Britain blocks islanders from going home.

More than three decades after British islands in the Indian Ocean were depopulated to make way for an American base, the Government will ask the courts today to ban the inhabitants from ever returning home.

The Chagos Islands, forming the British Indian Ocean Territory, are one of the world's most isolated archipelagos, found some 2,200 miles east of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast.

At America's request, Britain cleared the islands of all 2,000 of their inhabitants – referred to by one Foreign Office diplomat as "Tarzans and Men Fridays" – between 1966 and 1973. After this, a US naval and air base was constructed on the biggest island, Diego Garcia.

The High Court has twice given the islanders, known as the Chagossians, the right to return and Britain had initially accepted the ruling when the islanders won their first case in 2000.

But today the Government will try and overturn a second ruling in the Court of Appeal.

"The evidence points to this being done largely at Washington's request," said Clive Baldwin, from the Minority Rights Group, which is campaigning for the Chagossians. "After September 11 and with the island being used as a base for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military value of Diego Garcia has increased."

Royal Marines help Marie Rita Isou ashore to tend to family graves on Peros Banhos Island last April

When the islanders won their first case in 2000, the Government accepted the ruling. Robin Cook, then the foreign secretary, said: "The Government will not be appealing." He declined to defend "what was done or said 30 years ago".

The Government issued an order allowing the Chagossians, who were deported to Mauritius, to return home, while reserving Diego Garcia for military use. But after the terrorist attacks on September 11, this policy was abruptly reversed.

So the islanders win there case in 2000, the late Robin Cook said that the Government would not be appealing against that. Then after 9/11 they change their minds and tell them that they can not return home. After all the island is vital to our interests in the war on terror and all that, Jack Straw then issued an order in 2004 stopping them from returning and the courts then overturned that, now our beloved Government is trying to overturn that decision to keep the islanders off their ancestral home once and for all.

Nice to see we have a standard policy here, first remove the locals then say they can go back, then try to say no you can never go back. Just like everything else this inept bloody shower of a government touches, they royally fuck up.

Their comment to the press on this was the classic "Our hands are tied by the ongoing legal action," - Amoral fuckers our government the lot of them. Still you have to admire the governments bare faced nerve in saying that in order to protect our freedoms and liberties we have have suppress that of the islanders.

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Tags: Chagos Islands
Diego Garcia

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