Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (43 page)

43
. Attachment to Small, memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, January 11, 1971.

44
. John Todd, letter to Allan F. Knight, February 17, 1971, PRO: T317/1625.

45
. According to Madeley, “One Ilois woman, Marie Louina, died on Diego when she learned she would have to leave her homeland.” Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 5. I have been unable to confirm this account.

46
. See also Sunday Times, “The Islanders that Britain Sold,” September 21, 1975, 10.

47
. Marcel Moulinie, statement of Marcel Moulinie, application for judicial review,
Queen v. The Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ex parte Bancoult
, 1999.

48
. Small, memorandum for the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, January 28, 1971, 1.

49
. U.S. Department of State, telegram to U.S. Embassy Port Louis, U.S. Embassy London, February 4, 1971, library of David Stoddart. See also NARA: RG 59, Subject-Numeric Files 1970–1973.

50
. Bruce Greatbatch, FCO Telno BIOT 52, telegram to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, August 26, 1971, PRO.

51
. Attachment to E. L. Cochrane, Jr., memorandum for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Plans and Policy), March 24, 1971, NHC: 00 Files, 1971, Box 174, 11000, 2.

52
. Ibid., 1.

53
. Ibid.

54
. Ibid. The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans and Policy explained to Zumwalt that Diego’s inhabitants were a mix of Ilois, Mauritians, and Seychellois. He also explained the Navy’s position on employing any locals: “The decision not to hire local labor, even for domestic work, was made on the basis that no local economy dependent on the facility should be created. To do so would make it more difficult to remove the workers when the facility becomes operational. If a native community of bars, laundries,
etc.
grew and then was required to be disbanded, the resultant publicity could become damaging. Another important factor is that presentations to Congress have stressed that there will be no indigenous population and no native labor utilized in the construction.” Zumwalt scrawled
the following in response: “Better than I had hoped.” See Blouin, memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, December 28, 1970.

Chapter Seven
“On the Rack”

1
. Bandjunis,
Diego Garcia
, 47.

2
. Ibid., 47–49.

3
. See also Marimootoo, “Diego Files,” 46, 48.

4
. Ottaway, “Islanders Were Evicted for U.S. Base.”

5
. D. D. Newsom, letter to James K. Bishop, Jr., February 1, 1972, NARA: RG 59/150/67/1/5, Subject-Numeric Files 1970–1973, Box 1715, 1.

6
. Bruce Greatbatch, FCO Telno BIOT 52, telegram to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, August 26, 1971, PRO.

7
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 61.

8
. See also Marcel Moulinie, “Statement of Marcel Moulinie,” application for judicial review,
Queen v. The Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
, ex parte Bancoult [1999], para. 14; Pilger,
Freedom Next Time
, 26–27, 35.

9
. Moulinie, “Statement,” para. 14. See also Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 4–5.

10
. Some of the voyages to the Seychelles took as many as six days. Pilger,
Freedom Next Time
, 28.

11
. Moulinie “Statement,” para. 16.

12
. Greatbatch, FCO Telno BIOT 52, August 26, 1971; Dale, telegram to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Telno personal 176, September 23, 1971, PRO.

13
. William D. Brewer, memorandum to Department of State, December 20, 1971, NARA: RG 59/150/67/27/6, Subject-Numeric Files 1970–1973, Box 3010, 4.

14
. Ibid., 1, 4.

15
. Ibid., 1, 3.

16
. Ibid., 5, 1.

17
. William D. Brewer, letter to Herman J. Cohen, January 5, 1972, NARA: RG 59/150/67/1/5, Subject-Numeric Files 1970–1973, Box 1715, 2, 5. Although Brewer’s State Department superiors knew the Air Force undersecretary was being “intemperate and at times illogical,” they chose not to challenge him (and the Air Force) on an issue they considered minor and which they perceived might harm other departmental priorities. See Herman J. Cohen, letter to David D. Newsom, January 20, 1972, NARA: Subject-Numeric 1970–1973, 59/150/67/1/5.

18
. Brewer, letter to Cohen, January 5, 1972.

19
. Ibid., 1.

20
. Adam Hochschild,
King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 121–22. The possibility that others might have challenged the expulsion becomes more improbable when
one considers that to challenge any policy of the U.S. Government is not simply to challenge one’s immediate superior or an office within the Government, but to challenge one’s entire department, the department’s secretary, and to a significant extent the U.S. Government as a whole. This lesson is communicated explicitly in most telegrams, which, in the case of the State Department, for example, deliver most orders and instructions not in the name of a State Department superior but in the name of the “Department of State,” under the signature of the Secretary of State. This contributed to the feeling among many officials that they were carrying out the policy dictates of the U.S. Government writ large, matters about which they generally believed they had no input.

21
. Charles Lemert,
Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 119.

22
. U.S. Department of State, telegram to U.S. Embassy London, February 5, 1972, NARA: RG 59/150/67/27/6, Subject Numeric Files 1970–1973, Box 3010.

23
. Anthony Lake and Roger Morris, “Pentagon Papers (2): The Human Reality of Realpolitik,”
Foreign Policy
4 (1971): 159. See Samantha Power,
“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide
(New York: Perennial, 2002), 365.

24
. PRO: Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Overseas Development Administration, London, 1972; Henry Precht, airgram to Department of State, May 2, 1972, NARA: RG 59/150/67/1/5, Subject-Numeric Files 1970–1973, Box 1715, 2.

25
. John Todd, letter to Allan F. Knight, June 17, 1972, PRO.

26
. UKTB: M. T. Mein, 2002, para. 14.

27
. C. A. Seller, Letter to Morris, June 20, 1967, PRO: T317/1347.

28
. Bandjunis,
Diego Garcia
, 49, 58.

29
. Ibid., 62.

30
. C. S. Minter, Jr., memorandum for Chief of Naval Operations, July 20, 1972, NHC: 00 Files, 1972, Box 161, 11000.

31
. Bandjunis,
Diego Garcia
, 64–71.

32
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 12

33
. See Bandjunis,
Diego Garcia
, 309.

34
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 41.

35
. Ibid., 42.

36
. Ibid., 42–45.

37
. Ibid., 79.

38
. Ibid., 66.

Chapter Eight
Derasine
: The Impoverishment of Expulsion

1
. Anahita World Class Sanctuary Mauritius, “Paradise Found,” available from
http://www.anahitamauritius.com/anahita_location.php?langue=uk
.

2
. Susan Hack, “Butlers, Beaches, and Bubble Baths,”
Condé Nast Traveler
, August 2004, 93. Elsewhere Hack unconsciously captures some of the colonialist tinge of the tourist industry when she remarks, “Encountering a butler in the flesh, I savor the strange power of making demands on a man who lives to obey my orders.”

3
. Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 5.

4
.
Sunday Times
(London), “The Islanders that Britain Sold,” September 21, 1975, 10.

5
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 114–21. The persistence of poor housing standards left Chagossians vulnerable to new displacements and renewed homelessness, especially to the cyclones that periodically strike Mauritius with especially ferocious effects on the homes of poor families. A 1975 interview with a Chagossian from Diego Garcia describes the damage of the cyclone on a family of nine: “The five [chickens] that were left and the coop were lost in February in Cyclone Gervaise. She also lost during the cyclone her two coconut-straw mattresses that she brought from Diego. She tried to save them, but the wind became too strong and she and the children had to flee to a neighbor’s house. When she returned, the mattresses, and most of the iron sheets from the house, were gone. Now she has to gather grass for the children to sleep on.” Ibid., 111.

6
. Richard M. Titmuss and Brian Abel-Smith,
Social Policies and Population Growth in Mauritius
(London: Frank Cass, 1968).

7
. V. S. Naipaul,
The Overcrowded Barracoon
(New York: Vintage, 1984).

8
. Titmuss and Abel-Smith,
Social Policies and Population Growth
, 7.

9
. African Research Group, “BIOT: Health & Mortality in the Chagos Islands,” report, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London, October 2000, 3, 5.

10
. Comité Ilois Organisation Fraternelle, “Paper Prepared by the Comité Ilois Organisation Fraternelle,” Port Louis, Mauritius, n.d.: 2–5.

11
. Ibid., 3–5.

12
. Ibid., 2–3.

13
. I. Walker,
Zaffer Pe Sanze
, 14.

14
. Martin Walker, “Price on Islanders’ Birthright,”
Manchester Guardian
, November 4, 1975.

15
. Comité Ilois Organisation Fraternelle, “Paper Prepared by the Comité Ilois,” 2.

16
. See, e.g., Sydney Selvon,
A Comprehensive History of Mauritius
(Mauritius: Mauritius Printing Specialists, 2001), 394.

17
. A. Wooler, letter to Eric G. Norris, August 22, 1968, attachment to Eric G. Norris, letter to Mr. Counsell, September 9, 1968, PRO: FCO 31/134.

18
. I. Watt, letter to D. A. Scott, L. Monson, and Mr. Kerby, January 26, 1971, PRO: T317/1625, 3.

19
. Vine et al.,
Dérasiné
, 114.

20
. Ottaway, “Islanders Were Evicted for U.S. Base”; See H. Siophe in U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 112–21.

21
. Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 5. These reports seem clearly to suggest increased mortality compared with life in Chagos. Yearly average death figures during the last years in Chagos for individuals born there are 0.75 per year in Diego Garcia, 4.75 in Peros Banhos, and 2.33 in Salomon. See “B.I.O.T. Death Peros-Banhos, Solomon Island, Diego-Garcia 1965–1971,” death records, SNA.

22
. Comité Ilois Organisation Fraternelle, “Paper Prepared by the Comité Ilois,” 3.

23
. Michael Cernea, “Anthropological and Sociological Research for Policy Development on Population Resettlement,” in
Anthropological Approaches to Resettlement: Policy, Practice, and Theory
, ed. Michael M. Cernea and Scott E. Guggenheim (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993), 12. Research in India, for example, has shown that the country’s “development” programs have displaced more than 20 million over four decades and that 75 percent have ended up worse off than before their displacement. Cernea writes, “Their livelihoods have not been restored; in fact, the vast majority . . . have become impoverished.”

24
. Titmuss and Abel-Smith,
Social Policies and Population Growth
.

25
. See, e.g., Durbarry; “The Export Processing Zone”; Bowman,
Mauritius
; Kevin Ramkalaon, “Post-Independence Mauritius: An Economic Vision,” in
Colouring the Rainbow: Mauritian Society in the Making
, ed. Marina Carter (Port Louis, Mauritius: Centre for Research on Indian Ocean Societies, 1998), 27–32; Berhanu Woldekidan, “Export-led Growth in Mauritius,” Indian Ocean Policy Papers 3, Australia, National Center for Development Studies, 1994.

26
. Pacific & Indian Ocean Department, “BIOT Working Papers: Paper No. 5—Evacuation and Resettlement of Inhabitants of Chagos Archipelago,” 1969, PRO, paras. 6, 8.

27
. See, e.g., Marion Benedict and Burton Benedict,
Men, Women and Money in Seychelles
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982); Raphael Kaplinsky, “Prospering at the Periphery: A Special Case—The Seychelles,” in
African Islands and Enclaves
, ed. Robin Cohen (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983), 195–215; Ronny Gabbay and Robin Ghosh, “Tourism in Seychelles,” in
Tourism and Economic Development: Case Studies from the Indian Ocean Region
, ed. R. N. Ghosh, M. A. B. Siddique, and R. Gabbay (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 104–27.

28
. Benedict and Benedict,
Men, Women and Money in Seychelles
, 161.

29
. Marcus Franda,
The Seychelles: Unquiet Islands
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), 16, 81, 84–85.

30
. M. Walker, “Price on Islanders’ Birthright.”

31
. Ranjit Nayak, “Risks Associated with Landlessness: An Exploration toward Socially Friendly Displacement and Resettlement,” in Michael Cernea and Christopher McDowell,
Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000), 103.

32
. Jean-Claude Lau Thi Keng, “Intégration/Exclusion,” in
Etude pluridisciplinaire sur l’exclusion à Maurice
, ed. Issa Asgarally (Réduit, Mauritius: Présidence de la République, 1997), 17–48.

33
. Roland Lamusse, “Macroeconomic Policy and Performance,” in Dabee and Greenaway,
The Mauritian Economy
, 41.