luck to Mauritius, to the African union, to the ICJ and to the UN General Assembly. Never mind the silly enquiry. Oh, how dreadfully typical of the perfidious Albion.
So, the military base continues to be a danger to the region. Its nuclear materials and arms continue to flaunt the binding Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear Arms Free Africa. The Chagossians in the UK are being strung along again. And the UK and USA continue to act like bandit states, outside of international law. The very arms-dealers, bank-rollers and immoral justifiers of the genocidal State of Israel, also continue to steal and occupy the land of Mauritius.
“International Law” is used to preach morals to other inferiors, but it is not for the “might is right” crowd like the USA and UK to respect. No, they just do as they please. Then, they start stuttering their stupid alternative to “international law”, their “rules-based international order”, whatever that might be, and when push comes to shove, they just become total pirates, robbing and stealing outside all international law or any rules at all.
They expand NATO in defiance of promises to Gorbatchev, encircling Russia. They continue, so far, to arm, fund, and give political cover to Israel even when Israel is plausibly now found by the ICJ, in a binding judgment, to be committing acts of genocide, and is in urgent and imminent danger of continuing to commit acts of genocide, and it has tolerated genocidal incitation. And now, Cameron also comes and says the UK and USA will keep their forward fortress – their military base – on Diego Garcia and will hang on to all the Chagos Islands. The UK and USA will continue to use the land for which we, the people of Mauritius, are democratically responsible for, for their killing, their torture and rendition, their illegal wars?
Yes, following the ICJ judgment on Chagos, the UNGA on 22 May 2019 gave a massive vote declaring the continued military occupation of part of Mauritius illegal. There were only three miserable countries that voted with the USA and UK – Israel, Hungary and Australia. How is that for diplomatic isolation?* The UN gave Britain six months to get up and get out.
After that, to put the proverbial nail in the coffin of the legality of the UK’s colonial project for Chagos, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) judgment of January 2021 gave binding force to the ICJ Opinion and the UNGA vote. Its judgment is binding on all countries, and it is now the duty of all states in the UN to help get the UK out of this part of Mauritius, called Chagos. Since then, all UN bodies have recognized that Mauritius includes the whole of Chagos: the new UN maps make it clear, and even the BIOT postage stamps have been made invalid due to illegality. Only Human Rights Watch recognizes the BIOT as rightful owner of Chagos.
Now, four years since the beginning of the legal unraveling of the UK-USA occupation of Chagos began, the UK-USA are still military occupiers, still in flagrant violation of international law on decolonization, and international law in general.
Now the UK-USA have brought in the new man, Cameron, who is a former Prime Minister, no less, so not so much a “new man” after all, to play the old colonial game. And he is reviving the long-time “Plan B” that the British have always had just up their sleeve. It is a rather silly ploy to try and offer an illegal referendum of sorts, or a “survey” or a “call for evidence” or something, some kind of “consultations” so as to attempt to give a “legal framework” fig leaf for their illegal crimes of occupation. [For more details on previous threats of this “Plan B” just google “Plan B + Chagos on our website www.lalitmauritius.org]
Single-Issue NGOs Again and Again Mess Up and Abet the UK-USA Plan B
LALIT has often warned of the dangers of “single issue” politics, that the ONG-ization ** of the struggle has worsened. On this actual issue, here is how Greenpeace messed up and abetted the UK and was found out by Wikileaks.
Greenpeace, UK’s Illegal Marine Park in Chagos and the Wikileaks Cables
In 2010, at the very moment that LALIT was building up to its “International Action Conference on Diego-Chagos”, what did the British Government do? It launched “public consultations” – does that not sound similar to the new “call for evidence” amongst Chagossians – from Nov 2009 to March 2010 in both the UK and Mauritius amongst Chagossians, for their Plan to create a new Marine Protected Area over the whole of the Chagos. (These guys have no sense of irony, and seem oblivious to a polluting USA military base being in the middle of the pristine Marine Park thing, a base notorious for nuclear pollution!). It set up a “thingamebob” for this: “The Chagos Archipelago: Its Nature and the Future”. This new “call for evidence” that Cameron and Co. are launching as from December is uncannily similar. Once again it is aimed at masking the imperialists’ conspiracies to maintain illegal occupation, occupation now decreed illegal by both the ICJ and the ITLOS, and voted for massively at the UNGA.
So last time, once it had done its “consultations”, in April 2010, the UK decreed its “Marine Protected Area” around Chagos. Prestigious, big environment NGOs including Greenpeace, with whom we in LALIT had previously worked to get a ship to go to Diego Garcia, fell right into the trap set for them by the UK Government. single issue organizations are like horses in blinkers: they have tunnel vision. So, the UK says “Marine Protected Area”, and these NGOs don’t even notice that the said Marine Protected Area does not belong to the UK, and they support what is essentially a “land-grab” in disguise.
LALIT denounced Greenpeace for this single-issue mentality, and drew attention to the irony of the USA’s military base plumb in the middle of the thing, but to no avail. Greenpeace remained adamant, replying to us with disdain. So Greenpeace failed to notice that the Marine Park was in violation of international law, and of the Rights of the Sea, and of the Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear Arms Free Africa. And they went on supporting the UK government. They were sure their folly would never be exposed. But it was.
At the time, the wonderful journalist and brave man Julian Assange, today held in British prison waiting for a decision on extradition to the USA on charges of making public illegal acts by the UK and USA. Well, one of these cables Julian Assange published with the help of his Wikileaks team, proved that the UK-USA whole Marine Protected Area plot was no more than a cover for keeping control over the Chagos including Diego Garcia and preventing the Chagossians from returning home. In 2015, Mauritius won its first international case, in part because of the Wikileaks Cables exposing this. The then Navin Ramgoolam Government went to the Law of the Sea tribunal and the Marine Protected Area was declared illegal. Greenpeace became a laughing stock. LALIT was in the right. And as far as we know, though in the wrong, Greenpeace has made no public apology to the world.
[For details read LALIT member Ram Seegobin’s “Open Letter to Greenpeace not to Fall into UK Trap” dated 10 Feb 2010. Also use search words on our website like Greenpeace, Wikileaks, UNCLOS, MPA.]
Now NGO “Human Rights Watch” Falls into new UK Trap
On 5 January 2023, LALIT wrote to Human Rights Watch (HRW). On our website you can read our “Urgent Open Letter to Human Rights Watch – Be Careful not to Fall into U.K. Trap on Chagos Issue!” in which we warn HRW not to go any further into the UK trap set for them. We told them how Greenpeace, by being “single issue minded” had fallen into a trap. We warned them they were being drawn in as part of a new UK-USA conspiracy to legitimize the BIOT, following it being declared illegal.
When we see the content of the new enquiry that the UK launched in December, we see how NGOs around a single issue, invariably end up making themselves available to the imperialist plotters. They act as enablers to the imperialist plotters.
According the communiqué of the UK Parliamentary sub-committee, they are collecting evidence in writing on the future engagement of the UK Government relative to the Chagossian diaspora, for when BIOT will decide their future and the future of the BIOT, and about what funds (of course, money is dangled in most plots). But, for goodness sake, the BIOT is illegal. It is now known to be illegal. The BIOT, legally speaking, has no future role in Chagos. This is the truth. .
Add to this, the UK Parliamentary sub-committee, wants to gather views on what consequences there will be, if you don’t mind, should the UK Government not reach agreement with the Republic of Mauritius about supposedly “returning” Chagos to Mauritius. They are collecting views and evidence to justify the unjustifiable, i.e. on how to continue their illegal military base, even after the ICJ judgment and the UNGA well-nigh unanimous resolution.
This UK enquiry and its call for evidence and witness statements is also about the strategic importance of the future of the BIOT, as well as the importance to the environment of the Chagos. The new version of this old “Plan B” thus remains on the table. The Plan B all along, is at some point, to get around the international law “problem” whereby any referendum for independence must be of the whole people of the colony, in this case, the whole of the then, in 1968, people of Mauritius. It is illegal to cut out a portion of the people and ask their views and call it “self-determination”. This, the ICJ has settled once and for all.
So, once again the UK, when Cameron came out with his recent declaration that negotiations are over, and that the UK-USA are keeping Chagos, it means they are proving that they were just using HRW and its inappropriate demands. The UK succeeds in making the Mauritian Government and the HRW act against the interests of world peace, of decolonization, and of international law.
LALIT guards against this kind of weakness in the face of a powerful enemy by a principled stand on the Diego-Chagos issue that unites all the issues concerned. We have managed this principled stand for 45 years and intend to continue it:
- To decolonize the Republic of Mauritius, including Chagos!
- To re-unify the Chagos and Chagossians with Mauritius and Mauritians, after the colonial tearing apart!
- The unconditional right to return of all Chagossians, with full reparations for their suffering, and the free circulation of all Mauritians over the entire territory of Mauritius pu everyone who belongs to the country.
- To close the military base that the USA runs on Diego Garcia! It is illegal. The UK-USA must be made to do an ecological clean-up of the land and the sea of Chagos that permits life to begin again for Chagossians as part of Mauritius!
Only be unifying all these demands do we make progress against the empire.
World Peace is on the Agenda: The Republic of Mauritius has a responsibility to close the base down
Faced with a new set of plots and refusals to complete decolonization, we can expect a new UK and USA “Plan B”. There will be more mock-consultations of an illegal nature about an illegal BIOT. It is time for the Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth to withdraw his offer of a lease for 99-years, or even one day, of Diego Garcia for the purposes of a forward fortress for the USA. The UK and USA are trying to draw Mauritius into some new illegal, even criminal, deal. This must be resisted. The base represents a constant menace to peace.
Today Israel’s Genocide, armed and financed by the USA-UK, against the people of Gaza has put Peace firmly on the world agenda
The ICJ has decided that the huge demonstrations world-wide are right. The ICJ calls for Israel to stop killing Palestinians. Israel must stop injuring Palestinians. Israel must stop destroying Gaza. Israel must stop inciting people to genocide. And Israel must create the conditions for the means of life to be brought into Gaza. That means a ceasefire and the end of the siege.
Now we will see if the USA and UK will be complicit with genocide. This too constitutes genocide.
All over the world, there are also demonstrations against US and NATO military base, and against the arms industry. There are industrial actions to prevent ships and aircraft moving arms to Israel. These action – in the UK, USA, Spain, Australia, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Irak, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, all over the world, will now have with them the ICJ binding decision that it is imperative to prevent the genocide that is plausibly unfurling in Gaza.
We, the people of Mauritius, including Chagossians, must add our voice and our actions and call for the closure of the base on Diego Garcia, as part of a world-wide move towards decolonization, demilitarization, the end to occupation and the beginning of peace.
LALIT, 28 January 2024 (updated from a week ago)
* (The Maldives, which originally voted against over another territorial issue, subsequently withdrew its vote.)
** Term coined by Arundhati Roy
