The UK Chagos Support Association

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office yesterday announced that its consultation on whether to create a marine protected area in the Chagos islands (British Indian Ocean Territory), which was due to expire today, will now be extended to run until 5 March 2010.

This means that there are now three more weeks in which people can make representations to the FCO on this matter.� As such, it is crucial that supporters of the Chagossians are able to mobilise as much support as possible for the islanders’ right of return.

The campaign for the Government to widen the scope of its marine protection plan to include provision for the Chagossians’ rights has witnessed a dramatic buildup of momentum over the past few weeks: MPs, Lords, scientists, ecologists, journalists, lawyers, activists, and many, many members of the public have all called upon the Government to do the decent thing.

Stay tuned for more information about how you can add your voice to those already calling for this to be the year when the Chagossians’ 40-year long campaign for justice finally succeeds.� However, in the meantime, please read, sign and circulate the Marine Education Trust petition.

In addition to the 1,000+ politicians, academics, ecologists, lawyers, human rights activists and concerned members of the public that have signed up to the campaign� to marry environmental protection in Chagos with the Chagossians’ right of return (see entry below), Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now also coming under pressure from yet more of his own MPs.

Katy Clark, the Labour MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, has written a personal letter to Mr Brown saying,

I believe the time is now right to restore the Chagossians’ right to return permanently and believe that the establishment of a Marine Protection Area represents the perfect opportunity to begin a new era of co-operation and partnership with the Chagossians and slowly begin to right the wrongs of the past. Such a move would not only bring justice to the Chagossians but would also bring about closer co-operation with the Mauritian Government and would allow for a more effective and better protected Marine Protection Area.

Ms Clark is joined by other Labour Parliamentarians who are already fighting for the rights of the Chagossians as part of the Chagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group, including Jeremy Corbyn (Chair), Baroness Whitaker, Kate Hoey, Tony Lloyd, Chris Mullin, Kelvin Hopkins, Karen Buck, Laura Moffatt, Austin Mitchell and Lord Lea of Crondall.� Messages of support have also been forthcoming from others on the Government benches.

This support� has been matched by politicians in other parties, such as the Green Party‘s� Caroline Lucas MEP and the Liberal Democrats’ Dr� Vince Cable (whose signature can be seen on the Marine Education Trust petition, here).

As such, Gordon Brown’s Government risks looking decidedly out-of-step with public opinion if it refuses to take account of this mounting clamour for justice.

Academic Dr Sean Carey, a long-time supporter of the Chagossians’ right of return, has had twin articles published in the New Statesman and the Mauritius Times.� Dr Carey’s articles are each slightly different, but both speak directly to those in the UK Government who will ultimately be responsible for deciding the future of the Chagos islands.� They also both provide a great service in taking stock of the reasons why the Government should make restitution with the Chagossians.

Dr Carey� points out that the idea the UK can unilaterally impose a marine protected area in� Chagos has become untenable, saying:

the two genies — Mauritius’s claim to the territory and the position of the exiled Chagos Islanders who were removed from their homeland by the British authorities some 40 years ago — are now well and truly out of the bottle.

Dr Carey also� recalls how Mauritius, which stands to inherit sovereignty of the islands at some point in the future, has made its support for an MPA in Chagos conditional on the issues of sovereignty and resettlement being resolved.� As such,� he quotes the Mauritian High Commissioner as asserting,� “There can be no legitimacy to the project without the issue of sovereignty and resettlement being addressed to the satisfaction of the government of Mauritius.”

More importantly, Dr Carey also takes account of the level of support that now exists for the Government to address the issues of environmental protection and human rights simultaneously, rather than trying to keep the two separate, referring specifically to the Marine Education Trust’s petition� “to protect both the marine ecosystem of the Chagos archipelago and the rights of its exiled community.”

Those who have signed the MET petition include Richard Ambrose (Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA), Andrew Balmford (Professor of Conservation Science, Cambridge University), Barbara Brown (Emeritus Professor of Tropical Marine Biology, Newcastle University), David Bellamy ( Professor of Adult and Continuing Education, Durham University), Chris Perry (Professor of Tropical Coastal Geosciences, Manchester University), John Eade (Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Roehampton University), Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Professor of Social Anthropology, Oslo University), and David Simon (Professor in Development Geography, Royal Holloway College).

He goes on,

Prominent politicians have also added their names. They include Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP and Chair of the Chagos All Party Parliamentary Committee, Vince Cable, Deputy Leader of the UK Liberal Democrats, and Cassam Uteem, former President of the Republic of Mauritius. So why have they and over one thousand other people including students, teachers, lawyers, photographers, software engineers and home makers signed up? Simply because of a recognition that while marine ecosystems and tropical coral reefs are under threat in the Indian Ocean and need to be protected, it is clear that a failure to adequately involve the Chagos Islanders and the Mauritian government in the construction of the proposed marine reserve would both damage its legitimacy and its long-term effectiveness.

With just two days left of the FCO’s consultation period, it is clear that the original proposal for a marine protected area in Chagos simply cannot continue being discussed in isolation from the wider issues at stake.� Instead, the Government needs to act boldly, creatively and decisively to achieve its goals in Chagos.

If it has the courage to do this, then the rewards for everybody concerned would be truly immense.

The Independent‘s Environment Editor Michael McCarthy has today authored an article about the proposed marine protected area (MPA) in Chagos. The article essentially juxtaposes the campaign for a no-take marine reserve in Chagos with the Chagossians’ ongoing campaign for justice, labelling it a contest of “Man vs marine in the Chagos Islands.”

The article provides a thoughtful and balanced account of the various arguments being put forward and is worth reading in its entirety.� However, the most important point to be distilled from the article can summed up in the following passage:

“We will support the project only if we are physically involved in it all the way, and our right of return to the Chagos Archipelago is not compromised,” said Roch Evenor, a spokesman for the islanders and secretary*of the UK Chagos Support Association. “With the Chagossians living on Chagos we will be able to help the marine protected area, as our presence will be a deterrent factor for illegal fishermen who are fishing the sea cucumbers and sharks. We can co-exist – the Chagos archipelago could be something great if we all put our heads together and collaborate.”

In other words, a marine protected area in Chagos would work best if the Chagos islanders were able to return and be a part of it. The UK Chagos Support Association is calling on people to lobby the Government to make provision for this in whichever marine protection plan that it settles upon, preferably by legislating for the Chagossians’ right of abode (although it could perhaps also be done by designating certain� “zones” where the Chagossians would be able to fish sustainably upon their return).

Contrary to the article’s title, it remains UKCSA’s firm belief that marine protection and human rights can co-exist seamlessly in Chagos.� At this juncture, it is also important to point out that this is also� the shared opinion of those who are campaigning for a no-take marine reserve, notwithstanding the obvious differences in emphasis (as discussed in today’s Independent article).

The article comes hot on the heels of MPs’ on Tuesday� grilling� Overseas Territories Minister Chris Bryant over the issue of the Chagossians’ rights.� In particular, Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson harangued Mr� Bryant� for failing to adequately protect the islanders human rights (who, it should not be forgotten, hold British passports and are indigenous to one of Britain’s Overseas Territories).

Ms Swinson further called on the Government to drop its legal battle with the Chagossians, reminding the Minister that Robin Cook had acceded to letting the islanders return in 2000.� Not only would bringing legal proceedings to an end be the morally correct thing to do, but it would also make it much easier to plan for the future of the archipelago – including in terms of marine protection.

As the FCO’s consultation on Chagos marine protection draws to a close, Parliamentarians and civil society are increasing the pressure upon the Government to do the decent thing in Chagos.� Members of the public are encouraged to help by pricking Ministers’ consciences at any given opportunity!

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*Actually, Roch is now the Chair of UKCSA!

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP has today reiterated her party’s “total commitment” to the Chagossians’ right of return, adding her support for the principle that the Chagossians “must have control over any decisions that affect the future of the islands and the islanders.”

Green Party PPC Tony� Juniper, who recently wrote in favour of� an MPA in Chagos in The Guardian newspaper, has also� confirmed his support for the Chagossians’ right� of return, saying:� “I very much agree with the points made by Caroline Lucas on the importance of upholding the rights of the former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands.”

Ms Lucas’s timely intervention piles pressure upon the Government to acknowledge that the Chagossians’ rights must be respected in any marine protection plan.

Pertinently, her remarks also come alongside news that Lord Joffe, the eminent human rights lawyer who famously represented Nelson Mandela in court, as well as� ecologist� Dr David Bellamy, have each signed the Marine Education Trust‘s petition� calling for the Government to protect both the Chagos marine ecosystem and its displaced indigenous community.

As has been argued before, environmental protection and human rights can go hand-in-hand in Chagos, a sentiment echoed by Ms Lucas who said that she “welcomed the principle of protecting a valuable marine habitat.”� However, Ms Lucas has insisted that she is “adamant� that this must not take precedence over the rights of the displaced Chagossians, nor must any further obstacles or hurdles be erected to the right to return.”

The� Greens’� clear, direct and powerful statement in support of the twin issues of marine protection and human rights is a model for how other environmentally- and socially-conscious organisations should be responding to the Government’s consultation on Chagos.

Furthermore, Ms Lucas’s uncompromising and far-sighted approach, which marries a passion for conservation with a respect for indigenous peoples’ rights, should become a measuring stick against with other parties, politicians and campaign groups are judged against.

Hopefully, this message will not be lost on the other main political parties who are currently debating their stance on Chagos.

When the FCO’s consultation period ends in just three days time, public pressure will be an important part of ensuring that a fair and far-sighted proposal is decided upon by the Government.� Please sign the Marine Education Trust� petition, write to your MP (or other elected politicians), and generally make as much noise as possible in favour of the Chagossians’ right of return.

If enough people speak out in favour of the Chagossians’ rights being provided for, then the Government should have no option but to respond accordingly.

It has been the clear and consistent policy of the UK Chagos Support Association that environmental protection and human rights must go hand-in-hand in Chagos, a message that has been echoed by Chagossian groups, the Government of Mauritius, Parliamentarians, the Marine Education Trust, plus members of the scientific and conservationist communities.

Unfortunately, this spirit of openness and amenability has not permeated every organisation that is lobbying for a marine protected area (MPA) in Chagos. In particular, serious concerns have been raised about the Chagos Environment Network (CEN) campaign for a no-take marine reserve in Chagos – the so-called “Option 1” proposal� -� which would seriously jeopardise the Chagossians’ prospects of being able to return home.

The CEN – a coalition of environmental groups including the Chagos Conservation Trust, Pew Environment Group, the Marine Conservation Society and RSPB – is running a slick, well-resourced, and well-publicised campaign that presents people with� the seemingly straightforward options� of supporting environmental protection in Chagos or not. By presenting the public with this (false)� binary choice, the CEN has been successful in railroading thousands of people into signing their petition.

However, the CEN’s tactics raise serious questions about how far� its petition can be said to reflect public opinion.

Clearly, the CEN is eliciting signatures for its petition without providing the public with the information required to make an informed choice. For example, no attempt is made to inform people about possible ways of ensuring environmental protection other than Option 1, such as� an MPA� that made explicit provision for the Chagossians’ needs and rights. Instead, signatories of the CEN petition have been misled� into believing that the CEN’s preferred option for marine conservation in Chagos is the only option on the table.

This economy with the truth has not gone unnoticed. On the website of Care2 – a private company that has been commissioned, no doubt at considerable cost, to assist the CEN in hoovering up signatures from cyberspace – a “think before you sign” discussion has been set up to urge people to� consider the Chagossian perspective. This is mirrored by the discussion� groups that have spontaneously sprung up on the� Facebook social networking site, where people are actively debating the complexities of the Chagos MPA issue.

When given the full facts about what Option 1 entails, it has invariably been the case that people develop markedly colder feet about the CEN’s proposals.� One scientist (who was involved in surveying Diego Garcia in 2004) has used a public forum to caution that “it is disingenuous to present the creation of an extensive conservation zone out of a magnificent region of islands and ocean (which is indeed magnificent), without mentioning its background and darker side.”

The same expert goes on: “I think a conservation zone is a good thing too. But after being treated the way they were in their removal and being swept under the rug for so long after that, I can’t see disregarding [the Chagossians] again as acceptable to either the UK or the US.”

Unfortunately, these misgivings about Option 1 are simply not being acknowledged by the CEN, which has demonstrated itself to be more concerned with collecting signatures than facilitating an open and informed discussion.

This results-driven ethos could be down to the influence of those financially backing the campaign. Joshua S. Reichert, director of Pew Environment Group� (the London headquarters of which is listed as the CEN’s mailing address), is reported as having once told the Boston Globe: “We are very product oriented. We need to demonstrate a return [...] that is measurable.”

Unhappily, this juggernaut approach to campaigning stands in stark contrast with some of the more sober and compromising remarks made by William Marsden of the Chagos Conservation Trust just last year. In a letter to The Timeson 26 January 2009, Mr Marsden commented that “the aim [of an MPA in Chagos] would be to protect nature, including fish stocks; benefit science and support action against damaging climate change; be compatible with security; be financially sustainable; and provide good employment opportunities for Chagossian and other people.”

This support for the Chagossians has clearly been lost over the past 12 months. We can only speculate as to why, but it is likely a result of the� CCT becoming� subsumed within the more bloody-minded CEN coalition.

The FCO’s consultation period ends this Friday and the CEN will doubtless be submitting its thousands of signatures as proof of public support for a no-take reserve in Chagos. However, the veracity of this claim has been seriously called into question and it is important that the FCO and others are under no illusions as to just how the CEN has gone about its campaign (neglecting fully to inform the public; farming out the collection of signatures to private companies; failing to validate the identities of those that sign the petition).

In the meantime, supporters of the Chagossians must continue making their case for an environmental protection regime that makes provision for the Chagossians.� One way of doing this is to encourage people to sign the Marine Education Trust petition that was launched last month as a corrective to the CEN’s.

Tomorrow, the Chagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group will meet to discuss the FCO consultation and the findings of last month’s workshop at Royal Holloway, University of London.

If the APPG, working together with others who have engaged with the consultation process in an honest, transparent and constructive way, are able to convince the Government to take a sensibly rounded view of what the future of Chagos should look like, then 2010 may yet prove to be the year of the Chagossians.

Greenpeace has come under fire from some of its own supporters for failing to give sufficient consideration to the Chagos islanders’ human rights.

The environmental campaign group has put itself full-square behind the proposals to establish a no-take marine reserve in Chagos – even using its mailing list to advertise a petition that has been heavily criticised for its neglect of the Chagossians’ rights and concerns. However, some Greenpeace members have reacted with hostility to the organisation’s apparent lack of empathy with the indigenous people of Chagos.

In November 2009, when Greenpeace first floated its support of a marine protected area (MPA) in Chagos, its website received numerous comments from supporters of the Chagossians’ right of return.� Now, one Greenpeace activist has even taken action to write� to� elucidate� the truth about Chagos and how the territory came to be devoid of its native population. Meanwhile, discussion has been taking place on Internet message boards, where one activist has noted:

“Greenpeace people might think [the no-take marine reserve proposal] quite innocent, but unless its explicitly contracted in to any proposals, the Chagossians would almost certainly lose the rights to fishing [...] were they ever allowed back. From what I understand from talking to a few in Crawley (who came over mainly from Mauritius), there’s a strong fishing link there (not everyone, but it would be important).”

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This comment� really hits the nail on the head. Try as Greenpeace might to insist that they are campaigning for the waters of the Chagos to be held “in trust for the Chagossian people,” the reality is that a no-take MPA in Chagos would erect yet another obstacle in the path of the Chagossians being able to return home.� This is something that Greenpeace as an organisation should not be supporting.

Greenpeace’s riposte to this argument is that, in the event of the Chagossians being allowed to return, then the terms of an MPA could be re-negotiated.� However, this is a flawed argument for several reasons:

(1) An MPA should be a durable, far-sighted marine conservation measure; it would undermine it’s effectiveness if it was created with the specific intention of reorganising it some years down the line.

(2) Greenpeace should be campaigning for the Chagossians’ human rights to be restored as a matter of course, rather than hiding behind the ongoing court battle as a way� of abdicating responsibility for campaigning on their behalf.� In 2008,� Rex Weyler, one of the original founders of Greenpeace, wrote a strongly-worded defence� of the Chagossians’ rights, linking their displacement in the 1960s and 1970s� to the environmental degradation of the region.� This emphasis seems to have been lost in the past eighteen months.

(3) Greenpeace claim that, “At the moment, the Chagos Islands are being administered by the UK government, and whatever way you look at it, taking steps to protect the marine life there is a good idea.”� True enough, but the islands will not be administered by the UK Government forever: the UK has repeatedly promised to cede the islands to Mauritius at some point the future.� For its part, Mauritius has made its support for an MPA conditional on the islanders’ right to return being restored, and so the long-term viability of marine protection in Chagos would be put in serious jeopardy if the issues of environmental protection and human rights continue to be kept separate.

The UK Chagos Support Association’s mantra of “Environmental protection and human rights must go hand-in-hand” is not just a slogan, it is a statement of political reality.

Greenpeace should reconsider its policy on Chagos and throw its weight behind� an� MPA proposal that would explicitly make provision for the Chagossians’ rights -� making mere mentions of the Chagossians is simply not good enough.

The LabourList website has today published a blog post� urging Labour party members to pressure Prime Minister Gordon Brown into restoring the Chagossians’ right of return.� As the FCO’s consultation on whether or not to establish a marine protected area in Chagos goes into its final weeks, it has never been more important for people to stand up and decry the Government’s current policy towards the islanders.

The article argues that Gordon Brown has a precious opportunity to go down in history as the Labour Prime Minister who put right these past injustices. If he acts now, with foresight and with decisiveness, he will be remembered as the man who finally did the decent thing in Chagos.

It was a Labour Government that exiled the Chagossians from their homeland in the 1960s and so it would be especially pertinent if a Labour Government was to make amends for this historic injustice.

However, the UK Chagos Support Association will of course be lobbying all political parties in the run up to the general election. Parliamentary support for the Chagossians has come from all major political parties – Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green – and from a variety of assemblies.

This year, the Chagossians’ court battle with the UK Government will reach Strasbourg, where the Government is very likely to be found to be in breach of its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. Politicians of all stripes must act now in order to avoid Britain’s record on human rights being tarnished forever.

Click here for the full article.

Gordon Brown can be written to at:

10 Downing Street,
London,
SW1A 2AA

Or contacted online via: https://email.number10.gov.uk/Contact.aspx

Welcome to the shiny new UK Chagos Support Association website. We hope you like it.

You’ll find it’s still got the same useful information as the old site, as well as incorporating our blog, which previously lived at chagosuk.blogspot.com.

We’re also now on Twitter and Facebook, so you can keep up with happenings there too.

If you had an RSS subscription to the old blog, you’ll need to update your feed.

We’d very much like to hear people’s feedback on the new site, and there’s a reasonable chance of technical hiccups while it’s still new, so if you spot any broken links or other weirdness, please do give us a shout.

The Marine Education Trust’s excellent petition calling for the Government to make provision for the Chagos islanders’ needs and human rights when deciding on its preferred option for a marine protected area in Chagos has been translated into French and Spanish!

Thanks to the person who brought this to our attention by commenting on a previous blog post. So please circulate to any French- or Spanish-speakers that may be interested.

Merci beaucoup y muchos gracias!

http://www.tlaxcala.es/detail_artistes.asp?lg=es&reference=388