Diego Garcia is one of the islands that make up the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It is also an American military base from which most of the bombing runs on Iraq were carried in 1990. The inhabitants of these islands, known as Ilois, were forcefully removed from their homes by Britain in the 1960s and 70s and dumped on the dockside 1,200 miles away in Mauritius and Seychelles to allow the main island of Diego Garcia to be leased to the U.S. There they have lived a life of abject poverty.
       The story involves "bribes" from the United States and racism from senior British civil servants, with the United Kingdom deceiving its own parliament and the United Nations. At the height of the cold war in the mid-1960s the U.S. was worried about possible Soviet and Chinese expansion in the Indian Ocean and wanted a base in the region but one without a population problem. Britain had several Islands under its sovereignty in the region amongst them the Changos, which together with Mauritius, were ceded to it by France at the end of the Napoleonic war.
       When independence was granted to Mauritius in 1965, the Chagos were separated and renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) to facilitate transfer to the U.S. In return, the U.S. was willing to offer the British government an $11 million subsidy on the U.S.-made Polaris submarine nuclear deterrent system. A memo from the then British foreign secretary Michael Stewart to Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1969 admitted that this payment was kept secret from the British parliament and the U.S. Congress.
       The Americans' first choice was the island of Aldabra, located to the north of Madagascar but unfortunately home to the rare giant tortoises. The presence of military activity there was certain to upset the mating habits of the tortoises and set off angry protests from animal rights activists and publicity aware ecologists. The alternative was the Changos, home to the Ilois, descendants of African slaves and Indian plantation workers who have lived there for over 200 years.
       To facilitate the transfer, these inhabitants became non-people, as British politicians, diplomats and civil servants began a campaign to maintain the pretence that there were no permanent inhabitants in the islands. A telegram sent to the U.K. mission at the United Nations in November 1965 stated thus : "We recognize that we are in a difficult position as regards references to people at present on the detached islands. We know that a few were born in Diego Garcia and perhaps some of the other islands, and so were their parents before them. We cannot therefore assert that there are no inhabitants, however much this would be to our advantage. In the circumstances, we think it would be best to avoid all references to permanent inhabitants." Sir Paul Gore-Booth, senior official at the Foreign Office wrote to British diplomat Dennis Green in 1966: "We must be tough about this. The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours. There will be no indigenous populations except sea gulls." In reply Green said: "Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius."
       And that is what happened. With decisions made at the highest levels in the Harold Wilson Labor government and that of his conservative successor, Edward Heath, some 3,000 Ilois were forcefully shipped off to slum conditions in Mauritius where they have not settled well. Now numbering about 5,000 people, they are discriminated against and most often are uneducated and unemployed - sad victims of an act of late colonial arrogance.
       Oliver Bancoult was four when his family was evicted in 1968. In 1999 he took the British government to court to challenge this injustice of 30 years. He is an electrician living in a tiny house amid makeshift buildings in Cassis, one of the slums in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. In November 2000, the British high court ruled that the U.K. acted unlawfully in sending thousands of the islanders into exile to make way for a U.S. military base.
       The high court judge, Lord Justice Laws, said that there had been "an abject legal failure" and overturned a 1971 order that bans the islanders from going back to the island. But the situation is awkward as the U.S., whose lease on the territory is good for at least 50 years, says allowing people to settle even on outlying islands would be a security risk. The British government was set to appeal the court decision.
       Meanwhile the people of Diego Garcia while away their time in exile singing old songs of home, even as many have turned to alcohol or even suicide to escape the misery of not belonging. On most days, the fathers and sons of the Chagos community while away the hours of unemployment nursing bottles on the steps of their shacks dreaming of a paradise lost.