The Last Colony
by Philippe Sands, translated from English (Great Britain) by Agnès Desarthe
Albin Michel, 230 p., €21.90
It is a story where the path of international law set up after the Second World War, the British imperial heritage and the quest for justice intersect. Philippe Sands recounts it as a human adventure in which he himself got involved as an adviser to the Mauritian government.
At the center of the story, Liseby Elysé, 69, born on a remote island in the Chagos archipelago, a dependency of Mauritius, a British colony since its cession by France in 1814. Liseby Elysé, a young bride of twenty, pregnant with her first child, embarked without notice, on April 27, 1973, with 400 other people, on a ship which takes him, thousands of kilometers away, to Port Louis. “We close the island”, said the administrator. A four-day exodus to end up a refugee in her own country.
It all started in the 1960s when London and Washington secretly negotiated a long-term lease on the island of Diego Garcia where the Pentagon plans to establish a military base. Americans and British are developing a scheme to detach the entire Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, drive out their inhabitants, qualified as seasonal fishermen, and impose this “separation” on the Mauritian authorities in exchange for independence. A “Privy Council Order” creates the “British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT)” including the Chagos Archipelago and modifies the Mauritian constitution by excluding it from its territory.
Forced displacement
On March 12, 1968, Mauritius became independent but without the integrity of its territory. Between 1967 and 1973, the government of Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson organized the forced displacement of the entire Chagos population. About 1,500 individuals abandon their homes and their belongings, so many destinies shattered by the law of the strongest. Some survive in precarious conditions in Mauritius, others find asylum in England.
Philippe Sands exposes British postcolonial hypocrisy with its selective application of the right to self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Charter, invoked in the case of the Falklands and Gibraltar, ignored for the Chagos Islands. But we must not despair of international law, pleads the lawyer-writer. Since the Nuremberg trials, deportation – the forced movement of a group of people from one territory to another – has been a ” crime against humanity “. And the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized the “right to return”.
UN orders ignored
In February 2019, fifty years after the independence of Mauritius, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the main judicial body of the United Nations, created in 1945 by the San Francisco conference, delivers its verdict: the process of decolonization of Mauritius was not conducted legally and the UK must end ” as fast as possible “ to its control of the Chagos Islands. In May 2019, a resolution of the UN General Assembly, voted on by 116 countries, invites London to “put an end to his colonial administration” within six months and “to make no obstacle” upon the return of the former inhabitants.
The British government has so far superbly ignored these injunctions. The author nevertheless bets that London will eventually recognize the political and legal realities. The decision of the ICJ opens the prospect of a return for the Chagossians who wish it. One day, Liseby Élysé will find her island populated by birds at the bottom of the lagoon.