Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (44 page)

34
. Rosabelle Boswell, “Views on Creole Culture, Economy and Survival,”
Revi Kiltir Kreol
1 (2002): 15–26.

35
. Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 27.

36
. Herve Sylva, “Report on the Survey on the Conditions of Living of the Ilois Community Displaced from the Chagos Archipelago,” report, Mauritius, April 22, 1981, 2–3, 11–13.

37
. Prostitution appears as an ongoing employment opportunity of last resort for Chagossians with few other opportunities. Botte’s 1980 study of islander women found at least 23 engaged in prostitution (in Chagos, by contrast, “prostitution as a trade did not exist”). Although few were eager to discuss this subject, my research in Mauritius suggested that prostitution remains a source of employment for some. See Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 41–42. On prostitution and other illegal activities, see also Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 6; Sylva, “Report on the Survey on the Conditions of Living,”; Comité Ilois Organisation Fraternelle, “Paper Prepared by the Comité Ilois.”

38
. Chagos Refugees Group, Port Louis, Mauritius; N. C. Aizenman, “New High in U.S. Prison Numbers,”
Washington Post
, February 29, 2008. Based on CRG registration statistics, there were around 4,000 Chagossians age 12 and older in 2001; thus the 38 adults incarcerated easily represented more than 1 in 100 adults.”

39
. Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 30–31.

40
. Ibid., 30–31; I. Walker,
Zaffer Pe Sanze
, 17.

41
. Boswell, “Views on Creole Culture,” 19–21.

42
. See, e.g., Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 47. See also Boswell, “Views on Creole Culture,” for more on this phenomenon among the poor of Mauritius generally, and Elizabeth Colson,
The Social Consequences of Resettlement: The Impact of the Kariba Resettlement upon the Gwembe Tonga
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), on the phenomenon among involuntary displacees as a group.

43
. Michael Cernea, “Risks, Safeguards, and Reconstruction: A Model for Population Displacement and Resettlement,” in Cernea and McDowell,
Risks and Reconstruction
, 26–27.

Chapter Nine
Death and Double Discrimination

1
. This accounts for some of the inspiration behind the adoption of the term
Chagossian
.

2
. I. Walker,
Zaffer Pe Sanze
, 24.

3
. Nearly two-thirds (65.5 percent) of the first generation and almost half of second-generation respondents (44.7 percent) said they had been a victim of verbal abuse. See Vine et al.,
Dérasiné
, 125.

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

5
. In my 2002–3 survey, half of those surveyed from the generation born in Chagos and one-third of the second generation reported suffering job or other discrimination as a Chagossian. See Vine et al.,
Dérasiné
, 125; see also, Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 38–39; I. Walker,
Zaffer Pe Sanze
, 21–22; Tania Dræbel, “Evaluation des besoins sociaux de la communauté déplacée de l’Archipel de Chagos, volet un: santé et education,” report, Le Ministère de la Sécurité Sociale et de la Solidarité Nationale, Mauritius, December 1997, 36.

6
. Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 39, 25; see also I. Walker,
Zaffer Pe Sanze
, 16.

7
. For an interesting comparison in another island nation with strikingly similar historical and demographic conditions, see Viranjini Munasinghe’s description of the emergence of stereotypical, racialized discourses about peoples of African and Indian descent in Trinidad and Tobago. Viranjini Munasinghe,
Callaloo or Tossed Salad? East Indians and the Cultural Politics of Identity in Trinidad
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).

8
. Franda,
The Seychelles
.

9
. Issa Asgarally, ed.,
Étude pluridisciplinaire sur l’exclusion à Maurice
(Réduit, Mauritius: Présidence de la République, 1997).

10
. Thomas Hyland Eriksen, “Creole Culture and Social Change,”
Journal of Mauritian Studies
1, no. 2 (1986): 59.

11
. Similarly in the Seychelles, most Chagossians are recognized as belonging to a stigmatized darker-complexioned minority.

12
. Differences between peoples of Indian, African, and European descent are generally perceived locally in terms of race, as being fixed in biology; to avoid reifying race as a legitimate, scientifically accurate concept based in biological reality, it is useful to introduce the language of ethnicity.

13
. Larry W. Bowman and Jeffery A. Lefebvre, “The Indian Ocean and Strategic Perspectives,” in
The Indian Ocean: Perspectives on a Strategic Arena
, ed. William L. Dowdy and Russell B. Trood (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), n. 28; Pranay B. Gupte, “Dispossessed in Mauritius Are Inflamed,”
New York Times
, December 14, 1982, A5;
60 Minutes
, “Diego Garcia,” CBS Television, prod. Andrew Tkach, June 15, 2003. At least one grandchild of someone born in Chagos has worked on the base in the laundry and in other jobs. His obtaining a job seems to support the claim that Chagossians have been disqualified from employment on the basis of their place of birth or their parents’ place of birth.

14
. Utterances in italics like this one are quotations where I was not absolutely certain to have recorded every word spoken. These quotations are not reconstructions or paraphrases but instead indicate instances where I could not ensure that I had recorded a direct quotation word for word (although at their least accurate they are missing only few words). All other quoted utterances are direct word-for-word quotations recorded either electronically or by hand during research.

15
. Durbarry, “The Export Processing Zone,” emphasis added.

16
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 115–16.

17
. Ibid., 118–19.

18
. Dræbel, “Evaluation des besoins sociaux”; Sheila Bunwaree, “Education in Mauritius since Independence: More Accessible But Still Inequitable,” in
Consolidating the Rainbow: Independent Mauritius, 1968–1998
, ed. Marina Carter (Port Louis, Mauritius: Centre for Research on Indian Ocean Societies, 1998).

19
. Text translated from French by the author.

20
. Interview with Seychelles government official, September 28, 2004.

21
. Elizabeth Colson, “Overview,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
18 (1989): 1–16.

22
. Liisa Malkki,
Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

23
. She is not far off in her estimate: The base area of Diego Garcia resembles, if not the Seychelles, a small town in the United States.

24
. Thayer Scudder, “The Human Ecology of Big Projects: River Basin Development and Resettlement,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
12 (1973): 51.

25
. Colson,
The Social Consequences of Resettlement
.

26
. Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 38.

27
. Mauritius Legislative Assembly, “Report of the Select Committee on the Excision of the Chagos Archipelago,” Port Louis, Mauritius, June 1983, 3–5.

28
. Botte, “The ‘Ilois’ Community,” 29, 30; Sylva, “Report on the Survey on the Conditions of Living,” 3.

Chapter Ten
Dying of
Sagren

1
. Dræbel, “Evaluation des besoins sociaux”; see also Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 10–11.

2
. Vine et al.,
Dérasiné
, 174–87.

3
. Ibid., 116–19.

4
. Dræbel, “Evaluation des besoins sociaux,” 15–16.

5
. This figure is a revision of an earlier finding after final data cleaning and analysis. See Vine et al.,
Dérasiné
, 116–19.

6
. Dræbel, “Evaluation des besoins sociaux.”

7
. Ibid., 18–25, 34.

8
. Ibid., 26–35.

9
. Vine et al.,
Dérasiné
, 213.

10
. Ibid., 229.

11
. Mindy Thompson Fullilove,
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do about It
(New York: One World, 2004), 224.

12
. Chagos Refugees Group statistics.

13
. Dræbel, “Evaluation des besoins sociaux,” 25.

14
. Fullilove,
Root Shock
, 11.

15
. Nancy Scheper-Hughes,
Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil
, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 173–87. The
analysis in this chapter was unconsciously influenced by Scheper-Hughes; only after returning to reread
Death without Weeping
did I recognize how her remarkable work shaped my own.

16
. Thayer Scudder and Elizabeth Colson, “From Welfare to Development: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of Dislocated People,” in
Involuntary Migration and Resettlement: The Problems and Responses of Dislocated Peoples
, ed. A. Hansen and A. Oliver-Smith (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), 269.

17
. Ilan S. Wittstein et al., “Neurohumoral Features of Myocardial Stunning Due to Sudden Emotional Stress,”
New England Journal of Medicine
352, no. 6: 539–48; Scott W. Sharsky et al., “Acute and Reversible Cardiomyopathy Provoked by Stress in Women from the United States,”
Circulation
111: 472–79.

18
. Anne Fadiman,
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
(New York: The Noonday Press, 1997), 188.

19
. Nayak, “Risks Associated with Landlessness,” 95–96.

20
. Scudder,
The Human Ecology of Big Projects
.

21
. Saminaden et al., Petition to British Government.

22
. Nayak, “Risks Associated with Landlessness,” 96.

23
. Translation by author.

24
. Nayak, “Risks Associated with Landlessness,” 96.

25
. Mimose Bancoult Furcy, Grup Tambour Chagos,
Grup Tambour Chagos
, Island Music Productions, 2004. Translation by author.

26
. Fullilove,
Root Shock
, 12.

27
. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds.,
Social Suffering
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

28
. Ibid., xxi–xxiv.

29
. See Laura Jeffery, “The Politics of Victimhood among Displaced Chagossians in Mauritius” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2006).

30
. The words point to a common narrative of the expulsion and to the injuries experienced in exile. Among other purposes that the shorthand serves is to allow people to allude to the expulsion and other painful experiences of suffering without having to recite the entirety of the narrative or the specifics of their own painful injuries (including rape, hunger, and crime). See Jeffery, “The Politics of Victimhood.”

31
. Charles Taylor, “A Different Kind of Courage,” review of Jonathan Lear,
Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation
,
New York Review of Books
54, no. 7 (April 26, 2007).

Chapter Eleven
Daring to Challenge

1
.
Le Mauricien
, “150 ‘Ilois’ expulsés refusent de débarquer à P-L,” May 4, 1973, 4.

2
.
L’Express
, “L’accueil aux îlois: le PM donne des précisions,” May 10, 1973, 1. Parts of this chapter draw on David Vine, “Challenging Empires: The Struggle of the People of Diego Garcia,” in
Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Culture, Politics, and Society
(forthcoming, 2008), and David Vine and Laura Jeffery, “Give Us Back Diego Garcia: Unity and Division among Activists in the Indian Ocean,” in
Undermining the Bases of Empire: Social Movements against U.S. Overseas Military Installations
, ed. Catherine Lutz (Ithaca, NY: Pluto Press, 2008).

3
. Saminaden et al., Petition to British Government.

4
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975.”

5
. A.R.G. Prosser, “Visit to Mauritius, From 24 January to 2 February: Mauritius-Resettlement of Persons Transferred from Chagos Archipelago,” report, Port Louis, Mauritius, September 1976, p. 6.

6
. Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 7.

7
.
Le Mauricien
, “Trois des sept grévistes de la faim admiser à l’hôpital Civil,” September 21, 1978, 4.

8
. Madeley, “Diego Garcia,” 7.

9
. Ibid., 6, 8, 15.

10
. They also asked for recognition as refugees, a demand which was immediately rejected by the Mauritian Government, which considered Chagossians to be Mauritians who could not be refugees on Mauritian soil.

11
.
Le Mauricien
, “Nouvelle manifestation des ilois, hier: épreuve de force avec la police,” March 17, 1981, 1, 4; Lalit,
Diego Garcia in Times of Globalisation
(Port Louis, Mauritius: Ledikasyon pu Travayer, 2002), 113–17.

12
. This section draws on Jeffery, “The Politics of Victimhood,” 93–97.

13
. Lassemillante and the CSC argue that the expulsion and continued exile of the Chagossians is contrary to UN declarations on human and indigenous rights.

14
. At the time Gifford worked for the London law firm of Bernard Sheridan, the attorney who represented the islanders’ aborted efforts to gain compensation in 1979. Gifford says that part of his inspiration to take up the case was his interest in his firm’s role in the Chagossians’ saga.