Ben Fogle: My fight for the forgotten islanders

Crawley, an unassuming town in the West Sussex commuter belt, holds a dark secret. Hidden within its streets is a story of tragedy and deceit that has left thousands of refugees living in misery for 40 years, exiled from their homeland by a conniving and unrepentant government. It is a story – described by some as one of the darkest days in British overseas policy – that has transfixed me for more than a decade and shaken my very principles on conservation, ecology and the environment movement.

Lies, bribes and Wikileaks – this tale has it all. It starts in the mid-Sixties when the US, worried about possible Soviet expansion, was seeking a base in the Indian Ocean. The catch? They wanted somewhere without an indigenous “population problem” that could interfere with the base’s operation.

Britain, it hoped, could offer a solution. Mauritius and her dependencies had been part of the British Empire. In 1964, independence was finally granted on the understanding that the Chagos archipelago would be excluded from the deal as, it was claimed, it was of “significant” geographical interest to Britain.

In the same year, a secret British-American conference was held in London. In the chilling words of official jargon, the islands “were closed” and, in an exchange of letters never shown to either Parliament or the US Congress, a defence agreement was signed leasing the Chagos Islands to the US for 50 years with the option of an extra 20-year extension. The deal was struck on the understanding that the entire island chain was “fully sanitised” and “cleansed” of life. In exchange, Britain would receive an $11million subsidy on the US’s Polaris submarine nuclear deterrent.

But there was a problem: the UK had overlooked the existence of the native population of about 1,800 Chagosian people, mainly descendents of slaves, living on the islands. And, as members of an overseas territory, they were British nationals. Yet it was vital for the British government, in its own words, “to maintain the pretence there were no permanent inhabitants” on the islands. This was because permanent residents would need to be recognised as people with democratic rights. So the islanders effectively became non-people.

In the summer of 1971, a group of Whitehall officials arrived with an eviction order and informed the inhabitants that they were now illegal squatters. The islanders were duly deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles, families split between islands in the hasty removal. In Mauritius, they were sent to a derelict housing estate where they made shelters for themselves in the stables and pigsties. It was worse still in the Seychelles, where they were housed in the prison.

This was a living nightmare for the Chagossians – but it was only the beginning. Soon they learned they would never be going home again, and that their British citizenship had been revoked. They were offered a mere £325 per person as compensation for losing their homes, their livelihoods, their history.

Before the islands could be handed over to the Americans, the British Army had one final task. They rounded up the 800 pet dogs that had been left and gassed them. “I first made the building secure, then introduced into it pipes attached to the exhaust pipes of US vehicles,” reported Mr Moulinie, the former UK-appointed official ordered to complete the “cleansing”. The islanders had been removed, their dogs gassed: the transformation could begin.

I have been involved with the plight of the Chagos islanders for a decade, ever since I visited the islands, which I had to do illegally. I was there researching my book, The Teatime Islands, about Britain’s remaining Overseas Territories, and chartered a boat from the Maldives, 500 miles to the north. It felt eerie walking through Chagos’s ghost towns frozen in time. Vegetation had smothered many of the buildings, choking the stones in the graveyard, while sunlight streaked through the stained-glass windows of the deserted church. I was doubly horrified to find dozens of international travellers living among the ruins while the islanders remained pariahs, exiled by their own government.

There was a glimmer of hope in 2000, when the Chagossians went to the High Court and won the right to go home. The government, advised by the then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, also ruled that the Chagos people could have their British passports returned. The islanders, now numbering a mere 450, celebrated their victory and flew to the UK, settling in Crawley, the nearest town to Gatwick, where they awaited their return to the islands.

However, on Cook’s death, Jack Straw reneged his predecessor’s promise and took the matter to an Order in Council – hiding it from the scrutiny of parliament – to get the decision he wanted: that the Chagos people could not go home. The case is still currently waiting to be reviewed in the European Court of Human Rights.

Last year, I visited Crawley for a day celebrating Chagossian culture. Hundreds of Chagossians attended with photos, paintings, diaries and food that represented their vanishing culture. “I have one dying wish,” whispered an elderly Chagossian, still traumatised by her forced exile. “To set foot on my island and clear my husband’s grave. Then I can die happy.”

It seems a simple wish, but one which, in a new twist, has now been thwarted by the powerful environmental lobby. Last year, the islands were declared a marine sanctuary in which no people would be allowed to live, news that was greeted with delight by environmentalists but was condemned by human rights groups. Mauritius was furious with the decision. In 1965, Britain had promised that the Chagos Islands would be given to them when they were no longer needed for defence purposes.

“This has nothing to do with the environment,” says the Mauritian High Commissioner to London. “They want to prevent islanders from going back and keep these islands for ever. But we are not going to let this go.”

Their concerns have been confirmed by Wikileak revelations released in December that have cast doubts on the environmental debate. According to the leaks, the Foreign Office had no regrets over the illegal action to expel them from the islands, and had been planning for some time to destroy their campaign to return home. Colin Roberts, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office director, told the US political councillor that there would be no “Man Fridays” on the uninhabited islands.

Furthermore, according to US Embassy cables, the government pushed through the marine sanctuary as it would make a “good news story” for Brown’s “beleaguered” government “as the creation of a marine reserve would almost certainly enjoy the support of most Britons”.

In a section of the document headed “Je Ne Regrette Rien”, Mr Roberts said: “We do not regret the removal of the population.” And he told the meeting that establishing a marine park would “in effect put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago’s former residents”. When it was pointed out to him by the US officials that the Chagos people continue to demand a return to their homeland, he replied that the UK’s “environmental lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians’ advocates”. It was also asserted that the Conservatives, if in power after the next general election, would not support a Chagossian right of return.

Last month, the Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam announced that his government had filed a case before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg. “By creating the protected marine area, Great Britain did not take into account Mauritius’ rights and those of the Chagossians it shamefully evicted from Chagos,” he said.

Opponents say that the islands lack the resources for a return, but, when I was there, I found clean, fresh water boreholes; many of the houses could be repaired. With subsistence fishing, they could rebuild their community with minimal impact. In any case, most of the islanders wish to return to the outer islands, more than a 100 miles from the high security of Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia, the largest atoll in the Chagos chain, with its former RAF Second World War runway and huge lagoon, has been transformed into one of the world’s biggest and most secretive military bases, home to 4,000 US troops and civilian contractors, who use it as a base for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When I was originally asked to support the creation of the sanctuary, I was assured that the protectorate would include a clause that would allow the Chagossians to return home. Yet it now appears that, once again, the government has used environmental blackmail to get its own way. I was duped into supporting a scheme in violation of basic human rights, and I have since spoken to a number of scientists who agree that they too were misled.

By reneging on my support, I am essentially going against the RSPB, Greenpeace, the Shark Trust and even my old friend TV presenter Kate Humble, all of whom have pledged their full support for the sanctuary. Instead, I have agreed to become joint patron of the UK Chagos Support Association and will be helping the islanders in a final bid to go home.

Financing the new marine reserve is a huge concern. The area is patrolled by the Pacific Marlin, a vessel that costs £1.7 million a year to operate. Until recently, licences sold to French, Spanish, Korean and Taiwanese tuna-fishing vessels contributed about £1 million a year to the cost. A faster patrol ship will probably be necessary to prevent illegal fishing in the new reserve, but who will foot the bill? And all this at a time when the Government is selling off its own forests and cutting back on National Park spending. It simply doesn’t add up. After all, wouldn’t the islanders make the best wardens?

It seems to me that governments are increasingly using environmental causes to “greenwash” issues. I remain a passionate advocate for the environmental movement, but we must not allow ourselves to be dazzled by “green” policy, blinding us to the bigger picture.

We fight tooth and nail to avoid animals becoming extinct. Surely we owe the same to an island people.

* For more information, visit www.chagossupport.org.uk