Paradise Lost

SFX: waves

Host: Once upon a time, there was a group of about 58 small islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They were uninhabited when the Portuguese came upon them in the 1500s. When the French took over in the late 1700s they kidnapped and trafficked people from East Africa to work as slaves on coconut plantations. The enslaved workers also processed copra, or coconut meat,   which was pressed into coconut oil. In the early 1800s, the French ceded the islands to the British, who brought in additional laborers from south Asia. Together, these became the Chagossian people.

[music]

This group of islands is now known as the Chagos Archipelago. David Vine is a writer and anthropologist who wrote a book about Chagos and the later forced deportation of its people…

David Vine: Racism shaped every step of this sad, appalling story.   You have a group of almost entirely white Euro-American officials making decisions about a population of African and Indian ancestry.

Host: Chagossians speak a kind of French Creole. This is a Chagossian by the name of Rosemone Burtin …

Rosemone: speaking in Creole

Host: She’s saying, Every Saturday people would come together for the sega. Everyone would dance together… This is Iline Talete…

ILINE TALETE [translated]:  Everything we share, even the food we cook, we share.

Host:  She’s saying, roughly, We share everything, even the food we cook we share… This is Noella Gaspard…

NOELLA GASPARD [translated]: Our mom knew how to fish. We would plant.

Host: She said, Our mom knew how to fish. We would plant.

You know, it was home! There was a community!

{Music cuts}

Host: But all of this was about to be interrupted.

David Vine: ​​The secret deal began being worked out by the U.S. and British governments in the early 1960s .  .  .

Host: In 1966, the UK declared that there was no permanent population in Chagos, because they were preparing to make a deal with the United States.

David Vine: So, a group of officials in the U.S Navy hatched a plan.  They developed a plan to identify small islands around the world where they might build military bases in the future.   And Diego Garcia became the prime island on which they wanted to build a base.

Host: So how did the United Kingdom deal with this population, these hundreds of people that officially no longer existed?

DAVID VINE: The U.S. government dreamt up the idea of building a base on Diego Garcia. They were the ones who said the Chagossians had to be removed…

Host: The UK then decided they should be forcibly removed, not only from the island of Diego Garcia, but from all the islands in Chagos. This is Olivier Bancoult, a Chagossian activist…

OLIVIER BANCOULT: What happened to us, it's more purely like slavery. The way of uprooting people, forced people to leave their country. I can say that animals get better treatment

than human beings.

Host: Between 1967 and 1973, the British, supported by the US, forcibly removed the Chagossians from their islands. Forever. 

OLIVIER BANCOULT: It's a very shameful way that they uproot people from where they

belong, from their place of birth to another unknown country.

Host: To this day, Chagossians have not been allowed back to live – only occasional “supervised” visits. The islands are still a British colonial possession – the last one in Africa!  And Diego Garcia remains an important American military base.

This has been true for the past 50 years, and it was true when we started producing this podcast, and it’s true today. But, as Prime Minister Harold MacMillan once quipped when he was asked what was the greatest influence on his administration, “events my dear boy, events!”

Newsreel/Deutsche Welle: Britain has announced that it will give up its last remaining colony in Africa. You may never have heard of the Chagos islands, but [crossfade]

Newsreel/Channel 4 News: This necklace of islands in the Indian Ocean, under British control for more than 200 years, soon will be sovereign to Mauritius, an agreement between the two governments today ending years of bitter dispute, with the U.S. naval base at its heart.

Host:  Yes, between the time we started this podcast and now, things have changed … drastically. We’ll hear about this and what it all means later in the episode.

This is Rights & Wrongs, a podcast from Human Rights Watch.   I'm Ngofen Mputubwele. I am a writer, a lawyer, and a radio producer. Human Rights Watch asked me to look at human rights hotspots around the world through the eyes and ears of the people on the front lines of history.

This week on Rights and Wrongs, we’re asking, What happened to the Chagossians? And will this historical wrong be righted?

Ngofeen: So I'm joined from Nigeria by Mausi Segun. Mausi is the executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division. Hey, Mausi.

Mausi Segun: Hey Ngofeen!

Ngofeen: So correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a few years ago you took a vacation to Seychelles and, uh, you didn't spend all your time on the beach and relaxing. You decided to do some work. 
So can you tell me about what you ended up doing?  


Mausi: Indeed, this must have been, I believe it was 2021. My family and I decided we would go spend some time in Seychelles. But you know, the minute that I got onto Seychelles, the island, I remember asking our host of the Airbnb where we stayed, um, and I said to her, ‘you know, there are this group of people, Do you know anything? 
Have you heard the word Chagos before?’

And she said it's interesting that you would say that because just a few days ago, I heard someone on the radio talking about Chagos. I said, ‘do you remember his name? Can I find him?’ You know, and it was from her to another person. And, you know, the person who was coming to clean the house and they said, we'll find him for you. 
And they did.

So I met up with him. This was the leader of the Chagossian group in Seychelles. And we met up, you know, at a restaurant. My family was sitting somewhere and he was like, ‘I feel so bad that you're having to meet with me, but I am so grateful that Human Rights Watch, at least an international human rights organization, is finally looking into this situation. It's gone on for too long’. And so, yeah, we spent that evening and then he introduced me to a few other people. I took notes and, um, yeah, went back a couple of years later to finalize that research in Seychelles, um, but also, um, adding on, um, Mauritius, uh, while my colleagues, um, met with people in the UK and elsewhere. 


Ngofeen: So you've interviewed a bunch of Chagossians, those findings eventually landed into a Human Rights Watch report. And I want to ask you about a few of those people to get a sense of like, what's happened to folks. So first, can you tell me about Liseby's story?  


Mausi: So Liseby, Liseby was born in 1953 on one of the islands called Peros Banhos. 
Peros, as she described it, is very beautiful. Um, she worked for the Copra company. So this company that administered the island was, you know, as your, your, your introduction disclosed was into coconut, you know, farming and copra production and I guess oils from all of that. So she was a coconut peeler from the age of 12. 


She began to work. She was paid a little bit of money, you know, that she could spend, um, not in cash. Obviously there was no cash apparently on Chagos, there was no piece of money. There was no coins. There was no paper money. It was all in a savings account. People were also paid in kind. They were paid in terms of food, rations, oil, wine, uh, and all of that. 


So I think that she eventually went up to school for a bit, um, for a couple of years up to, what she said was standard, three. But then, you know, eventually she got married because yeah, what, what else was there and she lived on the island with her family. Now, when they were eventually told that they all had to evacuate the island, she was pregnant. 


Lisbey was pregnant, I believe, with her first child. This was 1973 - April 1973. And then they got on this boat. The condition of the evacuation that she described to me was horrible. They shared the cabin on the boat, that's what they called it, with animals like pigs and horses. Of course, people fell ill. 


She also fell ill. There were no toilets on that boat. So, you know, they went to the bathroom in the same room that they slept and ate in.   You know, so she saw people die. She saw their bodies thrown into the water, and then she also fell ill herself. By the time they got to Port Louis in Mauritius, she was so ill that she lost her pregnancy. As a matter of fact, she could not leave the boat when everyone else did. She had to stay on the boat even while it was docked because she was so ill. And I remember speaking to the captain of that boat and he said, there was nothing I could do. I couldn't move her away because guess what? 


All of the other people, so many of the other people was sleeping and eating on the dock because they had nowhere to go. And so that's Liseby's story. She lost her pregnancy. She remembers it so vividly. She wept as she told me this story.  


Ngofeen: What was your experience hearing the story from Liseby?  


Mausi: You know, Ngofeen, I, you know, I am, I'm supposed to be the professional here and I've, you know, I have, I have researched really gruesome stories and accounts of, of war and conflict, but, uh, you know, Liseby wept as she, as she shared this story with me and I wept along with her, I could imagine the smell on that boat. A pregnant woman, I mean, nausea is a natural part of your being for most, most women. And then a pregnant woman on the sea, if you have, if you suffer from seasickness like I do. So, you know, in my brain, I'm like, okay, that's already bad enough. 


And then you have, you are stuck in a space with pigs and horses and then people going to toilet in that room and you're having to do - it's beyond making your flesh crawl. I could smell it.

You're not supposed to cry as the researcher. You're supposed to be the strong one. But I wept along with her. 
Because I am a woman and I know what it means to have your first pregnancy and to lose it under those conditions, but not just the pregnancy, the loss of the pregnancy, the loss of your home, where you knew to be home, her parents and grandparents and great grandparents were all buried on those islands. 


And, you know, they didn't know at that time that they would never return, but that was what happened to them. They'd never have been able to go back there. 

Ngofeen: Where is Liseby now? Do we know at all? 

Mausi: I met Liseby in Mauritius. She's still there. Um, she still lives there. Um, I mean, yeah, she, she got some, um, menial job because as you know, the education, uh, on the island was really limited. 


So they had very little, in terms of skills, there were no opportunities. Everything that was promised to them by the colonial administration and the administrators of the island, none of it came to fruition. They didn't get any support. They didn't get any education. They didn't get skilled training, nothing. 


Ultimately they paid them some meager compensation, maybe three times over the last few years, but that's been it.  


{Music starts}

Ngofeen: And can I ask you about, um, Louis, is it Louis's story?

Mausi: It's Louis.

Ngofeen: Louie. Okay. Yeah.  


Mausi: So Louie, Louis, Marcel Humbert, he, he, he was also born in, on, on Peros Banhos Nord. He was born in 1955, just, you know, two years after Liseby. 


You know, he, again, um, like everyone else, he describes the life on the island. He talked about how easy it was. There was work, but he described it as being like paradise. His mom had been born in Peros Banhos and worked in Copra. They had some savings, you know, from her work with the company. It was 1967. He was just 12 years old. 
His family wanted to go on holiday to go spend some of this money because, um, like I said earlier, they couldn't spend cash in Chagos, but they could spend it elsewhere. So they had taken a trip to Mauritius. It was himself, his mother, four, five family members, but they left the others on the island. Those who couldn't travel for some reason.  

They spent about six months. 
It was a long holiday. Um, and then, his mom went to the agent's office to book their return trip home. And the agent told his mother, “People are no longer allowed on the island because it is about to be closed”. I mean, that was, they had never heard that before because his mother's mother and her own mother had all lived and died in Chagos. So what do you mean by the island is about to be closed? And they said, “well, it's about to be closed. You can't go back”. And she said, I remember vividly being so sad that I began to cry when I realized that we wouldn't be able to go back because they had left his other siblings, four brothers and his sister in Chagos. 


His mother was also weeping and she said to him, “now we will live a very different life”. And in his words, that's when the nightmare started. They had to go live with family members in Mauritius. You know, again, work was hard. His father eventually was able to join them, but their lives truly changed, how and where they lived. 


Paradise was lost to them. The cash based economy they weren't used to suddenly became the controller of their lives. You know, these are people who had never earned cash before suddenly had to try to earn cash and use it to make a living. You know, he says, you know, all of the all of the years that he spent, the pain has never been erased from his memory and the desire to return to their homes in Chagos has never left him. But you know, hearing these people tell this story, this man, you know, he talked about the 54 years of his life that he spent waiting. I, I am just so amazed by their resilience. They still have hope that they will be able to return.   They, many of those who lived on the islands who were old enough to have the memories, very strong memories of the islands, they are dying out. Some of those are interviewed even last year, 2022 and 2023. They have died. Their hopes did not come to pass, but there is still hope that those who are living and their children and their children's children will be able to return to Chagos.

[music, fade under]

Host: I’ll get back to Mausi in a few minutes. But now I want to introduce you to a Chagossian.

Ngofeen: Bon jour!

Ellianne: Bon jour!

[Laughter]

Host: Elliane Baptiste is a second generation Chagossian. Her father is Mauritian, but her mother was born in Chagos, which means her mother is first-generation, according to their way of accounting for the generations since the expulsion.

Ellianne: My mom is in Mauritius. I'm here in the UK. I need to continue the fight as the next generation.

Host: Ellianne grew up in Mauritius, and now lives in London. I wanted to get a sense from her what it’s like to be a part of a community that lost its homeland.  

Ngofeen: Do you remember at all when you were a kid, when you first started hearing about Chagos? 

Ellianne: Yes, I do remember the first time it really hit me.  So it was in 2006  when they did the first journey to the Chagos Islands for a visit. 

Host: This was the first of the supervised visits of Chagossians to their home islands.   Soldiers followed them around everywhere and made sure they were all on the return boat.   Ellianne would’ve been about 13 years old at the time.  

EB: So everyone gathered on the Mauritian port to wave goodbyes to the family. This is where I knew,  um, what was happening. My mom is going back to her, the land that where she was born. I also remember, one day we were watching the news and they were talking about, um, the Chagossians and their struggle and I remember the story really struck me and, uh, I felt very sad. And then I saw my mom, she had tears rolling down her cheeks. I asked, ‘why? Why is this making you, you know, so upset?’  She couldn't talk. She couldn't talk to tell me. So my dad said to me, You're too young to understand now, but one day you will. Obviously I listened. And then I remember saying to my mom, Don't worry, one day I will tell your story.

Host: When she was 15 years old Ellianne left Mauritius and went to the UK to join her older sisters to pursue educational opportunities she said they wouldn’t have in Mauritius. In 2002 they had been granted British citizenship because their mother had been born on Chagos. Many other Chagossians – many of her cousins, for example – were not granted British citizenship, because their mothers had been born after the expulsion, in Mauritius or Seychelles or somewhere else. This is one of the reasons the community remains so fragmented. In any case, Ellianne is a part of the Chagossian community in the UK, and they like to get together and be .  .  .   Chagossians…

Ellianne: I’ve heard from many Chagossians, um,  how they lived on, on the islands, um, that, that unity,  um, it's, It's like you can't even see it when, you know, there's gathering, um, how, like, everyone knows everyone, everyone is related.   That is something that, you know, I would want to, I would fight to keep alive, um,  apart from, you know, the food, the  delicious food and, um, and the music.

[Sega music]

Host: The Chagossian diaspora has strained the unity Elliane speaks of. There are differences of opinion across the diaspora. Yet…

Ellianne: we all have  the same goals. Everyone wants, um, the islands to come back to the chagossians and for all the Chagossians and their descendants to have the right to go back  or have the choice, um, whether they want to go back or not.

We all have the same aim, but we all have different paths to that aim and different opinions.  And, um,  those in, uh, in Mauritius have a different perspective compared to those who are in the UK and those in the Seychelles who never got any compensation, they have a whole different, um, perspective and a whole different opinion. 

*HRW ad*

Ngofeen: You're from Nigeria.

Mausi: Uh huh.

Ngofeen: … former British Colony, what was it like for you to be on this side of British colonialism, but be interviewing people who are still going through British colonialism?

Mausi: Yeah, you know, all of the different identities that I wear, you know, as an African, as a Nigerian, as a woman,  a lawyer and as a human rights advocate came to the fore, uh, with this project, you know, interviewing these people, um, who are a distinct people with their, their own identity as Indigenous African people in Africa who have suffered this, widespread and systematic attack. These attacks are crimes and Human Rights Watch has found that these are crimes against humanity, they have been persecuted on the ground of their race and ethnicity. So for me, as an African woman today,  seeing this happening in the 2000s is atrocious. The fact that it is ongoing, it is not historical, I am not reading this from a history textbook. Chagos is a colony of Britain, supported by the United States. Honestly, it felt personal.  It felt really close to home, and it still does today.

Human Rights Watch is one organization where, you know, we have history. We have experiences of working for decades, just to push through an issue. But we ultimately do get the business done. We get the change that we've been working on.

And I believe very strongly because we're not going to give up, until it is done, that the Chagossians would get justice, and that justice will include their right to return to Chagos, and that the harm that they have experienced will, with full compensation, will be paid for. There would be justice for them and everything they've suffered.

Ngofeen: That was Mausi Segun BEFORE the news came out. And the news, which you may have seen in the New York Times or the BBC or somewhere else, is that the UK is giving up sovereignty of the Chagos islands to Mauritius. It’s not a done deal, a treaty still has to be signed. But, I’m here with Mausi Segun again, to get her reaction.

Mausi, the devil is always in the details. Is this good news for Chagossians or something else?

Mausi: It could be, depending on who you ask. Honestly, this is the first time in a really long time for the Chagossians that the, both the UK government and the US government have clearly dropped their opposition to the return of Chagossians to the islands, except Diego Garcia. And that's one negative that I will come back to. Historically, and even until very recently, this seemed like an impossibility. They had said categorically that a return to the islands would not be possible. So this statement, um, even though we don't have the details yet of the, the treaty that both countries have said they would sign, I think that this indication is just a clear one that there is progress. 


The other part of it is that the statement says that both governments will take steps to address the wrongs of the past. This is the first time that we are hearing, including the U. S. government, say clearly that wrongs have been done to the Chagossians. They have in the past, you know, mentioned things like, uh, regrets, uh, you know, the way they were treated, but not saying anything about clear wrongs done to them. 
 This acknowledgement, you know, would be meaningless without concrete rights, guarantees, for sure, but it is a first step.

And the third part of, uh, you know, what we consider to be positive is that the statement included a commitment to some financial settlement.

Um, what is for us concerning is first the fact that the Chagossians were completely blindsided by this. 
They didn't even know that this was coming. I think for a lot of people, it's, it's, it's, it's jarring that this is happening again. Decisions are being made about their land, about their home, about their lives without their participation. So that's concerning for us, um, in terms of human rights. Um, the second thing would be the explicit exclusion of Diego Garcia, the biggest of the islands. 
Most of the Chagossians, um, lived and were exiled from Diego Garcia.  


Ngofeen: And if I understand correctly, Diego Garcia, the largest island, that's sort of the strategically important one, because that's where the military base, the US UK military base is located,  


Mausi: That's where the base is located. But, you know, even Diego Garcia is not just one island. It's, it's a group of islands and the base is on the biggest of the strips of the strip of islands. There is absolutely no reason why Chagossians cannot go back to live on the other islands that are in Diego Garcia. This exclusion completely cuts off Diego Garcia from Chagos. For us, um, it's, it's unacceptable. 
It would mean a continuation of the crimes that have been committed against the Chagossians. You know, so that's the second one. And just that the lack of language around the right of the Chagossians to return, there is nothing explicit about their right to return, whether to Peros Banhos or to Salomon Island or the other smaller islands in, in Chagos. 
The, the, the lack of clarity also around the finance, uh, that they, you know, including a clear. specification of payment of compensation or reparation to the Chagossians is a sore point. It's not a welfare. It's not a charity. It is a right.  


Ngofeen: Thank you, Mausi.  


Mausi: Thank you.  


Ngofeen: Eliane Baptiste, I'm curious. What is your reaction to the news that Britain is ceding sovereignty to Mauritius of the Chagos Islands? 


Ellianne: It all came as a surprise. Although we knew there was negotiations happening, we were not part of it, the negotiations. We did not know what stage it was at. We didn't know it was being concluded or anything as such. to just hear it in the news, it was a surprise. And for me personally, it's like, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop because yes, we've got the, the - Mauritian has been handed the sovereignty of the Chagas Islands, but not Diego Garcia, where my mom was born. 


And It's sad to know that she won't be able to resettle on the island where she was born, and many others as well. And, um, there's so much still up in the air. So, yeah, mixed feelings, I would say. It is a massive step forward, but the fight is far from over.  


Ngofeen: Say the treaty gets signed. Yes. You think you would pack your bags?

Ellianne: This is a, this is an answer that I've always, you know, we've already discussed as a family years ago, and it's a big yes. Um, I'm packing my bags. I'm getting out of here.

Host: That was Elianne Baptiste.

You can read much more about Chagos at hrw dot org.

The Chagossian music in this episode comes from Sega Tambour Chagos and the Chagos Tambour Group. Human Rights Watch would like to thank them for their support and collaboration throughout the research and work on Chagos.

The newsclips were from Deutschewelle and Channel 4 News.

You’ve been listening to Rights and Wrongs, from Human Rights Watch. This episode was produced by me and Curtis Fox. Our associate producer is Sophie Soloway. Thanks also to Ifé Fatunase, Stacy Sullivan, and Anthony Gale.

I’m Ngofeen Mputubwele. Talk to you again in two weeks.