Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (26 page)

Nor were Alex’s Rs9 a week and Rita’s jobs as a maid enough to pay the fees. So, Rita recounted, Olivier “went to take the exam. He went to take it—he passed. He didn’t get a certificate because he didn’t deposit the money.”

BARRIERS AT SCHOOL

The structural disadvantage the islanders faced was compounded by the low levels of education they brought from Chagos and systematic educational disadvantage in exile (particularly in Mauritius). In Chagos, low levels of formal education and illiteracy were irrelevant to performing the vast majority of jobs. In Mauritius and the Seychelles, having little formal education and being illiterate, or nearly so, have been significant and increasing impediments to securing jobs and to achieving upward job mobility. Most of the new employment created in the two nations since the
1970s (i.e., in the EPZ and tourist sectors) has demanded at least some educational background. At the height of the EPZ boom in Mauritius, remember, it was “the availability of cheap,
literate and skilled
labour,” in addition to financial incentives and infrastructure, that encouraged “a massive flow of foreign direct investment.”
¹⁵
By contrast to relatively high levels of education in Mauritius, almost all Chagossians who were adults at the time of the expulsion left Chagos illiterate: Schools only opened in the archipelago in the 1950s, so by 1975, just 2 percent of adults could read “a little.”
¹⁶

Similarly, most of those who left Chagos as children arrived with a low-quality formal education that had worsened in the last years in Chagos. With their school interrupted, at least briefly, by the expulsion, children were in some cases barred access to Mauritian schools or had significant difficulty enrolling. Many school-age adolescents, like Rita’s children Alex, Mimose, and Eddy, often had to curtail schooling to find jobs and help their families financially. By 1975, 27 percent of school-age children were not in school.
¹⁷
On the job market, even outside the EPZ and tourist sectors, Chagossians thus competed for jobs with Mauritians and Seychellois who almost always had more formal education than they had.

Among those who entered school, many experienced discrimination and verbal abuse from teachers and classmates. If children managed to finish primary school without having dropped out for work, family, or academic reasons, most could not afford secondary school, which only became “free” in Mauritius in 1976 (compulsory book, uniform, exam, transportation, and other fees make it far from free). Universal free secondary school in the Seychelles only became available in 1981.

Those children who have attended school in Mauritius have found themselves structurally disadvantaged in another important way: Living for the most part in the poorest areas of Mauritius, they have attended the worst schools with the worst teachers in a school system that has been shown to discriminate systematically against poor students.
¹⁸
Growing up with illiterate parents, moreover, meant they had little help with their studies.

I AM ALONE ON THE EARTH

I am very unhappy

There’s no one anymore

To console me.

The bird sings for me

The bird cries for me

The bird sings for me

The bird cries for me.

I left my country

I left my little island

I left my family

I also left my heart.

—Song composed and sung by Mimose Bancoult Furcy, posted on the office wall of the Chagos Refugees Group, 2004
¹⁹

EXCLUDED, POWERLESS, CLOSETED

On the wall of their home on Diego Garcia, Janette Alexis’s family had a photograph of the Queen of England. Arriving in the Seychelles as a young girl she remembered being confused about her and her family’s nationality.
Are we British? Are we Mauritian?
she wondered. “What are we?” she and others, in Mauritius and the Seychelles, asked, as a people without a country, without a homeland, without their “
ter natal
”—natal land.

Many like Janette describe feeling excluded and isolated from mainstream life in exile. As several in Mauritius put it, Chagossians are “eksklu de lavi moris.” They are excluded from Mauritian life.

Some of the sense of exclusion in Mauritius stems from feeling that they are literally not part of the nation. Such feelings are rooted in the history surrounding Mauritian independence and the bargain by which the “father of the nation,” Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, is understood to have “sold” Chagos—and the Chagossians—to the British in exchange for independence. As a result, many feel that Mauritius is, as they say, “not a nation for them.” Like many AfroMauritians, many feel that Mauritius is “for the Indians” or “for the Hindus,” the majority ethnic and religious groups. The nation is not, they believe, “for the Creoles,” and it is especially not “for Chagossians.” The exclusion is double: first, as Chagossians who gave up their homeland so the rest of Mauritius could have its independence, and second, as people identified with the most marginalized elements of the minority AfroMauritian Creole population.

In the Seychelles, similar feelings of exclusion are widespread. Unlike Chagossians in Mauritius, who gained citizenship upon its independence,
those in the Seychelles were not granted automatic citizenship. Many lived in the country for decades as noncitizens and eventually had to buy citizenship. Again this literal form of exclusion combines with widespread feelings of being discriminated against as “foreigners” in access to jobs, housing, schooling, and other opportunities. Many point to their national identity cards in particular as a source of job and other discrimination: One of the eleven digits in the national identification number indicates a holder’s place of birth. A “1” indicates the holder is from the capital, Victoria; “2” means you’re from South Mahé; “3,” from Praslin. The children of citizens born outside of the country and those naturalized, like many Chagossians in the Seychelles, carry the unusual numbers “5” and “6” respectively.
²⁰

Many in both countries also speak of never feeling “at home.” And many non-Chagossians have treated them this way, as a people apart. Anthropologist Elizabeth Colson describes how home and a familiar environment generally provide a refuge that is crucial to people’s sense of self and identity. Destroy people’s home, take away their familiar environment, and people are likely to suffer, both materially and psychologically, becoming disoriented and insecure.
²¹

While there is no automatic connection between home and psychological disorder among displaced peoples,
²²
most Chagossians suffer painful feelings of homelessness and alienation. Janette said she sometimes thinks about what life would be like if they had not been removed.
Maybe Diego would be like Seychelles is now
, she said, referring to the ways in which the Seychelles has developed economically since she arrived in 1972.
²³

I would be more at ease there
, she continued. I’ve never felt comfortable here in Seychelles. We are treated as foreigners in Seychelles and in Seychelles they don’t like foreigners. We have always been treated as foreigners here.

Like other victimized peoples and individuals, many have internalized blame for the expulsion, questioning how they could have allowed themselves to be exiled. Many in both the first and second generations have been left asking why the expulsion happened, why they were victimized, and why they cannot live in their homeland.

Why didn’t we resist?
Janette often asks herself. Even though she remembers Chagossians on Diego Garcia being scared of U.S. military forces arriving on the island with their boats, planes, and heavy equipment, even though she remembers fearing they might be bombed if they did resist, even though she remembers her father protesting the removals, she can’t get the question out of her head:
Why did we let it happen to us?

Anthropologist Thayer Scudder explains that to have been moved against one’s will is to have suffered a “terrible defeat.” It is “hard to
imagine a more dramatic way to illustrate impotence than to forcibly eject people from a preferred habitat against their will.”
²⁴
Colson likewise holds that expulsion causes increased dependence and, as importantly, an awareness among displacees of this increased dependence. Involuntary displacement, she says, is a clear demonstration to a group and its members that they have lost control over their own destiny, that they are literally powerless.
²⁵

Among women, this powerlessness has sadly expressed itself in a vulnerability to sexual assault and abuse. Josiane Selmour’s Mauritian husband beat her for years until she finally went to the police and took him to court (which eventually fined him). For Josiane, abuse stems from the fact that
Mauritians don’t like Chagossians
. She explained, Mauritians call Chagossians “
sovaz
” [savages] and say, “
Alle Zilwa!
” [Go away Ilois!]. Husbands too. . . . they take advantage of Chagossian women. They abuse them, they call them names, because Chagossian women are powerless.

Other women have echoed these feelings. Many have reported experiencing abuse from their husbands or domestic partners (especially from non-Chagossian men), as well as physical and sexual abuse at work. Some have described verbally or physically abusive relationships between Chagossian spouses as a result of stress and pressures in the home. When the islanders first arrived, some Mauritian public welfare officers raped or sexually abused Chagossian women, even suggesting that friends do the same: “Some Mauritian men who pretended to help,” Botte writes, “were looking for other benefits.”
²⁶
Still, it’s important to note that Josiane was able to go to the police and take her husband to court. And as we shall see, in political organizing, where women play a dominant role, they have proven themselves to be far from powerless.

Like other victims, many have also felt considerable shame. Some of this shame derives from the material poverty and discrimination they have faced. Many tell of the shame they felt attending school (or, like Rita, as parents sending children to school) barefoot when their classmates wore shoes. In the Seychelles, Francine Volfrin felt deeply ashamed that her family couldn’t afford fancy clothing to wear to church like other children; instead they wore secondhand and tattered clothing.

As a result of these and other accumulated forms of abuse, discrimination, and negative stereotyping, many have concealed their identity as Chagossians. While some, especially those who have been heavily involved in political organizing, have maintained a strong sense of Chagossian identity, many young people in particular have grown up with little sense of this identity at all.

Some stress too that they have been prevented from full cultural expression, and thus self-identification, as they have felt forced to adapt to the cultures of Mauritius or the Seychelles, especially in their styles of dance, music, and cuisine. Many describe having hidden their identity by concealing their accents and changing their linguistic practices shortly after arrival. While their Chagos Kreol is related to and mutually intelligible with Mauritian Kreol and Seselwa (Seychellois Kreol), Chagos Kreol is distinguishable in some of its vocabulary and the accent of its speakers. Islanders described to me trying consciously to change their accent. One man explained that people cannot express themselves as they would like: Chagossians have to change their language and their accent, he said.
Chagossians have to think twice every time they start to speak
.

For years after arriving in the Seychelles, Janette hid her identity for fear of being deported by the government in a one-party state where she held no citizenship. For years she felt ashamed to identify herself as a Chagossian in school when teachers asked where she was born. For years, while an active protest movement was growing in Mauritius, she and others in the Seychelles felt powerless to argue for their rights in the one-party state. Finally in the late 1990s (after the start of a multiparty democracy), Janette decided that she was no longer going to hide her identity. She described this as her “coming out.” Although Janette did not intend to compare her experience to that of nonheterosexuals in heterosexist societies, the parallels are strong. Like many who do not conform to heterosexual norms, Janette experienced discrimination, stigmatization, and fear, giving her good reason to keep her identity secret.

COMPENSATION

In 1978 and again between 1982 and 1985, most Chagossians in Mauritius received financial and land compensation as a result of their expulsion. No one in the Seychelles received compensation. The 1978 compensation was payment from the £650,000 transferred by the British Government in 1972 to the Mauritian Government to resettle the islanders. Although when the Mauritian Government surveyed them, a majority requested that compensation come in the form of housing, eligible adult Chagossians received only cash payments of around $1,210 and around $200 for children 18 and under.
²⁷

Between 1982 and 1985, many but not all Chagossians in Mauritius received land and cash payments totaling around $4,620 for adults (around
$8,750 in 2004 dollars). In part the cash was to pay for the government’s construction of a home or to build one’s own home. Since the expulsion, housing had been one of the islanders’ most pressing problems, with most still living in “ramshackle houses and in dire conditions”: By the early 1980s, more than 80 percent were living in two-or three-room “hovels,” with 27 percent of households doubling up with other families.
²⁸
Those who opted to accept land and housing received small plots and two-room concrete-block houses built by the Mauritian Government in what became known as a
Cité Ilois
in either the impoverished neighborhood of Baie du Tombeau or Port Louis’s brothel district Pointe aux Sables. Others who opted not to receive these houses could use their compensation money to purchase new housing or to improve preexisting homes.