© ReutersFuel tanks at the edge of a Military airstrip on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago, it is the site of a major United States military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean leased from Britain in 1966.
Twenty-two nations have applied to take part in the proceedings. Supporting Britain in its bid to retain control of the islands are the United States, Australia and Israel. The United States maintains a large and strategically important naval base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands.
Opposing Britain's continued rule over the Indian Ocean archipelago is Mauritius, which argues that the Chagos Islands should fall under its sovereignty.
Seventeen other nations support Mauritius' claim of sovereignty: Belize, Botswana, Brazil, Cyprus, Germany, Guatemala, India, Kenya, the Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Vanuatu and Zambia.
The African Union will also be making representations in support of Mauritius.
The ICJ took on the case after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a Mauritius-backed resolution to seek a legal opinion from the court. Its verdict will be advisory, and not legally binding.
'British agents gassed their dogs'
The Chagos Islands is the territory that decolonisation forgot.
Over 250 years ago, people began settling on the Chagos Islands - mostly slaves from Africa and indentured labour from India. During the colonial period, it was considered to be part of Mauritius, and administered from there. Given their tiny size and lack of natural resources, the islands did not receive much attention.
Chagos Archipelogo's unfortunate strategic location.
There was one snag, however: this was also Africa's independence era, and in 1968 Mauritius was about to be granted its own independence. Could a new government in Mauritius be relied upon to grant access to the base?
© UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic, American University Washington College of Law, Washington, DC"Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius etc. When this has been done I agree we must be very tough and a submission is being done accordingly. "
The removals took place over several years and were brutal.
According to anthropologist David Vine:
"British agents, with the help of Navy Seabees, quickly rounded up the islanders' pet dogs, gassing and burning them in sealed cargo sheds. They ordered ... the remaining Chagossians onto overcrowded cargo ships. During the deportations, which took place in stages until May 1973, most Chagossians slept in the ship's hold atop guano - bird crap. Prized horses stayed on deck. By the end of the five-day trip, vomit, urine and excrement were everywhere. At least one woman miscarried. Arriving in Mauritius and the Seychelles, Chagossians were literally left on the docks. They were homeless, jobless, and had little money, and they received no resettlement assistance. In 1975, the Washington Post broke the story in the Western press and found them living in 'abject poverty'. Most remain deeply impoverished to this day."Justice delayed
Over the subsequent decades, the evicted islanders - most of whom settled in Britain or Mauritius - have repeatedly taken the British government to court, demanding compensation and the right to return to their homeland.
In 2000, a British High Court ruled in their favour, ruling that the mass evictions were illegal and the Chagossians should be allowed to return home. This verdict was overturned by 'royal prerogative' - a little-used quirk of British law that allows the Queen to set aside court judgments she doesn't like.
More recently, Britain's Supreme Court denied the islanders' right to return on the basis that it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. To further frustrate the islanders' efforts to return, in 2010 Britain declared that the Chagos Islands to be a 'Marine Protected Area'. In the words of a US official in a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks: "... former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos archipelago were a marine reserve"."
Comment: The hypocrisy is staggering.
U.S. Navy pollutes Diego Garcia coral lagoon area - cleared of natives in order to 'protect environment'
In parallel, the Mauritian government has been pressing its claim of sovereignty, culminating in this week's hearings in The Hague. But Britain is hanging on tight to its last African colony.
"While we do not recognise the Republic of Mauritius's claim to sovereignty of the archipelago, we have repeatedly undertaken to cede it to Mauritius when no longer required for defence purposes, and we maintain that commitment," said a foreign office spokesperson.
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UPDATE: Justice Prevails
25 February, 2019, Sputnik reports:
UK Must 'Rapidly' Cede Control of Chagos Islands - UN Court
In a landmark ruling, the International Court of Justice had ruled "the UK has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos archipelago as rapidly as possible, and all member states must cooperate with the United Nations to complete the decolonization of Mauritius".The authoritative - albeit non-binding - ruling resolves a decades-long dispute over Britain's eviction of the Chagos islanders to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia, the biggest island within the archipelago, with the top United Nations court ruling the forced decolonization was not lawful.© IMBiblioInternation Court of Justice - The Hague
In 1965, three years before London granted Mauritius independence, the UK separated the Islands from the rest of its Indian Ocean colony, a move in breach of UN resolution 1514, which banned the carving up of colonies prior to independence - and UN Resolution 2066XX, which demanded Britain "take no action which would dismember the territory of Mauritius and violate its territorial integrity". The next December, the then-Labour government leased the territory to the US for military purposes for fifty years, with the option of renewal. As a result, Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands, became a key US military outpost, particularly valued due to its proximity to the Middle East and other resource-rich areas of imperial interest.
Before the base could be constructed however, London had to remove the islands' 1,500 indigenous inhabitants, in order to "reduce to a minimum the possibilities of trouble between [US] forces and any 'natives'" - natives which UK Foreign Office staff at the time referred to as a "few Tarzans", with "little aptitude for anything other than growing coconuts". In a letter to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, then-Seychelles Commissioner Hugh Norman-Walker likewise dubbed them "extremely unsophisticated, illiterate, untrainable and unsuitable for any work other than the simplest labour tasks".
The islanders were duly expelled without a workable resettlement scheme in place, and only the barest minimum compensation. Moreover, they were given virtually no time to pack possessions, and deceived as to what awaited them in their new home - they'd been told they'd receive a house, land and livestock, but most ended up living in slums in Mauritius' Port Louis in extreme poverty. Some soon died of starvation and disease, others committed suicide.
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