5 ms·

This is a British source that describes why the Chagos islands are so contentious: https://politicsfirst.co.uk/editorials/britains-shame-the-ethnic-cleansing-o

• onyva 7y ago
  Thank you for the link.
• gedy 7y ago
  That article is misleading, calling it ethnic cleansing of "indigenous peoples". These islands were uninhabited prior to European contact. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia
  • ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
    Not true at all. Diego Garcia is just one island among these Archipelago and it was always inhabited by the native creole-speaking "Chagossians". UK evicted them forcefully in the 70's or 80's I think.
    • viraptor 7y ago
      The way I understand what I've found is, the islands were not inhabited before the Europeans arrived there, and "Chagossians" weren't native. They were brought in as slave workers after the settlement. (Then, the population expanded with voluntary migration)
      • ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
        Regardless of their ancestry timeline, the natives have known to have been living there for at least three centuries. Expelling them now is cruel and unwarranted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Chagossians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Chagossians
        • sls 7y ago
          > Sir Bruce Greatbatch, KCVO, CMG, MBE, governor of the Seychelles, ordered all the dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. More than 1000 pets were gassed with exhaust fumes. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked", Lisette Talatte, in her 60s, told me, "and when their dogs were taken away in front of them our children screamed and cried". Sir Bruce had been given responsibility for what the US called "cleansing" and "sanitising" the islands; and the killing of the pets was taken by the islanders as a warning.
        • viraptor 7y ago
          What do you mean by "natives"? It's often used for the first people - and as weird as it is in this case, by that definition Europeans were the natives on that island. If we ignore the timeline, then does Dubai become natively Indian? This does not mean I disagree with the expelling being cruel and unwarranted. I do think it shouldn't belong to the UK, just don't think that "natives" is meaningful here or explains the reasons.
          • ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
            I used to term natives to refer to people who have been living here for centuries and have made it their home. The equivalent is expelling everyone from Australia because US/UK wants to build military base there.
  • inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Given that Madagascar was seemingly settled by Polynesians, I'd be amazed if Europeans and their slaves were actually the first ever inhabitants of Chagos, but that aside, if they were, then the Chagossian descendents of those first slaves would be, by definition, the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands. Edit - and will people stop buying .io domains. They might look cool but it is straight up theft. https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-level-domain/ https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-... https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-k-is-making-web-domain-profits-from-a-shady-cold-war-land-deal/ https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-accused-of-profiting-from-sales-of-chagos-islands-io-domain-name-9574316.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-ac...
• zakum1 7y ago
  It is staggering to hear arguments justifying occupied land that has absolutely no connection to the uk. It shows how poorly the west still understands the evil of colonialism. Regardless of the ancestry of the people living in any territory, they deserve to have sovereignty over their lives.
  • PunchTornado 7y ago
    yes, USA should give Alaska and Hawaii to the local people
    • jonathanstrange 7y ago
      Well, principally yes. Or, at least, the US could acknowledge the massive genocide that European settlers have committed in the past, rather than glorifying the "good ol' days" of expansion and slaughtering people and their cattle, and give the indigenous people some real recompensation for the atrocities that have been done to their ancestors.
      • petercooper 7y ago
        If you'd suggest the USA might give Alaska and Hawaii back to indigenous populations, what about the entire USA itself? :-D
  • mattmanser 7y ago
    Err, we did actually pay for it. And what connection do the "natives" have, they weren't native to it. They'd lived there less than 200 years and were French speakers. It's not an indigenous population. It's more complicated than you claim. I'm pretty strongly anti-colonial, but this ain't that and it takes the piss to frame it like it is.
    • raesene9 7y ago
      how many generations of people have to live somewhere to be considered "native" then. In this case we're talking what 4-5 generations, depending on how you count it, that sounds fairly native to me. The UK acted poorly here and the pressure that this vote applies to them is good, as if anyone has a right to the islands it's the people who lived there for hundreds of years.