Abstract
The Chagossians are a little-known part of the African diaspora, originally living halfway between continental Africa and Indonesia as the indigenous people of the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago. Members of the community are the descendants of enslaved Africans, mostly from Madagascar and the southwestern Mozambique coast, and, to a lesser extent, indentured Indians, brought to the previously uninhabited islands beginning in the late eighteenth century. By the mid-twentieth century, this diverse group had become a distinct people of around two thousand with a vibrant society and generations of ancestors buried on islands described by many as idyllic.
We are the descendants of slaves. Our skin is black. We don’t have blue eyes…. Whether we are black, whether we are white, whether we are yellow, we all must have the same treatment. That, that is the treatment that the Chagossian community is asking for…. Stop all the injustices that have been committed against us.1
—Louis Olivier Bancoult, elected leader of the Chagossian people
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Notes
Rosemond Saminaden, Fleury Vencatassen, and Christian Ramdass, et al., Petition to British Government, English translation (Port Louis, Mauritius, 1975).
Huguette Ly-Tio-Fane and S. Rajabalee, “An Account of Diego Garcia and Its People,” Journal of Mauritian Studies 1, no. 2 (1986): 91–92; Iain B. Walker, The Complete Guide to the Southwest Indian Ocean (Argelès sur Mer, France: Cornelius Books, 1993), 563; Iain B. Walker, Zaffer Pe Sanze: Ethnic Identity and Social Change Among the Ilois in Mauritius (Vacoas, Mauritius: KMLI, 1986); Robert Scott, Limuria: The Lesser Dependencies of Mauritius (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 20.
Scott, Limuria, 42–43, 48–50; Vijayalakshmi Teelock, Mauritian History: From Its Beginnings to Modern Times (Moka, Mauritius: Mahatma Gandhi Institute, 2001), 16–17.
Deryck Scarr, Seychelles Since 1770: History of a Slave and Post-Slavery Society (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1999), 5.
Larry Bowman, Mauritius: Democracy and Development in the Indian Ocean (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 13.
Teelock, Mauritian History, 104–5; Robert L. Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 119.
On naming practices during slavery reflecting the maintenance of kinship ties among African Americans, see Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York: Vintage, 1976), 185–201.
Marion Benedict and Burton Benedict, Men, Women and Money in Seychelles (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), 161.
E. H. Peck, “Defence Facilities in the Indian Ocean,” memorandum, May 7, 1965, UK Public Records Office.
John Madeley, “Diego Garcia: A Contrast to the Falklands,” The Minority Rights Group Reeport 54 (1985), 7.
“Nouvelle Manifestation des Ilois, Hier: Épreuve de Force avec La Police,” Le Mauricien (Mauritius), March 17, 1981, 1, 4; Lalit, Diego Garcia in Times of Globalisation (Port Louis, Mauritius: Ledikasyon pu Travayer, 2002), 113–17.
Neil Tweedle, “Britain Shamed as Exiles of the Chagos Islands Win the Right to Go Home,” Daily Telegraph (London), May 11, 2006.
See Vytautas B. Bandjunis, Diego Garcia: Creation of the Indian Ocean Base (San Jose, CA: Writer’s Showcase, 2001).
Stephen Grey, Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006); Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor, “Claims of a Secret CIA Jail for Terror Suspects on British Island to Be Investigated,” Guardian (UK), October 19, 2007; Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, “Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees Involving Council of Europe Member States: Second Report,” explanatory memorandum, June 7, 2007, Strasbourg, 13.
Jamie Doward, “US ‘held suspects on British territory in 2006,’” The Observer (London), August 3, 2008, http://guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/03/terrorism.usforeignpolicy/print; Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor, “Claims of a Secret CIA Jail for Terror Suspects on British Island to Be Investigated,” Guardian (UK), October 19, 2007.
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, “Overseas Territories,” Seventh Report of Session 2007–2008, London, July 6, 2008. See also David Vine, “Decolonizing Britain in the 21st Century: The Chagos Islanders Confront the Crown,” Anthropology Today 24, no. 3 (2008): 24–28.
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© 2009 Manning Marable and Leith Mullings
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Vine, D. (2009). Taking on Empires. In: Mullings, L. (eds) New Social Movements in the African Diaspora. The Critical Black Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104570_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104570_10
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