Posted on 05/24/2007 3:19:09 PM PDT by Androcles
Hundreds of Indian Ocean islanders who were forcibly deported from their homeland by Britain 40 years ago won a battle yesterday which could see them set sail for an emotional return within days.
The court of appeal in London found the British government guilty of "abuse of power" for attempting to prevent the Chagos Islanders from reclaiming land leased from under their feet by Britain to the US in the 1960s.
Three judges upheld a ruling in the islanders' favour last year, ordered the government to pay their legal costs and withheld support for an appeal to the House of Lords. Giving his reason for the ruling Lord Justice Sedley wrote: "Few things are more important to a social group than its sense of belonging, not only to each other but to a place. What has sustained peoples in exile, from Babylon onwards, has been the possibility of one day returning home." The judge added: "The barring of that door, however remote or inaccessible it may be for the present, is an act requiring overwhelming justification."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Headly Lamar, “ There may be a legal precedent here... ( Lamar grabs a law book)
Land snatching, land snatching.... Oh here it is ...Land Snatching ...see snatch.
An excellent film...and appropriate quotation.
Interesting. The deportations started under LBJ... but it is unclear from the article how long the Chagos islanders have lived there, it only says they were brought to the islands to work on coconut plantations and originally came from India and Africa...brought by the French. Those brought by the French would predate 1814 but for how many years? There is no mention of any people who may or may not have been there before the Arrival of these imported workers. And being imported to do work does not necessarily imply the workers were ever given or ever did purchase the land upon which they lived while they worked; for all anyone can tell by the lack of info in the article, they may have leased, or squatted, or most likely lived in company quarters.
Of more interest then is exactly when the lawsuit was filed, because this will shed more light on the real reason the lawsuit was filed so late....
The timing to me seems more like it was filed in the interest of Iran and not in the interest of former coconut plantation workers.
Does not seem compatible with:
Chagossians - who are descended from 18th century African and Indian labourers on French coconut plantations
The article doesn't say they were slaves, so the implication is they were people who voluntarily left "the place where they belonged" to work for pay in a strange place under French rule in the 1700s up to 1814 when the Brits acquired the islands. They never established an independent country to which they would gain a sense of nationhood, and apparently didn't have enough sense of belonging to go back home to India or Africa or even leave with the French. Mainly the way this is written they are the descendents of migrant workers and eventually the jobs their ancestors originally came for dried up. Not that much unlike Okie sharecroppers who rented land from the Chickasaw.
“because this will shed more light on the real reason the lawsuit was filed so late....”
The real reason is Diego Garcia.
L
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