The UK Chagos Support Association

A play inspired by the eviction of the Chagos islands, A Few Man Fridays, is playing at London’s Riverside Studios from 10 February to 10 March, produced by Cardboard Citizens.

The title comes from a real historical quote by a Foreign Office official when the eviction was being planned in 1966, showing the British government’s disdain for the Chagossian people. With his superiors saying the islands must be made empty except for the seagulls, DH Greenhill wrote in a note: “Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius, etc.”

Cardboard Citizens, which puts on plays performed by homeless and displaced people, stages the story in its trademark style where personal testimony and historical narrative meet to forge epic, mesmerising theatre.

Moving, gripping and funny, A Few Man Fridays unearths an inglorious episode of British history, and explores the fantasies of the powerful set against the dreams of the powerless.

To find out more and to watch the video trailer for the play, click here.

Photo: Gail Johnson

The Chagos Islands (BIOT) All-Party Parliamentary Group held its 26th meeting on 15 December 2011 in Parliament. The meeting was preceded by a 45 minute meeting with the Foreign Secretary in the FCO, attended by 8 members from all parties and both Houses, the Coordinator and two officials from Overseas Territories Department.

Members expressed their views on a wide range of issues including review of the 1966 UK/US agreement, defence and security, pre-election Coalition commitments to the Chagossians, the case at Strasbourg, the UK’s human rights obligations, feasibility of resettlement (sea-levels etc), availability of funding, the need for a new independent study, the legitimacy of the MPA, conservation and future sovereignty. Members urged the Foreign Secretary to discuss any US defence concerns with Hilary Clinton directly and to seize the opportunity of the 2014 review of the 1966 agreement in order to make provision for the return of the Chagossians to the Outer Islands. The Chairman of the APPG suggested that one way of making progress would be to establish in the FCO a cross cutting unit, independent of Overseas Territories Department, which would bring all issues from human rights to conservation together, dedicated to bringing about an overall settlement, and which would call on expertise from outside the FCO. With political will and compromise, solutions could be found. It was pointed out that a speech by the Foreign Secretary entitled ‘The best Diplomatic Service in the world: strengthening the FCO’ noted that “our diplomats excel at finding deft, realistic and workable solutions”.This offered cause for optimism.

Mr Hague acknowledged that participants represented a wide cross section of Parliament and that they possessed in-depth knowledge and considerable experience of the issues. He had listened carefully to their suggestions but whilst he was sympathetic to many of the views expressed he could not take matters forward until the court cases had been concluded when a different situation could prevail. He understood that a decision by Strasbourg might take until the early summer. Members urged him, in the meantime, to take forward discussions with the US and Mauritius. Mr Hague reiterated FCO positions on defence and feasibility, whilst recognising that the practical aspect of resettlement was secondary to the principle of the right to return. He mentioned the strengthening of links between the FCO and Chagossian groups through meetings and visits. Mr Hague agreed to a further meeting with the Group after the ECtHR had given its decision. The Chairman thanked the Foreign Secretary for a cordial meeting and said that the Group would write to him about the issues which members had raised. Mr Hague welcomed this.

The subsequent meeting of the APPG reviewed the meeting with the Foreign Secretary and felt that it had been useful and encouraging. It was agreed that the Chairman would table a request for a 90 minute Commons debate early next year. The APPG took note of the Chairman’s response, on behalf of the Group, to the FCO Consultation on the Overseas Territories. The Coordinator reported on the Linnean Society and CCT MPA conference on 24 November which he had attended on behalf of the Group, and also on his recent visit to Strasbourg.

The next meeting will be on 1 February 2012.

Photo: Gail Johnson

The Chagos Islands (BIOT) All-Party Parliamentary Group held its 25th meeting on 23 November 2011.

The Group reviewed recent developments and the state of play on the current legal and parliamentary actions. The Group discussed further exchanges of correspondence between the Vice Chairman Andrew Rosindell and the FCO Minister Henry Bellingham. As several of the issues remained unanswered the Group felt that Mr Rosindell should persevere with the correspondence. The Group was pleased to note that the postponed meeting with the Foreign Secretary had been fixed for 15 December. Members were keen to discuss a wide range of issues at that meeting. The Group were surprised that the US Ambassador had not yet answered a request for a meeting made in a letter from the Chairman on 10 June and asked for this to be pursued actively with the US Embassy. The Group noted the comments on Question Time on 3 November by Benjamin Zephaniah concerning the undemocratic use of the 2004 Orders in Council banning the Chagossians from returning to their homeland.

The APPG discussed the latest research, shortly to be published on sea level in the Chagos Archipelago by Dunne, Barbosa and Woodworth in Global and Planetary Change. Members noted that measurements showed that there been no detectable change in sea level over the last 20 years and that the islands should continue to be able to support human habitation, as they had done for much of the last 200 years. This contrasted with the advice of the BIOT Conservation Adviser that sea level rise was accelerating and the Foreign Secretary’s comments to the Foreign Affairs Committee on 8 September 2010 in which he raised the spectre of the “pressure of climate change on sea levels” which made resettlement “a very daunting prospect”. The issue was likely to surface at the Chagos MPA conference on 24 November at the Linnean Society at which the Coordinator would represent the Group. Members took note of an on-line article about the findings, by Fred Pearce in the New Scientist, which commented that since 2002 UK Ministers had repeatedly cited rising sea level as a “clear and compelling” reason why resettlement was not feasible.

Finally the Group decided to ask for a debate in the Commons on Chagos in the new year. The next meeting of the APPG will follow the meeting with the Foreign Secretary on 15 December.

The Chagos Federation football team is playing a friendly match against the Swiss team Raetia Federation on Sunday 4 December.

Federation president Herold Mandarin invites all to come and support the Chagossian footballers.

The game is at 1.30pm at Oakwood Football Club, 6 Windsor Close, Crawley, RH11 9PA. Refreshments will be served afterwards.

Lagoon, Egmont Island (Photo: Karin Sinniger)

New research by the National Oceanography Centre throws doubt on predictions that sea-level rises will make the Chagos islands uninhabitable.

The New Scientist reports that the centre’s Philip Woodworth has conducted a fresh analysis of the data, and questioned the findings of biologist Charles Sheppard of the Chagos Conservation Trust on sea-level rises in Chagos.

Fluctuations in sea level make it difficult to pinpoint the “underlying rise”, and whatever the true measure of past rises, it should not be used to try to extrapolate future sea-level rises, Woodworth says.

That, of course, is exactly what the government has been doing, and one of its main reasons for claiming that a return to Chagos is unfeasible.

Read the New Scientist’s article here. Woodworth’s work is to be published in the journal Global and Planetary Change.

It’s fair to say you don’t hear a huge amount about Chagos in the mainstream media. So it was great to see poet and author Benjamin Zephaniah bringing up the Diego Garcia story on the BBC’s Question Time last night (it’s on iPlayer here, the relevant bit starts at 43:30).

It was part of a discussion about the royals meddling in politics, prompted by the controversy around Prince Charles being offered a veto on certain new legislation.

Zephaniah said:

“We are told that we elect our politicians and the royal family stay out of it… There’s an island called Diego Garcia, and the British citizens were moved off that island for an American base to come on. In the British courts the people of [Diego Garcia] won the right to return and because of some kind of antiquated rule or whatever, some people went into a room with the Queen and they stood up and the Queen just overruled the decision of the court… We’re not being democratic if politicians make decisions and members of the royal family can veto them.”

He’s right, although it’s worth pointing out that what the monarch rubber stamped that day was drafted by the Foreign Office under the New Labour government. It wasn’t the Queen who was abusing her power – the government were abusing it for her. So the problem isn’t so much the royals being naughty, it’s that their antiquated powers are wide open to abuse.

The result, as we know, is that vulnerable people suffer.

The whole story is brilliantly told in John Pilger’s film Stealing a Nation, which you can watch online here.

There’s been some great coverage in the Guardian yesterday and today of the Chagos Regagné conference in London.

Today’s piece by Fred Pearce in the Environment Blog focuses on disagreements between environmentalists on allowing people back to Chagos. This, unfortunately, has become a key issue because of the way some conservationists have supported the introduction of the Chagos marine reserve while remaining quite about how it trampled on the islanders’ rights.

Two articles yesterday by Sam Jones provide a general overview of the topic and a report from the event, highlighting how the islanders remain in exile while a major military base occupies the main island, Diego Garcia.

Ben Fogle

Our patron Ben Fogle said before yesterday’s event:
“I am an optimist but I’m also a realist and I don’t see why we can’t come up with a workable, sustainable solution… Now is the time to do this.”

The Labour Friends of Chagos Islanders have set up a petition calling for the Prime Minister to allow the Chagos islanders to return home. It’s already got dozens of signatures. You can read it in full and sign it here.

Meanwhile, in the light of recent statements from the Foreign Office (see here and here) about the government’s position on resettlement of the Chagos islands and the establishment of a Marine Protected Area, this association makes the following statement:

The UK Chagos Support Association would condemn in the strongest possible terms any reversal of commitments made to the Chagossian cause by the coalition parties. We are seeking clarification of the position and remain committed to working with the UK government to establish the right to return.

The Foreign Office has been writing to Chagossians and supporters saying that the coalition government is against resettlement and will pursue the case at the European Court of Human Rights. But the coordinator of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Chagos has warned that these statements may not be all they seem.

Below is the text of a letter sent by David Snoxell to the New Statesman in response to a blog post by Sean Carey revealing the government’s apparent change of heart.

“Sean Carey assumes (Coalition ditches promise to reverse policy, 27 August) that the Government has taken the decision to maintain the policies of its predecessor and quotes from a letter from the FCO Minister in charge of the Overseas Territories. It is doubtful that this letter represents the views of the Government as a whole and may not even reflect those of the Foreign Secretary who told a constituent on 9 July that he “was very sympathetic to the position of the Islanders and that he would look at the situation over the next few months”. He also said “it appeared that the best solution would be for the Chagos people to return to the outer islands”.

In Opposition both Nick Clegg (“The Government has a responsibility to allow these people to return”) and William Hague (” If elected to serve as the next British Government we will work to ensure a fair settlement of this long standing dispute”) supported the Chagossians, as did several members of the present government. It is doubtful that in mid August they have been consulted. In a letter to the Foreign Secretary in June the Chairman of the Chagos Islands All Party Parliamentary Group, Jeremy Corbyn MP, said he hoped that the Group (which includes several current ministers and former FCO ministers) would soon have a meeting with Mr Bellingham. The purpose of the meeting will be to feed the views of Parliament into the review that the Foreign Secretary is conducting on Chagos policies. This review was not expected to conclude until Parliament returns in October when the meeting will take place. Presumably the Cabinet would then be consulted.”

We’re waiting with great interest to see what the Government does next on this, especially when MPs return from the summer break in a few days time.

Remember the statements of support for the Chagossians from William Hague and Nick Clegg during the election campaign?

Hague, now Foreign Secretary, promised that the new government would “work to ensure a fair settlement of this long-standing dispute”, while Clegg, now Deputy PM, said New Labour had “mistreated” the Chagossians, and that the government had a “moral responsibility” to allow them home.

As a result, the Chagossians were expecting a break with the policies of the previous government. But there seems to have been a sudden change of heart. In a letter sent to Olivier Bancoult, chairman of the Chagos Refugees Group, Henry Bellingham, Minister responsible for the Overseas Territories, has said:

“The UK government will continue to contest the case brought by the Chagos Islanders to the European Court of Human Rights. This is because we believe that the arguments against allowing resettlement on the grounds of defence, security and feasibility are clear and compelling… The Government also believes that a Marine Protected Area (MPA) is the right way ahead for furthering environmental protection of the Territory and encouraging others to do the same in important and vulnerable areas under their sovereign control.”

Bellingham’s letter goes on to restate the arguments we’re so familiar with hearing from the Foreign Office: that compensation has already been paid in a full and final settlement and that feasibility studies deemed resettlement “precarious and costly”.

To say this comes as a surprise is an understatement. The last thing we knew, Hague was still conducting a review of policy on Chago, which wasn’t expected to be complete until after parliament returns in the autumn. It’s hard to see how he can reconcile the view outlined in Bellingham’s letter with his previous pledge to seek a “fair settlement” of the matter, or his comment since the election (in a July meeting with Philippa Gregory, bestselling author and patron of this association), that a return to the outer islands would seem like the best solution.

The statement (variations of which have also been sent by Foreign Office officials to supporters of this association) has been released during parliament’s summer recess, without the opportunity to consult the All Party Parliamentary Group on Chagos or, for that matter, cabinet.

Is this really how the new government intends to conduct itself in dealing with Chagos? Breaking its promises of change? Burying bad news in the summer recess? Failing to consult parliament? If so, it’s going to face resistance from within its own ranks. Government members who have called for the legal case against the islanders to be dropped include senior Lib Dems such as Business Secretary Vince Cable, Ed Davey, Chris Huhne and Lynne Featherstone. From the Tories, Keith Simpson has said the islanders “must be placed at the heart of any decisions taken about their homeland”, while Henry Smith (who represents the hundreds of Chagossians living in Crawley) said the decision to bypass parliament with the 2004 Orders in Council was “quite wrong” and that the islanders have a human right to be allowed home. Mark Field, Peter Bottomley, Bill Cash and Anne McIntosh have also criticised New Labour’s treatment of the islanders.

It’s starting to look like the words of support for the Chagossians during the election campaign may have been just that: words. Parliament returns from recess on 6 September – make sure your MP knows that you expect the promise of ‘new politics’ to be fulfilled.

See Sean Carey’s post on the New Statesman blog, here, for more on this.