United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

The London Guardian reported Tuesday that the British Foreign office argued to the House of Lords that Chagossians who were expelled from their homeland in the 1960s have no right to return, and that any such return would be "precarious and costly" and would pose an "unacceptable risk" to the U.S. base in Diego Garcia, the establishment of which was the reason for their expulsion.[1] -- A "divisional court and the court of appeal have already found in favor of the Chagossians," Duncan Campbell said, but in 2004 the government "issue[d] orders in council forbidding the return of the islanders." -- BACKGROUND: "Orders in council" is a phrase meaning government by fiat: "the use of a royal decree by politicians who want to get away with something undemocratically," as John Pilger has written. -- "Most British people have never heard of it. British prime ministers use it to take the nation into unpopular wars, such as the invasions of Egypt in 1956 and Iraq in 2003. Dictators do the same, but without the quaint ritual." -- For these words and more on this case, see the Pilger's Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire (2007), whose first chapter tells how two thousand people who lived on the Chagos archipelago, principally on Diego Garcia, were evicted after a secret decision was made in 1961-1964 by the U.S. & the U.K. to establish an Indian Ocean base there. -- "It was not until 1975, following an exposé in the Washington Post, that the U.S. Senate revealed that the British government had been secretly 'compensated' for the Chagos with a discount of $14 million off the price of a Polaris nuclear submarine. This was illegal, as it was never submitted to Congress for approval." -- At present, the U.S. maintains "four thousand service personnel and contractors, two bomber runways, each two and a half miles long, anchorages for a fleet of ships, living conditions the U.S. Navy describes as 'indispensable,' 'outstanding' and 'unbelievable,'" though habitability was one of the ruses used to justify the eviction of the Chagossians (John Pilger, Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire [NY: Nation Books, 2007], ch. 1, "Stealing a Nation," p. 56; see also pp. 20-61). -- The Chagossians are rarely mentioned in the country whose government is at the root of their misfortune and the latest news of their legal case appeared in no U.S. paper; however, their plight was discussed recently in an article entitled "Evidence Shows America Is an Empire" published on Jun. 21, 2008, in the Bangor (ME) Daily News by a member of Maine Veterans For Peace....

DIEGO GARCIA: CHAGOS ISLANDS RETURN 'PUTS U.S. BASE AT RISK'
By Duncan Campbell

[PHOTO CAPTION: Chagos Islanders pictured after winning the right to return home after a high court battle in 2000.]

Islanders seeking to return to the homes from which they were removed to make way for a U.S. military base nearly 40 years ago have no right to return, the law lords were told yesterday. Allowing the Chagossian islanders to go back to their Indian Ocean homes would be a "precarious and costly" operation, and the United States had said that it would also present an "unacceptable risk" to its base on Diego Garcia, the law lords heard.

The Foreign Office is appealing this week to the House of Lords against earlier judgments which have granted the Chagossians the right to return to the islands in the British Indian Ocean Territory. A group of islanders have arrived from Mauritius, where most of them have lived since being evicted, to hear the final chapter in their legal battle. Both the divisional court and the court of appeal have already found in favor of the Chagossians.

While there were "undeniably unattractive aspects" to what had happened to the islanders in the 1970s, that was no longer what the case was about, Jonathan Crow QC, for the foreign secretary, told lords Bingham, Hoffmann, Rodger, Carswell and Mance.

The issue now was whether the government had been entitled in 2004 to issue orders in council forbidding the return of the islanders, he said. Britain took the Chagos islands from France in the Napoleonic wars and, under a 1971 immigration ordinance, removed the inhabitants compulsorily so that the main island in the archipelago, Diego Garcia, could be used as a U.S. base.

Crow said that it had been regarded by the U.S. since 9/11 as a "defense facility of the highest importance . . . a linchpin for the U.K.'s allies."

Although the judgments being contested do not grant the islanders the right to return to Diego Garcia itself, repopulation of the other islands would present an "unacceptable risk," the U.S. believed.

"It has financial implications, political implications, and defense implications," said Crow. "The Chagossians do not own any territory . . . They have no property rights on the islands at all. What is being asserted is a right of mass trespass."

Most of the islanders were now British citizens, said Crow. They had already received "very substantial compensation" for their removal, the law lords heard.

Sir Sydney Kentridge QC will reply on behalf of the Chagossians. They argue that they should be given the right to return, whether all of them wish to do so or not, and claim that it would be possible for them to make a living through ecotourism and fishing.