CAAB

THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF AMERICAN BASES (CAAB)

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters12-10-044443.asp?reg=AFRICA#body Exiled islanders protest outside British embassy



PORT LOUIS, Dec. 10 — Indian Ocean islanders expelled from their homes to make way for a U.S. military base protested in Mauritius on Wednesday, using U.N. International Human Rights Day to highlight their plight and ask to go home.


		Up to 2,000 people from Britain's Diego Garcia and other islands in the Chagos archipelago were uprooted and shipped to Mauritius more than 30 years ago after a deal to build a U.S. air base which has since been used in the war on Iraq. They lost a case for compensation and the right to return home at Britain's High Court in October, but have vowed to fight on. On Wednesday, more than 100 men, women and children sat in scorching heat by the British High Commission in Port Louis, holding placards saying ''We want to return to our native land'' and ''36 years of misery due to British interests is enough.'' ''Today is U.N. Human Rights Day and we want to highlight the human rights violations that we have faced by the British and Americans when we were forced from our homes over 30 years ago,'' Olivier Bancoult, chairman of the Chagos Refugee Group told Reuters. ''The British government dumped us in the slums of Mauritius and we want them to know that we are still here and that we won't go anywhere until they right the wrongs they committed against us.'' Bancoult said the Chagossians had presented a letter to the British High Commission, U.S. embassy and United Nations. Many of the islanders, who once led a simple but comfortable life fishing and coconut farming, are unemployed in Mauritius or working as manual labourers. The islanders and their descendants -- numbering about 5,000 -- won a victory in 2000 when the High Court ruled they should be granted full British citizenship.