Britain and the USA caught in their own colonization-denial trap – L’Express, too?
02.09.2024
Three years ago when the American and British Authorities that illegally occupy Diego Garcia arrested a group of Sri Lankan refugees found drifting precariously in a little boat lost somewhere near Diego Garcia on its way to Canada, they were expecting to be able to transfer such “illegal migrants” swiftly from Diego Garcia where the USA-UK are illegal occupiers – out of sight, as it were, and then hopefully out of mind – to Rwanda. The illegality of the UK-USA sequestrating these people would this way, they hoped, not be noticed or, if noticed, be quickly forgotten.
But colonial “logic” has passed its sale-by date. The illegality of UK-USA sequestration is being noticed, and its logic questioned. It is not being forgotten. Look what is happening.
As everyone in the world now knows, the UK and the USA are in open defiance of the findings of the world’s top court, the International Court of Justice, which was requested by the UN General Assembly, no less, to statute on the legality of continued UK-US occupation. The ICJ found that Chagos, including Diego Garcia, is part of Mauritius. The ICJ found that Mauritius has sovereignty over Chagos, including Diego Garcia. The ICJ found that Chagos, including Diego Garcia, must be de-colonized at once. That is the truth of the matter.
L’Express, however, though it is a newspaper published, printed and read in Mauritius, does not know that Mauritius has sovereignty. So, in our previous paragraph, we should have written not “As everyone in the world now knows”, but “As everyone in the world, except the Express newspaper, now knows”.
L’Express newspaper does not know. It says Britain has sovereignty. Or is L’Express hiding the truth on purpose? Or is it perhaps confused as to the meaning of the terms “decolonization” and “sovereignty”? Or is it after all merely a vassal of the US-UK empire? On Saturday, in a big article that starts with a Page 1 banner, this newspaper writes the following, “Bien que sous souveraineté britannique (sic), cette l’ile [Diego Garcia] est louée aux Etats Unis …” (31 August). Diego Garcia is under British sovereignty, according to L’Express. False. Yet its own “Code of Conduct” says that its staff works, “dans le strict respect de la vérité et avec un grand souci d’exactitude”.
British sovereignty? Where does L’Express get this idea from?
The only countries that did not vote for the illegal occupier Britain and its illegal tenant the US, to get out of Chagos including Diego Garcia at the UN General Assembly following the ICJ judgment were Israel – the state carrying out a genocide live on TV right now – the right-wing Orban government in Rumania, and Australia under its previous right-wing government. (For the record, Maldives did vote for with the USA-UK, but then withdrew its support afterwards publicly.) And, alongside these isolated true believers, sits L’Express.
But now, the hope the UK had of hiding the poor Sri Lankan refugees in Rwanda has gone for good. The whole Rwanda sub-contracting of refugees nightmare that the Conservative Party set up was, again and again, declared illegal by the Courts, and then the new Labour government came to power on a promise to shut it down altogether. Which it has done.
But the refugees under arrest there, or more accurately, sequestrated illegally there, continue to suffer. And so, we are now witness to the continuation of the torture of people illegally detained on Diego Garcia, just as in the past there was rendering and torture of prisoners illegally kidnapped by the USA.
We say these refugees, including children, are sequestrated illegally on Diego Garcia because it is true.
Sovereignty over Chagos, including Diego Garcia, is Mauritian, and it is not the Mauritian police who have arrested the refugees there. The Mauritian Constitution is strict as to who is permitted to detain people by force, and under what conditions. It does not include those detaining the 64 Sri Lankans. By what authority have the UK and USA held these 64 people, including children? None whatsoever. They hold them illegally. And even when a British judge was on her way to hear their habeas corpus case, according to British law, supposing it applied, what happened then? The USA armed forces prevented the judge from leaving the UK, as she was headed for the airport to go to hear their case on Diego Garcia, threatening her with being deprived of food, transport and everything else necessary for a Supreme Court to sit and hear a case.
Now the case is fixed once again.
It is fixed for two weeks from today, 16 September, before the colonial BIOT supposed “Supreme Court”, a Kangaroo Court if ever there was one, the Court of an illegal occupier, a Court that is, in addition, subject to the “veto” of the illegal tenant the USA, the “receiver of the stolen goods” that the Chagos Islands are. This unfortunate “BIOT Supreme Court” judge is trying to put legal order in the vestigial rump of the illegal British colonial empire, Diego Garcia! The last African colony is now exposed. And the USA is also exposed.
LALIT, as readers know, has called on the UK lawyers of the refugees, including children, to contact the Mauritian Supreme Court for redress.
We now call on the Mauritian Government to call on the International Red Cross to visit the poor refugees stranded there, sequestrated by an illegal occupation, maltreated, and in danger of further maltreatment. They are imprisoned in a camp. The children are exposed to abuse. They are denied schooling. The adults are denied all redress. It is an emergency.
LALIT 2 September 2024
PS We note that in today’s L’Express in another article, this time signed Narain Jasodanand, that he refers to “pourparler” between the British and Mauritian political leaders on sovereignty, and whether the British would be “prets a render la souveraineté”, implying they have it, but then even asks “Négocierait-on sur la souveraineté mauricienne, reconnue par la Cour international de justice en 2019?” So, maybe it is not unanimous in L’Express that sovereignty is British?
