Sent to The Times last week
Sir,
Your ocean correspondent (Comment, Jan 23) sees in the Chagos Islands “a glimmer of hope” for coral reefs. “We have the golden opportunity to protect them,” he writes, because “they are administered by Britain.” The same did not apply to the islands’ inhabitants, who were unlawfully expelled in what your correspondent dubs “a controversial resettlement.” The Washington Post called it an “act of mass kidnapping.”
Although the House of Lords has shamefully upheld Britain’s freedom to steal their homeland, nine senior judges have found in favour of the islanders’ right to resettle it. Your correspondent cites the “absence of entrenched economic interests” there, but not the opaque interests compelling the United States to demand that no Chagossian live on islands 150 miles from the American military base on Diego Garcia, which has served as a secret prison.
Wouldn’t your comment pages be better used urging the Foreign Secretary to ask his new counterpart in Washington why the indigenous population can’t return at once? Unless there’s a strong, publicly defensible case to the contrary, shouldn’t they be welcome, as they are alongside the American bases in Mildenhall and Lakenheath?
Daniel Simpson
