Empire: World History - 229. Britain’s Last Colony: The Second World War, Forced Deportations, and 9/11 (Ep 1)

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

The Chagos Islands have dominated news headlines over the past few months, but the struggle of the Chagossian people to reclaim their island home has spanned decades. First colonised in 1513 by the Portuguese, the archipelago shifted from one imperial master to another over the course of the next three hundred years, until the British took control in the 19th century and changed the course of Chagossian history forever... In the 20th century the US realised the strategic importance of the Chagos archipelago, sitting equidistant between Asia and Africa. As the island of Diego Garcia became home to one of the largest US military bases in the world, the Chagossian people were forcibly evicted from their lands and displaced across the world, left to fend for themselves in unknown lands. Listen as Anita and William are joined by Philippe Sands, barrister, writer and academic, who has been leading the repatriation case against the British government on behalf of the Chagos Islands and the Mauritian state.  _____________ Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, and a weekly newsletter! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mparpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Drimple. Just a couple of little things before we start. You are going to hear a little bit of... It's not because R2D2 is starring in this episode.

We have some drilling in the background. So huge apologies right from the get-go, but we are coming to you from the Jayapur Literary Festival in Jayaapur, India. One of the most thrilling literature festivals the world has to offer. But they're making it bigger. While we're here, apparently it's not big enough, William. They're building it around us. We are very ambitious for the festival.

Well, it would have been nice if you were ambitious after the recording, but, you know, it's fine. It's okay. And the other thing I want to tell you, we have been at Jopal. We are doing a little bit of something a little bit special for the bonuses. We've been in, I think, one of the most exciting green rooms I have ever been to. And I do this kind of lot quite a lot. Tripping over talent, tripping over gossip and interest.

And we've been grabbing a few people to bring you some very, very special bonus episode. I've no idea what Anita's been up to. I've been on stage running the festival. I mean, you've been slightly the director of the festival while the cat's away. And I've had such a nice time. Anyway, so yes, do, do please become a member of the club. If you want to hear all this bonus stuff, Empirepoduk.com. Empirepodukuk.com is where you have to go.

And let me tell you something. Some of it is going to blow your little socks off, I promise. Now, it isn't often that we collide with a news story that is so rooted in our food groups of Empire. But it happens and it's happening right now. We're meeting. We're sitting actually here at the gypropos. Literary Festival. At a time where just about a day ago, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Kirstama, met with his Mauritian counterpart to discuss the future of a place called the Chegos Islands.

Now, you've probably heard this in the news. It's come up again and again, particularly after the inauguration of President Trump, all because of one particular military base in this archipelago of islands, the Chegos Islands, called Diego Garcia. What is it all about? You're probably scratching your because there are a great deal of complexities involving words like treaty, history and imperialism that are all wound up in this. And we have got the best man with us to unravel it. And when I say the best man, William, we really mean it because he's been in the eye of this storm. He absolutely has.

We have with us Philippe Sands, international human rights lawyer, barrister and writer. And also up to his nostrils in Chagos Islands. And he's very happy to be with you on your fabulous podcast, which is a really, regular listener. Oh, and you're such a nice man. So yes, Philly James Sands who's been up to your nose in Chegos Island. It is certainly the case that Empire and Colony in the Indian Ocean have been part of my life since April 2010 when I was on holiday, skiing with my brother on a chairlift when my phone went and I normally don't look at my phone on a chairlift, but the number was plus 2300. I didn't know what that was. I answered it.

fearful of dropping it in the snow 100 feet below me. Right. And the person at the end of the phone said, this is the prime minister's office in Mauritius. Would you be willing to speak to the prime minister now? That was how it began. Did you take the call up in the chairlift? How can you not?

Well, look, how could you say that such a call? My proudest moment is that while on the phone with the Prime Minister, I managed to remove myself from the chairlifts, slide off the challenge without falling over. Holding a pair of skis? Holding my ski sticks in one hand, the phone in the other. my brother lifting the barrier and him starting to

talk about a place called Chegos which I'm going to be very honest with you I had never heard of Well of course why would you have It's a teeny archipelago So people who don't know anything about it Let's start and I'm going to come back to your story Let's start with your story about why you're involved

But just now that you've Just before we get to that And then he said you probably haven't heard of Cheagos But you'll know about Diego Garcia Right And the penny dropped You see, I do that sometimes. I leap in too soon and I did that just now. I'm so sorry for leap. Honestly, if you were if you had a gamble of shut your face, you would in a second. He's just very polite.

So look, you are utterly forgiven for not knowing about the Chegos Islands. Diego Garcia features in movies about wars and America and everything else. Can you wrap this all up for us? Where is it in the world? Geography first. How big is it? What is it like and what is Diego Garcia? 58 islands forming an archipelago. in the Indian Ocean, to the east of Mauritius, about a thousand miles, to the north of Madagascar, north-east of Madagascar, and south of the Maldives, which is the closest other land territory. And like the Maldives, are they atolls of coral, or what are they? They are atolls of coral volcanically created also, and they are presently uninhabited,

but until 1968, they were the home to about 2,000 human beings. beings, although that number is contested by some, almost all descendants of enslaved people from Managascar or Mozambique who worked on coconut plantations for various British and other companies. I have never brought it up with you guys, but I've long thought that there would be a very good empire episode in the whole story of Mauritius and the Maldives, because this is an area which since deepest antiquity has been on the sea routes and which sort of pass his hand like a sort of, like a present at a child's birthday party at musical chairs, that sort of stuff, between successive forces that have controlled the Indian Ocean. So in the case

of the Maldives, you have Buddhist missionaries coming first from Ashoka in India, and the stupas and all sorts of wonderful early Buddhist remains, if you go to the Mauritius, followed by early Arab traders, followed by the Portuguese. And it's, I think, the Portuguese that give Phillips, not right. The first Europeans to have written about a place we now know as the Chegos archipelago were the Portuguese. And it's named after the Portuguese for the wounds of Christ. Is that right? Diego Garcia is named after a Portuguese gentleman. And they held onto it for very little time. There's some suggestion that when they first saw it, they saw three black men in a canoe, but that is contested by others. So maybe there were people there before.

Then it became Dutch, then it became French, and in 1814 at the Treaty of Paris, the French ceded it to the United Kingdom. So I want to unravel this. It's very densely filled with information. So let's just pull it apart a little bit. I want to restore my Portuguese wounds. No, no, I know. I know you're right, because Chegos is from Chagas, isn't it?

Versus the Chagas. The Chagas, which is the wounds of Christ. So you're absolutely right. You are right. But on this issue, on this issue of people who did live there, I mean, I'm ashamed of to say if I'd have taken your call on ski lift, I would have a little bit known about the Chegas all lines, only because there has been a legal case rumbling for ages to try and get compensation for these people who were evicted. I remember talking when I was a first student journalist

to a woman called Zabano Gifford, who wrote sort of books at the time. And she would always tell me, why aren't you covering my husband? Richard. So just tell us what he was doing because she said, you know, it is absolutely criminal that nobody is concentrating on what Richard Gifford is doing for these people who have been left with nothing. To be honest, I feel. I feel. I feel almost a sense of shame that I didn't know about Chegos because of course I immediately read myself in after the call with the PM Too busy skit. I was too busy doing cases about genocide in the Congo and Croatia.

I'm going to defend, I'm going to dissent. I'm going to defend himself, William. I had certain things on my plate at that point. Vukovar Shrebrunitsa, Rwanda. But it is true and I fess up. I felt almost a sense of shame that I'd never heard of Chega. So, of course, why did I feel a sense of shame? Because having read myself in, I realised very quickly there had been litigation in the English courts

brought not by the government of Mauritius, but by a group of Georgians led by an extraordinary man called Olivier Banquou, who was born on Peros Banyos, one of the islands of the Chegos archipelago, about 150 miles from Diego Garcia, and who led the litigation in the English courts quite successfully up to a point that by 2000 he had won and but for the events of September the 11th, the attacks in New York and elsewhere, the British government at the time, a Labour government, would have allowed the Chigossians

to return to the outer islands of the Chagosha. Because that's what they were asking for. They were just saying, let us go home. At that point, the issue was limited in the English courts run by a remarkable man called Richard Gifford to the question of the right of return of the Chagosos. population who had been forcibly removed between 1968 and 1973. I have to say, I hold my hands up because I didn't understand it.

It's like, you know, a handful of people wanting to go back to a place I've never heard of. And I was very little. It was my first kind of gig in journalism. I never did it, but I never saw anyone else do it either. So all of us were kind of in this stew. And suddenly, Chagos Island, Trump, Britain, Mauritius, China. All of these sort of big players get suddenly involved.

And we're like, oh, I know an echo of this, but I don't know anything. Now tell me how did you read up and where did you get to very quickly. So, you know, I read up, there's the internet, there's a few books provided, and I went back in historical terms to what had happened after 1814. So the British, with a colonial power from 1814, up until Mauritius obtained independence in 1968. But it's the three or four years prior to independence that are crucial for this story. So just to clarify where we are with the Chavez Islands.

So Britain invades Mauritius, takes the Chegos as part of its territory. Doesn't invade Mauritius. It's ceded. It's ceded by treaty. At the end of the Napoleonic War. Got it. Okay.

So it's kind of the swap shot. And they take it over and Ilde France becomes Mauritius. Gotcha. The capital remains Port Louis. And for the next 154 years, it is a British colony in the Indian Ocean. So, Philippe, what you said is absolutely right. And you're very right to correct me. as a peaceful transition.

And then there was the abolition of slavery, but there are lots of investigations about how long did it last. Certainly notionally, by 1830, they were saying, you know what, we don't do slavery anymore. And there was this whole system of giving compensation to the slave owners,

not to any of the enslaved people. So that also is going to bring bells with people. I've been over those documents on the UCL archive, and I've found examples of slave owners in the territory, the colony of Mauritius, being paid compensation for the ending of slavery there. One thing that's also very important to explain because it becomes important later, the Chegos Archipelago is 1,000 miles from Mauritius. So what is its relationship? It is treated

by the British as a dependency of Mauritius. And so, for example, the way that it works is a magistrate will sail once every three months from Mauritius to the dependency of the Chegos archipelago and deal with any cases that need to be dealt with. This becomes absolutely. crucial 150 years later when the International Court of Justice needs to look at the question of was the Chegos archipelago really a part of Mauritius?

Who was in charge? Who has the right to call this? The crucial question was, was it really run from Mauritius or was this a fiction? Very interesting. And your conclusion was? Well, the conclusion of historians

is it was genuinely run as a dependency and in the British legal texts of the 19th century and the early 20th century, including Second World War and beyond, the Chegos Archipelago is described as a dependency of Mauritius. By the 1900s, and we're talking sort of after,

okay, so people have been given compensation, there's supposedly no slavery, indentured labour, we'll return to that maybe at another time in another legal case. Who knows you might be involved in that. But by 1900, we're talking about 426 families who live on this archipelago, known as Cheygo. So about 60% of this African Malagasy origin.

Malagasy, just explain what Malagasy means to be able to. for me means of origin from the island of Madagascar. And that, I have to say, is not a part of the world that I know well, although, as you may know, Madagascar also has now certain claims in relation to islands that it says were separated unlawfully by France, but that will be for another conversation. And just to add to the complexity, the ethnic origin of the people of Madagascar is actually from Southeast Asia. and there is an extraordinary migration in about 500 BC when the whole bunch of seafarers move all the way

from islands like Java and Borneo right across the ocean and end up in Madagascar. So these are a mixture of them and the slaves. Remember in our pirates series? Oh, the pirate enclave of Madagascar. In the pirate kingdom. We haven't addressed because William reminds me in this crucial 19th century period

a large population from modern India arrives in the island of Mauritius to work as indentured workers for the British and former French colonial individuals. And I think they're North Indians, aren't they? They're from the Gangesitic plain from Bihar. Yes, and this becomes crucial in terms of geopolitics for today on your point

because the question in the eyes of many Western governments is what is their natural support directed towards? Is it going to be India or is it going to be China? The answer is very clear. Leave that in your head for a second because that's going to come up a bit in the second half. But just on, before we go to the break, we haven't touched on the strategic importance of why anyone should be bothered by this little archipelago, very pretty little islands made of coral, palm trees, blue sea. Why should anyone care? Location, location, location, location. It is equidistant from Africa and Asia. It provides an opening to what today is called the Indo-Pacific region. It allows a springboard into the South China seas and those areas. It is

seen as vital both for protecting trade routes and military routes. And that is going to be very important in part two when we talk about a little event called World War II. Join us then. Welcome back. So yes, a little tease for you just before we went into the break, which is why is the strategic importance of this, everything and everything, to the debate that we're having right now and all of these sort of international wranglings that are going on with Britain saying, we'll wait for Donald Trump to read a treaty before we decide to do what we thought we were going to do, which is give the Chegos Islands back to the Mauritians. And it's all very much alive in the news at the moment. But let's go to World War II first, because what the Cheycos Islands did at that, time is that they were so important strategically, as Philippe said last time, but for fueling warships. Coaling. The Chegos Archipelago was a coaling station, and given the vast distances, I mean, a thousand miles from Mauritius, and even more from the African continent, it's the same distance into the Indian Ocean and the Asian battlegrounds. And so warships are stopping there, and they are refueling and stocking up with coal so that they can sail eastwards. And when they're

coming back from the east, they don't have to sail all the way to the African continent and they can refuel halfway there. But at this point, it is just like a little wait station. Refuel and wait. It's just time. So there's no such notion of like Diego Garcia. That's not even a thing. That comes a bit later, doesn't it? Well, Diego Garcia exists as an island, but it's not a, it's not a military base. It's a coaling for refueling essentially military vessels. And the British Coaling State and just Yes, yes, it's a British coaling station. So we've got its pivotal importance. Everybody sees it's really very useful before the big blue starts to have somewhere that you can refuel. This is an excellent place. It's kind of out of the way. And it's handy for us. At what point then to the

Americans say, you know what, I'd quite like a bit of that. Thanks very much. And you're our friends, Britain. Let's do a deal on this. So the first key date is the summer of 1945 when the United Nations is created in San Francisco. And it has a commitment to something that's come to be known is decolonization. The colonial powers agree to end their sort of colonial rule. It takes 20 years for the Mauritians to really get up to speed. By now, there are 20 or 30 independent African countries. Mauritius is not at the forefront, but by the early 1960s, they are agitating for independence. And there are a series of meetings between the Mauritian leadership and the British government with demands for independence. There is then a crucial meeting in November

1965 in London at Lancaster House between the Mauritian leadership group led by a Mr. Ramgoulam, the father of today's prime minister, and Harold Wilson, to determine the conditions under which Mauritius will become an independent African state. Mr. Wilson's been given a briefing paper, which I and others have called the sort of Frighted Them with Hope paper. because his instruction from his permanent secretary is, you must frighten them with hope, Prime Minister. He says it in that quote-unquote? Yeah, that's just nuts.

It's an incredible series of words. The hope that they will get independence and the fear that they will not, if they do not cede to us the Chegos archipelago, and allow us to dismember the colony. Now, this is a problem in international law. Do you want to know what the problem is? I absolutely do, yeah.

The rule on decolonisation is that you can only dismember a part of a colony if the affected population has given its consent. The British say that the Mauritian leadership gave its consent at Lancaster House. The Mauritians will later say, we sort of gave our consent, but it was under duress. So hang on a minute. Is that in effect saying we said it, but our fingers were crossed under the table? I mean, is that... Not our fingers. No, he forced us.

He told us that if we didn't accept this, we wouldn't get independence. So we had no choice. Beats hope. Okay. Yes. Gotcha. So they consent. The British immediately, like a few days later,

pass an ordering council creating a new and the last British colony to be created, the British Indian Ocean Territory, formerly known as the Chegos Archipelago, formerly dependency of Mauritius. And this is 1965. Five. The year I was born. The year is born. The last colony was great.

You look good. You look good. Yes, you are coincident with the last British colony ever created. Do people call it Bayot for sure? Yes, they do call it Bayot. Three years later, they gained independence in March 1968 without the Chegos Archipelago. And the reason the British have held on to the Chegos archipelago is not that they have a particular desire to hold on to it or any part of it. it. But the Americans have a new project starting in 1964, 65, to create a...

This is mid-Vietnam War. You've understood. To create a series of military bases or listening stations in far-flung strategic but tiny islands. And they identify Diego Garcia, one of the 58 islands of the Chegas Archipelago, as their preferred destination. And they say to the British, we want it. and we want it cleared of any population. Oh. So this is the Richard Gifford case where it starts.

So his case has always been is that there were people there who were forced. They weren't asked. They were made. It gets even more complicated. The Americans say, we don't care about the other islands. The population can stay there. But we want everyone off Diego Garcia. The British then have a problem.

Under international law, they have understood it. we've got the legal advice from the archives in which this is made clear, you have to obtain the consent of the affected population. It was understood that the affected population of Diego Garcia would not give its consent. It was understood that the affected population of all the other islands, a total of maybe up to 1,800,000, 2,000 people would not give their consent. So the British have an internal legal debate, and the argument that prevails is to determine that there is no population on any part of the Chegos Archipelago which needs to give its consent. They determine in London that every person living on the Chegos archipelago is a contract laborer, not a resident.

So they take all of their rights away, just like that? Who comes up with this legal solution? Is it some lawyer in... A lawyer named Tony Ost, who I knew very well. He was opposed by another lawyer called Henry Darwin who said, this is wrong. Henry O'Darwin did not prevail. Tony Ost prevailed. And the consequence was, at a stroke, a decision was taken that every person who lived on the Chegos archipelago was no longer considered to be a resident, but became a contract laborer. One of the contract laborers was a four-year-old boy called Olivier Banqu. And Olivier Banquieu never forgot what was done to him.

And Olivia Bonku is a very important name because we kind of started talking about him with the legal case at the start because he was the test case or at least the spearhead of the case that's saying, you know what, you can't do this to people. You can't suddenly make them stateless. And just to be completely clear, there's 2,000 people scattered between these various different islands. They are a mixed population. Some are ex-slaves. Some are sort of indigenous. None are ex-slaves. They are all descendants of predecessors slaves. Their grandparents, their great-grandparents or who. The question of Indigenous is very complex. They argue, some of them, that they are an Indigenous community, but that is contested by others, including the Mauritian government today. You've spent time, I mean, obviously you've spent time here, and you've talked to people. What did it do to them, you know, to be told from a place, a court far away,

people in sort of strange wigs and different languages telling them that their history wasn't real. Their stories weren't right. Their grandparents didn't matter. and a four-year-old child could be a laborer who could be deported at any moment. I'll give you one story that for me has been the most touching. Olivier Banco's aunt, Lisbee-Ele, aged 20 in 1973. Nichoma and ban zanimo and an slave to Sabatula. On the 29th of April that year, as she described to me, and she has a good memory,

she was a witness later in the proceedings at the International Court. Court of Justice. She said, I saw something I'd never seen before on my island, Peros Bagnos, which is also where Olivier Banco is from, I saw a white man. And he came up to me and he said, your island is being closed, you will leave tomorrow with one suitcase and nothing else. So she then gathers her belongings. They are all removed, 400 or so people, the next day on a boat called the Nordvea. They are sailed to Mauritius. Are we saying, when you say removed, at gunpoint, soldiers come and say, right, march up the count ofunk you're off.

Is resistance? Do they throw stones? There's no resistance. There are a community that is particularly attached to their dogs. They want to take their dogs. The British won't allow them to take their dogs. They first try killing them with Strickenin. They then try shooting them.

Who the British do? The British. And they then end up gassing them. And they witness. They watch their pets. I have had Chagosians described to me how they watched their dogs swim after the boat. as the boat was leaving. I don't know why that makes my heartbreak.

Well, you ask how they were. They're utterly traumatised. I mean, this was, you know, 50 plus years ago. They still talk about it. What kind of life are they living there? Are they small farmers or what's going on? They are living a subsistence life looking after chickens and coconut plants and vegetables and fish.

They are fantastic fishermen. And this I've seen for myself going back, with them and they are able to catch things extraordinarily easily in ways that others can. And this is a place which in a different shake of the dice, if America had not insisted on this, if Howard Wilson had not just been prepared to wipe away their rights, would in time presumably have become like the Maldives a fancy tourist destination. Absolutely. And someone would have been very rich.

I don't quite know who. But in terms of the impact on them, remember that the Americans have basically said we only want Diego Garcia cleared. it is the British legal logic, my own community, that causes everyone to be cleared out. So they are then dispersed to various parts of the world. Most of them go to Mauritius, some go to Seychelles. And do the Mauritians give them houses and land or are they living in a shanty town? It's appalling.

It's appalling. It's a point. Imagine a country that has become independent just three, four, five years later. They are utterly dependent on the export of one commodity to the former country. to the former colonial power, and that is sugar. So they are imprecunious. These folk describe to me how they arrive in the port of Pau-Louis. There is no one to meet them. There is no one to look after them. They have no money. They have no home. They have nowhere to live. And for a lot of them, there is a resentment not only of how they were treated by the British, but then how they were

received and not well treated by an independent Mauritius. It's a very complex story. Again, I just want to remind people, this is not that long ago. We're talking about from sort of the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, this clearest of people. It's crazy. In my lifetime, in my lifetime. And that's why I come back to the sense of shame. How could it be that I lived through this? Never read about this in the newspapers.

Never saw anything about it on the telly. Never saw it was talked about it in history lessons at school. And even worse, when I studied law for the first time, 1970, 1990, 1983. no one talked to us about these kinds of things. One thing we haven't mentioned is numbers. How many people are on this boat? Well, on the boat from Peros Bagnos to Mauritius, it was about 400 people. But again, back to Lisztu, the aunt of Olivier Boncou,

all the black people were kept in the hold of the boat. All the white people were upstairs. No! No, no, no. Yes, yes, yes. She describes, in her pleadings before the International Court of Justice that they felt they were treated like slaves. She was so traumatized that she didn't realize she was pregnant, but she lost a child during the trip. And the trauma, dignified community, but a traumatized community still today.

I mean, this is during the 60s, the Beatles, into, you know, glam rock. I mean, just to give it context, this is what the world looked like. And 65 years of the Daws first album, just to put this. Oh, thank God for you. Thank God. Thank God. It was the one thing I was searching for. But, yeah, very good.

in our lifetime. It's just nuts. Come on, baby, light by far, is the number one in LA at this point. Oh, my goodness. Again, the numbers, 400 on the boat. You said earlier that the entire archipelago, the numbers are disputed. About 2,000 backs. Yeah.

I mean, some say 1,200. I think it's around, we're just under 2,000 people. Can I just say, just as we're going to do another episode of the course we are. We've just scratched the surface. But honestly, when Philippe said that about the way in which the passengers were kept, all jaws, and there are three of us here, hit the floor, all of them. One would think that an army of keen lawyers would want to step forward and get involved. This is the 60s and 70s, for God's sake.

But actually, we're going to talk about the one who did step forward. It was a lot later, but he is the one who is sitting on this sofa with us here at Jaipo. We'll talk about how Philippe Sands got involved in the Chagos Islands and the cause of those people who live there. Join us then. Until then, goodbye from me, Anita Arndan. Goodbye for me, William Drupul. And goodbye from me. are as gripped by Philippe's story of the history of the Chegels Islands, as William and I clearly

are, you can carry on listening by becoming a member of the Empire Club. So come on, be part of the fam. All you have to do is sign up. Empirepoduk.com, Empirepoduk.com. Empirepoduk.com.