When Bernadette Dugasse visited Diego Garcia in 2011, she could not stop tears from running down her cheeks when she saw the church where she was baptized as a child
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st March, 2019) When Bernadette Dugasse visited Diego Garcia in 2011, she could not stop tears from running down her cheeks when she saw the church where she was baptized as a child. It was the first and only time Dugasse visited the island where she was born, after her family was forced to move away to make way for a US military base over half a century ago."I've only visited Diego Garcia once with one of my sons in 2011. When I first arrived, I cried a lot when I saw the church that I was baptized in. But the roof of the church was already missing. Everything else was already in ruins. I couldn't find the house my family lived in anymore. Only the cemeteries were still there," the 63-year-old woman who lives in Croydon, the United Kingdom, told Sputnik.
Diego Garcia is the largest of about 60 islands known as the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean. Before the US military established a key strategic naval base on the island in the early 1970s, the Chagos islands were occupied by about 1,000 residents known as the Chagossians, who were mostly laborers brought onto the islands to work in the coconut processing plantation owned by French colonizers in the late 18th century.
In the late 1960s, the British government bought the Chagos islands, including Diego Garcia, from the self-governing colony of Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory, as part of the mutual defense strategy with the United States to establish a key naval based in the Indian Ocean following the end of the World War II.
To prepare for the construction of the US military base on Diego Garcia, the British government forcibly removed the Chagossians, including Dugasse's family, without offering any compensation or a resettlement plan.
According to Dugasse, the removal of Chagossians from the islands started as early as the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. When locals traveled off the islands to seek basic medical treatment in neighbor countries such as the Mauritius and Seychelles, they were not given the permission to return to the Chagos islands. Dugasse's father was expelled from the Chagos islands in 1958, when she was only a two-year-old baby, for offering carpentry services to other residents on the islands without proper permission. Her family was forced to relocate to the Seychelles.
Dugasse's grandparents were among the last group of Chagossians who were forced to leave the islands in 1972, when the British government killed the pet dogs of the local residents as a way to intimidate the Chagossians to agree to move away.
"For Chagossians, women are our leaders. When the British government had meetings with them in 1972, they initially were not willing to move away, because that's where they have built a life. Then the British government just gassed and killed all the pet dogs in front of everybody. They could hear the screaming. That's when our women leaders felt that if they didn't leave, the same could happen to their children," she recalled.
About 250 Chagossians were moved to the Seychelles, while the rest were relocated to the Mauritius.
"My grandparents were already in their late 60s when they arrived in the Seychelles. They worked in the coconut companies on the Chagos islands their whole life. They couldn't find new jobs. They were just dumped in the harbor without any help. They were forced to rely on handouts from others," Dugasse said.
While some of the Chagossians relocated to the Mauritius received financial compensation of about $6,000 per person from the British government, Dugasse and others who moved to the Seychelles never received the money.
In 1982, Dugasse received her British passport after obtaining a birth certificate proving that she was born on the Chagos islands. She moved with her husband to the United Kingdom in July 2007.
Despite establishing a new life in the United Kingdom, Dugasse never stopped thinking about and longing to return to her birth place.
"England is not my home. Seychelles is not my home. I was born in Diego Garcia. When I visited there, I felt right at home. I would like to settle on the island and die there. I'm used to the hot climate and the seafood that's available on the island. I'm not used to the cold weather in England," she said.
This week, a new ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) looks to be a chance to offer Chagossians like Dugasse some hope to return home one day.
According to the ICJ ruling, the United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos islands as rapidly as possible and the decolonization process of Mauritius in 1968 was not lawfully completed, following the separation of the Chagos islands.
The return of the Chagos island, including Diego Garcia, under the jurisdiction of the Mauritius government could be an important step for the Chagossians to have an opportunity to return home. But Dugasse warned against being overly optimistic about such prospects.
"I'm strongly against returning the Chagos islands to Mauritius, because they're the ones who sold us to the British government to gain their independence. We cannot return the islands to the butchers who sold us. And the British government never follows international court rulings anyways," she said.
Nevertheless, Olivier Bancoult, a Chagossian activist who left the island at the age of four and has become the leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, expressed hopes that the Mauritius government could at least allow Chagossians to travel to the Chagos islands without restrictions.
"I think we need all the help we can get, like we did in the United Nations where 94 countries supported the Mauritius and the Chagossians. We need to raise awareness and put pressure on the UK government to respect the fundamental rights and the dignity of our people. The Mauritius government is not against us returning to the islands. It's the UK government that's preventing us from returning," he said.
The Mauritius-based activist stressed that the Chagossians are only demanding free access and equal employment opportunities on the Chagos islands.
"We cannot accept that other people can live and work on the islands. But we as native Chagossians don't have the same rights. There're people from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Mauritius, the United Kingdom and the United States who are allowed to live on the islands. But we are forbidden. We're not against the US military base. How can other people be cooperative and work on the base, but we've been prohibited? How could others can live and work on those islands for two years or six months, but we can Chagossians are only allowed to visit these islands for three hours? Is it fair?" he said.
Bancoult described the importance of access to the Chagos islands for himself and his family.
"Even I'm living in Mauritius, my birth place is the Chagos islands. My children will ask me: 'Dad, where were you born? One day you need to bring us there.' No place can replace the place of birth. Most of us are Catholics. Every November, we need to pay tributes to deceased parents. How is it not possible for us to put flowers on the graves of our parents?" he said.
Bancoult pointed out that the UK government conducted a feasibility study in 2016 on the resettlement policy of the British Indian Ocean Territory, which is the official name for the Chagos islands in the United Kingdom.
However, the British government eventually decided against the resettlement of Chagossians to the Chagos islands. Alan Duncan, the minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs at the time, explained the British government's decision in a statement.
"In coming to this decision the Government has considered carefully the practicalities of setting up a small remote community on low-lying islands and the challenges that any community would face. These are significant, and include the challenge of effectively establishing modern public services, the limited healthcare and education that it would be possible to provide, and the lack of economic opportunities, particularly job prospects. The Government has also considered the interaction of any potential community with the US Naval Support Facility - a vital part of our defense relationship," he said.
Duncan said the British government would instead seek to support improvements to the livelihoods of Chagossians in the communities where they lived at the time and agreed to fund a package of approximately 40 million British Pounds (about $53 million) over the next 10 years.
At the same time, the British government announced that it planned to continue to welcome US military presences in the British Indian Ocean Territory and would extend the defense agreement until December 30, 2036.
For Dugasse, the Chagossian who currently lives in the United Kingdom, she still hopes one day the British government would change its mind during her lifetime and allow her to return to her birth place.
