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Mauritius: Divided Loyalties
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L'Express (Port Louis)
COLUMN
3 April 2008
Posted to the web 3 April 2008
Deepa Bhookhun
Port Louis
Mauritius claims that the Chagos archipelago has been unlawfully excised from its territory following a unilateral decision of the British Government. Some Chagossians think it's irrelevant - recognizing British sovereignty over the Chagos, they want to be British. How compatible are both stands?
Prime minister Navin Ramgoolam and opposition leader Paul Bérenger engaged in an interesting, if confusing, discussion last Tuesday in Parliament. While talking about the ill-treatment of the Chagossians when the British deported them in the 1960s while pretending to the world that they did not exist, Paul Bérenger asked Navin Ramgoo-lam: "Will government help them?"
"We are looking into the matter. ( ) I have spoken to them and have asked them to talk to our legal advisors", answered Ramgoolam.
That's where the discussion becomes confusing. The government's counsels advise Mauritius on the best way to deal with the thorny issue of Mauritius reclaiming its sovereignty on the Chagos islands, which have been illegally dismembered from the Mauritius' territory. Chagossians' fight, on the other hand, (at least a part of them led by Olivier Bancoult's Chagos Refugee Group) is to be given the right to go back to their islands.
To do this, Bancoult and his friends have publicly acknowledged Britain's sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago, fought to be granted British citizenship (through the argument that as Chagossians from the Chagos that belong to the United Kingdom, they should be regarded as British citizens) and have fought the British Government in a British Court for the right to return to the Chagos (that they accept as British territory).
This fight is neither complementary nor compatible with Mauritius's stand - that the British give up their so-called sovereignty over Chagos, an illegally excised part of our territory. As a matter of fact, Mauritius has always refused to recognize Britain's claim to sovereignty over the Chagos.
Highly prejudicial
Asked by a British official if Chagossians faced with a choice would prefer to stay Mauritian or British, Bancoult answered that most of them would rather "stay British". This statement is highly prejudicial to the cause of Mauritius because, in the white paper prepared by former British Foreign secretary Robin Cook, there is a provision for organizing a referendum among the people of the British Overseas Territories so that they can decide who will govern them.
As lawyer Hervé Lassémillante points out, "if ever the British let Chagossians go back to the islands and organize a referendum and the Chagossians decide to be stay British, then all is lost for Mauritius". So how will the government's counsels advise Chagossians? How will government "help" Chagossians?
The Chagossians are divided (bitterly so) in two groups - one led by Fernand Mandarin- (Comité social des Chagos) that believes that Chagossians are above all Mauritians (because the Chagos are part and parcel of Mauritius) and that any claims Chagossians may have against the British will be raised through the Mauritian government.
Bancoult's refugee group has no such qualms. Contrarily to Mandarin's group, they don't feel any allegiance to the country and according to lawyer Hervé Lassémillante - legal advisor to the Comité social des Chagos - there is not even a degree of gratitude to all the benefits Chagossians have enjoyed (free education, free health care, etc.) since their forceful eviction from their islands.
What's even more surprising is that, despite the ill-treatment at the hands of the British, some Chagossians "seem like they want to go back to colonial times" says lawyer Lassémillante. And yet, whatever happened 40 years ago was incredibly cruel and vicious.
Chagossians, as revealed by the Prime minister yesterday, were not involved in any of the discussions regarding the dismemberment of their islands from the territory of Mauritius and the subsequent use of the Chagos islands by the British (same as the Mauritian Government was completely unaware of the use the British intended to make of the Chagos archipelago). "They didn't even count how many Chagossians there were; it was a complete denial of the human rights of Chagossians," added the Prime minister.
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Yet the disdain with which Chagossians were treated (with the insulting treatment and the meager compensation given many years later) does not seem to have made much of an impression on some of them.
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