October 02, 2004

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible.
Diego Garcia is one of the biggest American bases in the world. It was not always so. During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitise" the islands of 2,000 inhabitants using a combination of fictions, lies and intimidation.

The practice to keep the inhabitants from gaining justice continues to this day, at the hands of the British Labour government of Tony Blair. "Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the 'deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts' as a crime against humanity."

posted by Bluestone 20 years ago
  • Sickening.
  • Depressing.
  • how come I'm not surprised.
  • Some fucking role model for democracy the US and UK is. This is just evil.
  • Depressing, indeed. The evil that one suspects large governments, the powerful, and the military are capable of, seems regrettably, to be far worse than speculation. Stories like this are why a free and independent media is necessary, not 'news' outlets that are part of the industrial/military/corporate megaliths. Who's getting more interesting information from the web than from CNN, etc.?
  • The trick would be to get the media to talk about an issue like this. That is a next-to-impossible task. My belief is that even if Americans found out about this, they would not really care. I have no idea how it is in other countries, but the prevailing belief in this country is that other lives are worth less than American lives. Displacing other people to make us feel safer is a long, proud feature of American history.
  • disgusting. Another good reason not to vote for Blair.
  • Except who is the alternative? And would they act any differently? In Canada, we've just found out that our gov't may be going along with the US missle defence plan on the same grounds - that it's governed by a treaty - but as it is, the opposition party is more eager to join the missle defence than one in power, so it's not like we have much choice.
  • Except who is the alternative? The Liberal Democrats, probably. (Although I live in a very Conservative area, so both Labour and the Liberal Democrats get very few votes here anyway. My vote doesn't really feel like it ever matters...) And would they act any differently? Who knows. But thats no excuse to continue voting for someone who you find abhorrent.
  • This reminded me of the people from Bikini Atoll.
  • jb - you're probably right - but dng hit the nail ...
  • Yes, you fight this stuff whenever and wherever you find it. But let's not be naive. All governments are ruthless. Most western governments, and many of the rest, are better than they used to be. In fact, I think the biggest reason that people so often think everything is going to hell in a handbasket is because in one crucial way things are much better than they used to be: we learn about this stuff. Prior to the last few generations, the public never learned pretty much anything the government didn't want them to know. And this was coupled with an educational establishment that sanitized history, emphasizing all the supposed virtues of nations like the US, the UK, Canada, etc. So what's happened is that the last couple of generations has learned horrid things about their countries that the prior generations never did, yet we were still largely weened on idealistic, patriotic stories of our countries. The reality comes as quite a shock. But that doesn't mean that things are worse in reality. They're actually better. It's just that they're worse, and have always been worse, than people like to believe.
  • kmellis" Hear,Hear!
  • kmellis makes a good point - what has happened in the last two generations is not a lot compared to what our governments did quietly before. (Though I don't know what age you are, kmellis, but the current Canadian educational system at least no longer sanitizes history to the extent that it did.)
  • Yeah, this is outrageous. I can't quite remember which network carried it, but I remember seeing a documentary on this at some point. Might have been ABC(?). Anyway, it was better than this article, which is a little lean on details.