Human Rights Watch calls for British, U.S. reparations for displaced Chagossian people

Feb. 15 (UPI) -- A Human Rights Watch report Wednesday called for Britain and the United States to pay full reparations for forcing Chagossians from their indigenous homes in the Chagos Archipelago from 1965-1973.

The "That's When The Nightmare Started" report said Britain and the United States permanently displaced the Chagossians without compensation to build the Diego Garcia U.S. military base.

"The forced displacement of the Chagossians and ongoing abuses amount to crimes against humanity committed by a colonial power against an Indigenous people," the report said.

According to the report the Chagos Archipelago was part of the British colony of Mauritius and was split from that colony in 1965.

Human Rights Watch said British colonial rule of the Chagossians was systematically racist. The Chagossian people, the report said, "are predominately descendants of enslaved people, forcibly brought from the African continent and Madagascar to the then-uninhabited Chagos islands where they worked on coconut plantations under French and British rule."

"Perhaps most damning," the report said, "is that despite the clear and public evidence that senior UK and US officials planned and implemented the forced displacement of an entire people, demonstrating discrimination based on race and an utter disregard for basic rights, and continued to commit abuses for decades, there has scarcely been a public discussion, let alone any actual investigations, into whether these atrocities are international crimes and serious violations of human rights law."

Clive Baldwin, Senior Legal Advisor for Human Rights Watch, said British and the U.S. governments committed at least three crimes against humanity.

Baldwin said they include forcible displacement of the Chagossians, preventing them from returning and persecution of the Chagossians on racial and ethnic grounds.

During a published interview on hrw.org, Baldwin said "These are crimes that are taking place today, and the Chagossians are owed reparations. They should have the right to decide whether or not they return to the land that was stolen from them and to receive full financial compensation for the harms inflicted on them. This crime should be acknowledged for the colonial crime it is."

The Human Rights Watch report said the Chagossian must be consulted regarding current British-Mauritius negotiations over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands.