The UK government’s deportation of thousands of inhabitants from the Chagos Islands to make away for a US military base in 1971 was unforgivable, a Foreign Office minister has said. But he refused to give any guarantees they would be allowed to resettle on the islands.
A long-delayed decision on the Chagos Islands, a British Indian Ocean Territory, will be made before Christmas, Tobias Ellwood said. Thousands of the Chagossians, many living in the UK, have expressed a desire to return to their birthplace.
Ellwood, speaking in a debate in Westminster, apologised for the actions of past Labour and Conservative governments, saying it was a matter of sincere regret.
But a mixture of cost, economic viability and continuing objections from the US military suggests the Foreign Office is leaning towards blocking their return. The Foreign Office has spent £3m in legal fees in efforts to defeat the Chagossians, and it is understood that the US does not wish to share the main island of Diego Garcia, home to its largest military base outside the US, with the former inhabitants.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, along with MPs from all parties have called on the government to right what many consider to be one of the biggest wrongs from Britain’s immediate post-imperial past. Corbyn claims to have personally lobbied Barack Obama on the issue.
The Americans are renegotiating a further 20-year rollover lease on the islands, giving the UK government rare leverage and a chance to say the lease for the strategically important base would only be renewed if the Chagossians were allowed to return to at least the outlying islands, away from Diego Garcia.
There are hundreds of Filipinos on the islands helping the US service personnel, and it has been argued the Chagossians pose no greater security risk than the Filipinos.
Ministers have been reviewing a resettlement policy since 2012 and a government-commissioned review by KPMG found that 85% of Chagossians surveyed said they wished to return. A decision had been expected in the summer but was delayed because of David Cameron’s resignation and the ministerial reshuffle in the Foreign Office
But giving a possible glimpse into Foreign Office thinking, James Duddridge, who was the minister for overseas territories until that reshuffle, told a Westminster Hall debate he was opposed to resettlement.
Reflecting on his ministerial visit to Chagos, he argued it would be expensive to repopulate the islands and they might not be economically viable.
“I am not saying one could not populate the islands, but the concept that the outer islands are an idyllic possibility is for the birds,” Duddridge said. “They were difficult, overgrown, humid areas that were accessible only where the marines had gone in and chopped down foliage.”
However, Duddridge’s thinking was challenged by Henry Bellingham, a predecessor at the Foreign Office. He said: “Time is running out. The Foreign Office really needs to put a great deal of effort into seeing whether some form of scheme can be put in place immediately.”
Other Tory MPs including Henry Smith, the MP for Crawley, said Britain should be ashamed of its treatment of the Chagossians.
“As recently as the late 1960s, through orders in council, the then Wilson administration forcibly evicted the people of the Chagos Islands from their homeland and they were dispersed, mainly to Mauritius but also to the Seychelles and other parts of the world,” he said. “It was a story that I would have expected to have read from 150 or 200 years ago, a colonial account, but it was just within my lifetime.”
Smith said independent estimates of the cost of the return would be £100m, and could easily be absorbed by the overseas aid budget.
Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, said the treatment of the islanders over the past half century was a subject of shame for the UK, describing the forcible expulsions as a blot on the British human rights record.
Bob Stewart, Conservative MP for Beckenham and a former UN commander in Bosnia, conceded the US was not going to give up the Diego Garcia base, but it should be possible for the Chagossians and Americans to co-exist. “The evictions were wrong then and they are wrong now,” he said.
Expressing his sincere regret at the deportations, Ellwood nevertheless said: “Establishing a small and remote community on the territory would not be straightforward. The independent feasibility study published in 2015 found that resettlement could be viable, but also highlighted significant practical challenges, including the difficulty of establishing modern public services, healthcare, education and economic opportunities, particularly job prospects.
“Only a quarter of those who were in favour of resettlement were also content with the realistic scenarios of how it might work in practice.”
