The Sun Still Has Not Set

Craig DalzellI threw out this week’s planned newsletter (a defence of the Tourist Levy) in response to some breaking news on Thursday morning that concerns a story that I’ve been following for some years (albeit very much from the farthest fringes of the outside).The UK, after many years of arguing against an international consensus that campaigned against their illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Chagos Islands, has agreed to hand sovereignty of the islands back to Mauritius who were stripped of the territories when they won their independence from the UK in 1968.The reason that the UK did this was that in 1965 – seeing the winds blowing increasingly forcibly against Imperial occupations – they made a secret deal with the US to place a military base on the largest island Diego Garcia – a move that saw the population of the islands forcibly displaced in 1967. Those folk weren’t even treated with even a modicum of decency by their displacers. The fictionally-legal justification given to enact the displacement was that the people there weren’t really a native and permanent population (many were the descendants of slaves brought there under French and British rule but generations had passed since then resulting in a distinct people, culture and language on the islands), and thus had no real claim to the place (Diego Garcia, of course, being that famous wellspring from which all of British culture originally flowed…). Even after their eviction from their homes, the humiliations continued with the degradation of their right to exist on equal terms with anyone else in the former Empire. Citizenships of Britain only started being granted to Chagossians in 2002.The plan had always been to establish a permanent military presence in the area but something I didn’t know until very recently was that the part of the deal that included the “permission” for the US to build the base there was bought with a substantial discount on the UK’s purchase of Polaris nuclear weapons from the US – meaning that the consequences of that ethnic cleansing in the Indian Ocean are completely intertwined with the injustice of weapons of mass destruction being forcibly hosted on Scottish soil too.There is a lesson in here for Scotland and independence. As of the time of writing, the full treaty between the UK and Mauritius has not been finalised but it is being reported that the military base (itself a site of great secrecy and known war crimes including rendition flights) will continue to persist in the long-term. The initial lease signed in 1966 was for 50 years but was extended to 2036. This new treaty extends that lease again “for an initial period” until 2123 and if anyone believes it won’t be extended again after that, I have several other tropical islands to sell them. This is the problem with “temporarily leasing” military bases to foreign powers. Temporary deals have a way of making themselves permanent. If an independent Scotland attempts to arrange a "short-term lease" of Faslane to the UK to help deal with that aforementioned nuclear issue then I fully expect the same thing to happen here too.Indeed, I very much hope I’m wrong about this but Mauritius has been one of the region’s steadfast proponents of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons however they have so far stopped short of actually signing and ratifying it. If they did sign after reclaiming the Chagos Islands, the US would not be allowed to host nuclear weapons in or transit them through Mauritian territory nor could Mauritius do anything that could assist the US with anything to do with nuclear weapons. The US would have to confirm that all military forces at or passing through the base are nuclear-free and any nukes that happen to be within the territory at the point of ratification would have 90 days to be removed under the scheme that Scotland could also follow if we sign TPNW after independence. I fully expect the US is right now “negotiating” hard to avoid that coming to pass and to prevent another nation joining the growing coalition against these menaces to civilisation just as they have done with other nations that they park their nukes on.Of course, there is a group of people who have not been at the table to negotiate this deal and were not in the room when two Prime Ministers announced their plans to the world and they are the Chagossians themselves. Decolonialisation is continuing but it’s far from the idea of self-determination via the people best placed to make the decisions that affect their own homes. This might be the decades delayed decolonialisation of one of the last chunks of an Empire over which the sun never set and under which the blood never dried. This deal might well effect the return of people to homes that too many never saw again. But it is still a deal being done very much TO the people involved, not with and – as per that military base again – certainly not FOR them. Their voice must be at the table when the treaty is drawn up and their rights must be given the priority they deserve throughout.In a world where war crimes and flagrant disregards of international rule of law are the subject of reality TV levels of spectacle, it is good to see even the smallest glimmer that the UK can and will adhere to such rules (even if it only did so after exhausting all alternatives) but we do need to consider why those laws exist – to protect the powerless from those who would otherwise act with impunity over them. As Scotland continues its own journey towards self-determination we should consider those who are also still being denied it and where that denial takes on far harsher consequences than it does even here, under the shadow of nuclear weapons bought at a discount earned by the ethnic cleansing of an entire people.