But some official crimes in history seem to be difficult for the powers-that-be to keep covered up. The House of Lords October judgment denying the people of the Chagos Islands – the Chagossians – the right of return to their home has brought the shocking events that took place behind the backs of the British people, under Harold Wilson’s Labour government, out into the open. People in Britain are now hearing, often for the first time, about the ugly events that took place then. It wasn’t so long ago.

The ‘triple-crime’ on Diego Garcia – part of Mauritius – was committed 40 years ago by the governments of Britain and the United States. The story has been brought to public attention by political struggles, often by the most unexpected people: women in street demonstrations in Mauritius; a Mauritian electrician filing cases in the British courts; small grass-roots anti-base groups setting up a worldwide network with the bold aim of abolishing all foreign military bases; and quiet researchers in Europe documenting renditions for torture.

At the time of the events in question, Britain was the old empire retreating from its colonies, while the USA was the new one, but already buckling under pending defeat in Vietnam. They jointly conspired to take for their military a spot on the globe that would be supremely isolated from any social control.

The triple-crime I: theft of territory

The first part of the original ‘triple-crime’ was theft. The British government stole the inhabited islands of the Chagos archipelago, including Diego Garcia, from Mauritius. It renamed this new figment of a colony the ‘British Indian Ocean Territory’. The illegal deed was done by a cabinet decree called a ‘Queen’s Order in Council’, dated 1965. The role of the US was receiver of the stolen goods.

The illegality of Britain’s occupation is evident from African Union resolutions, United Nations resolutions, including 1514, and resolutions in the Non-Aligned Movement, the international organisation of states that do not consider themselves loyal to any great power. What Britain did is against the UN Charter itself: a colonising power can’t splinter territory in the run-up to independence. So, today, a bit of Africa is still colonised. The Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear Arms-Free Africa, signed in 1996, had to have little dotted lines put around Diego Garcia.

The triple-crime II: mass kidnapping

The second part of the triple-crime is what the House of Lords judgment is about. The British government pretended there weren’t people on the islands, even as they passed an immigration ordinance (1971) banishing them. Then, any Chagossian who had to go to the main island of Mauritius to visit family or to buy furniture was told at the shipping agent’s counter, when they went to book their return trip to Chagos, that ‘the islands are closed’.

The British starved a thousand people off the islands. They closed down food supplies. They gassed everyone’s dogs. They forced the remaining stubborn men and women into the holds of ships and dumped them on the quay-side of the harbour of Mauritius’s capital, Port Louis, where they were taken into the homes of the poor and the unemployed. Many died of a strange illness they call lasagren, or homesickness. All of this has been described very vividly in a series of court judgments in the British courts.

Ansie Jaffar came over to have her baby in a hospital in the capital, and was stranded. She began what turned out to be a two-year separation from her family. Aurelie Talate told me how she lost two of her little children within weeks of landing in Mauritius.

The triple-crime III: the military base

The theft and the banishment were driven by the third part of the triple-crime, and its prime motivation: the US plan to cover half of that beautiful island with concrete bunkers and runways for B52s. They set up a huge military base.

The life on the base was very different from that of the people who had been banished. The islanders had harvested coconuts, cracked them open, stored them and sent them to Mauritius, or worked for companies in various other jobs. It was hard work. There were ironsmiths and carpenters, storekeepers and dockers. And they fished in the lagoon of an afternoon. They kept their goats and pigs and chickens. They grew vegetable gardens and spices around their houses.

Now, everything has changed. When not doing military work, the US top brass have their club with amenities for rest and recreation, the officers have another, the ordinary soldiers and base employees a third, and the foreign workers a fourth. No one is allowed to go a club up. You can go one club down, but only one. They must wonder why they are not allowed to visit the other half of Diego Garcia, where the tombstones of generations of Chagossians fall to ruin.

The US has, in turn, perpetrated further crimes from Diego Garcia. It is from here that the B52 took off when it bombed a wedding procession between two villages in Afghanistan. And from Diego Garcia that more B52s bombarded Baghdad during the ‘shock and awe’ offensive at the start of the last Gulf War. It is here that illegal prisoners have been hidden, tortured and rendered as part of the ‘war on terror’ – at Camp Justice, as it’s called.

How many people in the world realise the degree of cruelty and the depth of conspiracy that was so recently perpetrated by the US and UK, in the mid-1960s and early 1970s? This did not happen hundreds of years ago. Individual businessmen implicated later became politicians, including Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s ex-secretary of state, and Dick Cheney, US vice-president – not to mention Halliburton.

The political struggles

After independence in 1968, the Mauritian state pushed the issue onto the agenda at various international forums. The stakes were raised, but the Mauritian government always retreated in exchange for trade preferences.

The real struggles took place among the people. By the mid-1970s there were street demonstrations organised by the workerist party, the Mouvement Militant Mauricien. There were social struggles built up by the Organisation Fraternel, and there were hunger strikes, petitions and street demonstrations from 1978 onwards.

The high point of this political action was the 1981 nine-woman hunger strike out in the open in the Company Gardens in the middle of Port Louis. After a week of the hunger strike, there were three days of women’s street demonstrations that had the active support of the women in the political group Lalit de Klas, now LALIT. One hundred and fifty women ran through the streets each day, shouting and holding placards. On the last day, the riot police were sent in to clear us away by force. We resisted with umbrellas and fists, and empty bottles of Vichy water from the hunger strike. The riot police retreated into their jeeps and drove off, but eight of us were arrested and tried under the repressive Public Order Act.

This demonstration was what put the issue on to the political agenda. The Muvman Liberasyon Fam, a women’s group in Mauritius, brought in support for the Chagossians from women’s organisations worldwide: from Africa, the Indian sub-continent, Europe, Latin America. One US women’s organisation sent us a telegram in reply to one of ours that had read, ‘Request support for Diego Garcia women on trial for peaceful demonstration.’ Theirs read, in telegraphic language: ‘Who is Diego Garcia? Stop Make sure it’s a women’s issue.’

The demonstrations introduced Diego Garcia to the world – and the ensuing grass-roots support forced the UK to pay out compensation to the Chagossians. Everyone got money enough for a plot of land and a house. And for the next 15 years the struggle went on more modestly. LALIT always brought together the three aspects of the issue: the military base, the forcible evictions, and the reunification of the country of Mauritius.

Ten years ago, LALIT, together with the then minority party of Chagossians led by Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, called a united front of political, women’s and trade union organisations and held forums and seminars. Bancoult pursued legal strategies in the British courts, and after victory on the right to return in 2000, he and LALIT planned a ‘peace flotilla’ to go to Chagos. This planned event is referred to often in the House of Lords judgment. LALIT also joined the worldwide ‘no bases’ movement, bringing the Diego Garcia struggle on to the agenda of the anti-war movement. In Mumbai, at the World Social Forum in 2004, it rallied support for the peace flotilla.

The House of Lords judgement

The October 2008 House of Lords judgement came as a shock to Olivier Bancoult and the Chagossians in his group. In the courts that heard their case previously, a total of nine British judges had found they have a right of return – none were against. But in the House of Lords three of the five judges found against them.

The reasoning of the Law Lords is based on a number of points. The majority found that:

n The ancient form of legislating through an Order in Council that was used in 2004 to prevent the Chagossians returning, despite having won their case in 2000, was perfectly legal.

n The interests of the whole of the UK and its colonies is what an Order in Council must cater to, not just to Chagossians.

n Defence of the UK and its ally, the USA, is important enough
to justify the Order.

n When Robin Cook as foreign secretary said the government would not appeal against the judgment of 2000, this was not a statement of policy that was binding; it was contingent upon a ‘feasibility study’.

n The feasibility study showed that ‘civilised society’ could not easily exist on the islands, and if it could, it would be too costly.

n Because the Chagossians were not actually living there, even though they had been allowed to from 2000, they were not suffering infringements of their human rights by being prevented from returning.

n They were seeking funding not human rights redress by going to court for the right to return.

In short, the majority judgment is a victory for what the French call ‘raison d’etat’. You don’t need arguments for ‘raison d’etat’. The majority of judges found the archaic Queen’s decrees still operative, as well as the dictates of the US military today.

In a fine minority judgment, Lord Bingham, the presiding judge, argued that the Order in Council as a method of legislating is being phased out, and cannot thus be used in order to do new things not already done in this undemocratic way. He also said he found the US military demands ‘highly imaginative’.

Olivier Bancoult and his lawyers will be continuing with an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. If they win, they get the right to return but as British subjects. No doubt, the US and UK would then use administrative means to stop them actually going home.

Next step: decolonisation

The political situation, meanwhile, is in a state of flux. The financial crisis exposes US economic disorder, at a time when it is already suffering military overreach in Iraq and Afghanistan. It closes bases every year now. And in September this year, the Ecuadorian people showed us all that you can mobilise and win a referendum, and you can get a new constitution, and it can, among other things, abolish foreign military bases.

So, it is now time to mobilise for complete Mauritian decolonisation, meaning getting Britain out of the British Indian Ocean Territory altogether. This way the Chagossians’ right to return will be secured in dignity. This will involve forcing the Mauritian government to take Britain to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

The process of ‘assimilation’ into British society is seriously affecting the community. British passports were offered to Chagossians after the 2000 judgment, and many have already moved to the UK. Some, though, are still holding out. Assimilation is the British state’s fall-back strategy from which to oppose the Mauritian claim of sovereignty – draw enough Chagossians into Britain so that in a referendum a majority choose to stay British.

The US base on Diego Garcia must be closed down and the environment cleaned up, so that the island can be returned to its full beauty, and the Chagossians must be part of this process, with proper reparations being made by the UK and the US. These are the demands that people in Mauritius have been mobilising behind. Nearly all the working-class organisations and women’s groups are already backing them. Most Chagossians are too.

So, lalit kontinye, the struggle continues, as we say it here.