Chagos: London Considering a Restocking

However, neither the exiled Chagos installed in Mauritius, London and the Seychelles or Mauritius diplomacy take seriously announced by the UK intentions. " We have no confidence in what announces the British government. What is the guarantee that this study will not be oriented to say, ultimately, that the Chagossians can not return home? Why again this time we are excluded from the team that will lead this study ? "said Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagos Refugees Group.

In a statement issued Friday, the Mauritian Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its total disapproval of the decision of the Foreign Office in London. He wondered about the timing of this announcement. This occurs, the statement added, " on the eve of the hearing in the trial Maurice brings the UK " for the creation of a marine protected area in the Chagos.

" The Mauritian government has strongly protested to the British government against the recent visit of a British Minister Mark Simmonds, in the archipelago and against the so-called studies on resettlement , " the statement added.

5000 Americans over the archipelago

Britain had undertaken an initial feasibility study in 2003 with the conclusion that resettlement would be " costly and precarious . " This study was the resettlement of the Chagossians even riskier than the sea level rise of 5.44 mm per year. " What had been refuted by other scientists , "says the Guardian .

For his part, David Snoxell, former British High Commissioner to Mauritius, member today theChagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group , which defends the Chagossian because in Britain, said that London was initiated in December 2012 to conduct such a study. He hoped that the research will be completed before the end of this year.

The Chagos transformed into a military base by the Americans, were emptied of their inhabitants by their ally, Britain, in the 1960s and 1970s. Nearly 2,000 people, most living in Diego Garcia, were driven out of their land which now houses 5,000 Americans.

Experts for assignment to examine neutral " options and risks " of the coexistence of different communities on different islands and Diego Garcia. Document the Foreign Office as project suggests " a modern lifestyle, an ecological village, a pilot resettlement project including jobs on the military base and the creation of a scientific research center . "

Americans pollute

Meanwhile, The Independent revealed in its online edition yesterday, Saturday, March 15, that "the clearest waters in the world are polluted by the U.S. Navy . " These waters are part of themarine protected area declared by London there four years.

According to our British colleagues, U.S. military dumped tons of wastewater in a lagoon of the Chagos Archipelago in defiance of British laws on the environment. This practice lasted for 30 years, according to the newspaper.

The British Foreign Office said it was in April of last year that he learned that U.S. ships' sewage flowed into the lagoon since the creation of the naval base in the early 1980s . "

Chagossians do not understand how the British government saw nothing during that time. " That which contradicts the decision of Britain to declare the waters of Chagos marine protected area. On the one hand, she wants to get in our way because it assumes that we are polluters on the other, it left to the Americans. The British will they say to the Americans: "leaving because you destroy the Chagos waters"? "said Olivier Bancoult.