Burying The Chagossians - The Media Silence

It always struck me that media coverage of the government's treatment of the Chagos islanders was appalling, but I've only recently tried to quantify this. Indeed, I can only assume that given the lack of proper media coverage, most of the UK population must be unaware of the facts, even many of those reading this site.

The background is that around 2,000 Chagossians - the entire community - were depopulated from the Chagos islands from 1968-73 following the UK's agreement to allow the US to use the largest island, Diego Garcia, as a military base. They were dumped in the slums of the Mauritian capital, Port Louis, where most of the now 8,000-strong community still live in poverty. Minimal compensation was offered by the UK government which then proceeded to lie, notably to parliament, for four decades (yes, four decades) that there had been any 'permanent inhabitants'. Ever since, the Chagossians have fought for their right to return, with almost no international help.

(A longer analysis, drawing on the declassified files, is in chapter 22 of my book, Web of Deceit, or some further shorter background is in a recent Guardian piece - http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1636549,00.html)

In the late 1990s the Chagossians began a legal battle in the British courts to win the right to return. In November 2000 they won a stunning High Court victory which labelled their removal from the islands by the government 'an abject legal failure' - they thus won the right to return, though the government interpreted this as to the outlying islands in the Chagos group, not Diego Garcia itself. However, in June 2004, the government suddenly - literally out of the blue - announced it was enacting 'orders in council' to ban the Chagossians from ever returning. This is the British version of the 'fatwa', which allows any government to overturn independent legal decisions made against it (a nice illustration of the Blair government's commitment to legality, to go alongisde the Iraq case). The Chagossians are currently appealing against this ruling and seeking to uphold their right to return. A hearing was held in December and the High Court is expected to decide towards the end of February.

The government is fighting the Chagossians tooth and nail in court; its legal fees currently come to over £1.5 million spent on defeating this poor community, who have no money and rely on hand-outs to come to the UK, and the support of the Chagos Support Association, run on a shoestring budget. Whitehall is of course terrified of having the original inhabitants back on the islands anywhere near Diego Garcia, which of course would mightily upset Big Brother. The Americans made it absolutely clear at the time of the original discussions in the mid-1960s that they wanted the removal of the entire population and this remains their position.

The treatment of the Chagossians is appalling, but nothing other than normal, by British government standards. But the other interesting thing is how topical, in any news sense, the whole issue is: Diego Garcia is a US military base used to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan (and would possibly be used in an attack on Iran); there have been US media reports that DG is being secretly used to house 'terrorist suspects'; the High Court case is ongoing; there is a community of 200 Chagossians in the UK, who are British citizens; the US and UK have a declared aim of promoting democracy (a joke obviously, but their declared aim, meaning that journalists might be thought capable of finding what are called 'double standards') in the region; the 'right to return' is not an untopical issue in the context of the Middle East. Etc Etc.

Given all this, you might think it would be seriously hard for journalists not to cover the issue. So what has happened? Consulting their websites:

- In the Independent and Independent on Sunday between them, there have been 5 full articles in the last three years (one of which was on the dispute between the UK and Mauritius over sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago, not the population).
- In the Observer, there has been one full article in the past three years (in July 2003). The only article before that was in July 2000.
- The Guardian has had 11 articles in the newspaper and a further four online, in the past 3 years.

I can't find a way of quantifying TV coverage. But I'm not aware of ANY BBC TV news coverage at all in the past three years (though I do know of various recent unsuccessful attempts to interest Newsnight, for example). Search on the Channel 4 site produced no mentions of 'Diego Garica' or 'Chagos' - I do not know of any coverage there either. John Pilger's documentary, broadcast last year, was certainly a first on TV since documentaries on the subject have never, to my knowldege, been broadcast on UK television.
The Guardian's 12 articles might seem half-decent compared to the rest. But then look at the number of articles on an official enemy - Zimbabwe, for example. There are literally dozens of articles on Zimbabwe in the past 3 three years, quite possibly hundreds (I couldn't be bothered to count all of them). In fact, the Guardian has had the same number of articles on Zimbabwe in the past three months as it has had on Chagos in the past three years.

It would really take some doing to argue convincingly that the Chagos issue does not merit considerable media attention by any objective indicators. The fact that media coverage has been so slight is in my view therefore a further illustration of media selection. The issue is scandalous enough but, as over Iraq and numerous other foreign policies, if the media were doing their job, some justice might have been achieved by the people concerned. Indeed, this issue is such a 'no brainer', that the government is distinctly vulnerable to being pressed for a fundamental change in policy. As it is, the issue is marginalised, and so are the victims. For further information on the Chagos islands campaign go to www.chagossupport.org.uk


Mark Curtis
www.markcurtis.info
New book - Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses