Quotes from “The Plight of the Chagossians”, by the Chagos Refugees Group

“Besides our properties, we had furniture, personal belongings, animals that we reared for consumption, and our domestic animals. We also had employment and a monthly salary (in nature and in credit form). When we were forcibly removed we lost all of these.”

“The British put a price tag of $11 million on our people’s lives and the Americans decided to give giant tortoises preferential treatment over us. When we look back at this, we tell ourselves that the British and American governments never accepted that slavery had been abolished, because in their minds and deeds, black people’s lives could still be price tagged and were still inferior to animals.”

Lee H Hamilton, the chairman of the congressional hearings, exclaimed when being told by a witness that no coercion was used in the removal of the Chagossians, “No coercion was used when you cut off their jobs, what other kind of coercion do you need? Are you talking about putting them on the rack?”

“In their strategy to remove us from our homeland, they stopped sending milk and milk products to us. Bear in mind that they were not used to doing it for charity: we bought these products once they arrived in the Chagos. This was therefore an embargo that the American and British authorities imposed on us. This embargo was a sanction for us being a bunch of black people in the way of white colonialists who had decided to go against fundamental norms of international law for their own benefit.”

“Our dogs, around 1,500 of them, were stacked and forced into a big building. All doors and windows were closed. We then saw 2 jeeps approach the building and back up in such a way as to bring their exhaust pipes as close as possible to a door; the British and American officers managed to connect the exhaust pipes of the vehicles to inside the building; they then left the vehicles’ engines running and went away. By that time, we had realised that our dogs were being killed and that the building had been converted into a gas chamber. Most of us who had brought our dogs there waited to see what would happen; we tried to convince the officers to let them out, in vain. Pretty soon, we heard the dogs starting to cry, then scream painfully. It was one of the hardest scenes ever. Our children cried so much in pain and sorrow and we all cried. This is still fresh in our minds.”

“On the ship, we and our well being were worth less than the horses’. These were not even animals which could be consumed or which had a commercial value - they were retired old horses which simply belonged to the plantation’s managers, who had arranged with the American and British authorities (and who had agreed) to have the horses carried delicately.”

“There were many of us who got really sick on board. Those who died were thrown into the sea and it was terrible. We still remember the screams of the families of those we were throwing overboard.”

“We remember Christian Simon, a 28-year-old Chagossian, who could not accept what was happening to him and to us, could not bear the sadness of having left our lives and everything we had back in the Chagos, could not take the pressure of having to live in Mauritius, then a foreign land, so threw himself overboard and disappeared in front of our eyes.”

“Most of us were very sick from the trip. Many children died a few days after we reached Mauritius. We remember the children of Noellie Talate dying of malnutrition a few days after landing in Mauritius.”

“We have had to struggle all through our lives against discrimination and it is still persisting today. The Americans first discriminated against us in favour of the turtles. Then the British offered different treatment to the people of the Falklands, as opposed to us, because they were whites and we were blacks. Then, when we were forced to come to Mauritius, we again faced discrimination: if we are Chagossians, they do not like us. The fact that we are Chagossians prevents us from being employed on Diego Garcia because the Americans do not want any of us there. Just look at the number of Chagossians who have applied for jobs there and the number who have actually obtained them.”

“We lived and still live in shacks. In 1975, we had the cyclone “Gervaise” and in 1981 we were visited by “Claudette”. Almost all Chagossians lost their houses and all their belongings in these two cyclones. Then, after the cyclones, we had to start all over again. Of course, we had no insurance...”

“In 2001, when some Chagossian fishermen tried to set foot on Peros Banhos, the BIOT (British Indian Ocean Territory) patrol vessel quickly came and kicked them out, although they showed their BIOT passports and the judgement. Ironically, in the lagoon of Peros Banhos, there were at least 15 yachts and sail boats, moored peacefully, their occupiers, all white sailors, were having a barbeque on the beach and playing volley-ball.”

“In 1982 the British Government decided to grant us some relief. Each of us got about $1,500, which, for the most part, unfortunately, went into the partial repayment of loans. The thing is that we were tricked into signing these forms when we collected our money. We thought that by asking us for the thumbprints, it was to acknowledge that we had received the money. Of course, we had no problem with this. The truth, unfortunately, is that it was far from just being an acknowledgement form: it was a form, drawn up in legal English, where we were renouncing all our rights as human beings against the UK Government.”

“The UK and US governments go to Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq to put an end to violations of human rights, yet they are violating human rights in their own back yard.”

Translated by Ann Stewart