THE ILOIS OF DIEGO GARCIA
Diego Garcia is a little coral island in the
Indian Ocean. At 11 sq mi (28 sq km), it is the largest island of
the Chagos Archipelago. Diego Garcia was populated by some 3,000
descendants of African slaves and Indian laborers known as the Ilois. They
lived a simple life.
The
Chagos islands are part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. Because
they were considered of strategic importance during the Cold War years,
Diego Garcia was leased to the United States and later developed as a
joint U.S.-British naval base. The base was to help guard the Persian Gulf
oil routes and to serve as a counter to increased Soviet military
activities.
While the lease was being negotiated, the United
States had indicated that it did not want a "population problem"
on the islands and Britain therefore decided to remove the population. To
facilitate their plan, Britain granted Mauritius (from which the islands
were being administered) independence in 1965, on condition that it
handed the islands over to Britain’s control.
British officials then made life untenable for the
Ilois by withholding essential services and supplies. Those who left the
islands for a short period were prevented from reentering. Between 1965
and 1973, about 90 percent were taken away by ship mainly to Mauritius and
the Seychelles as part of a £3 million deal. Britain also led the United
Nations to believe that there that the island's population consisted of
"contract laborers" and that there were no indigenous
inhabitants with a right of self-determination on the island. Because of
this claim, anyone born on the Chagos during the period of their removal
was refused a birth certificate. The British received, in consideration,
an $11 million discount on the purchase of the Polaris nuclear weapons
system from the United States.
Diego Garcia was later developed into a formidable,
strategic military facility.
Secret documents released to the Public Records
Office indicate that the British government did receive a discount on its
Polaris nuclear weapons system and £5 million from the US. The documents
contain an April 1969 memo from British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart
to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, which confirms that the agreement was
kept secret from the British parliament and the US Congress.
The Chagos Refugee Group in Mauritius, has been pursuing legal action against the British government. They contend that the islanders were officially British subjects and that their removal violated their human rights, and was illegal. The Ilois say that they were never consulted about the matter and that its implementation condemned them and their families to a lifetime of poverty. They are demanding compensation and the right of return for the remaining 500 islanders and their 3,800 descendants.
Useful links:
http://www.bartleby.com/65/di/DiegoGarc.html
http://www.cosmos.ne.jp/~miyagawa/nagocnet/data/diegogarcia1e.html
AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND UNDER NEW
YORK STREETS
New York City's
African Burial Ground is part of a cemetery used
between the late 1600s and 1796, in which 20,000
African men, women and children, both slave and free were buried. The area
lies under five blocks in city, surrounded by City Hall, the US
Courthouse and State Supreme Court.
In this burial ground, then located on the outskirts of Colonial New York, lay remains of enslaved African workers who in life grew New York's food, worked on its wharves, built New York's first public buildings, roads and forts. However, being slaves, they were themselves regarded as mere commodities traded on Wall Street.
On Oct. 4, 2003 the remains of more than 400 African persons buried there during the 17th and 18th centuries will be reburied on the African Burial Ground Memorial Site at the corner of Duane and Elk Sts. in lower Manhattan.
Long forgotten
with the passing of the years, the African Burial Ground was
rediscovered in May 1991 during the construction of a Federal
office building. It was readily recognized as one of the nation's most
significant archaeological finds this century. Scholars regard it as the
earliest and largest Colonial population available for study.
427 human remains
have been taken from the site. The skeletons, artifacts, and documents of
the people buried are being scientifically examined. Bones and teeth have
s so far revealed much about the health of the slaves. It is expected that
artifacts and DNA studies could be used to trace the slaves' origins back
to the particular African countries they came from.
Contrary to
popular consciousness, New York had a significant slave population during
the 18th century and slavery was not practiced only in rural or the
Southern parts of America. While the burial ground was in use, from ten to
twenty percent of the city's inhabitants were African.
The rediscovery of the burial ground resulted in a $15 million project, overseen by the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that administers all Federal property. The Federal government owns much of the land. According to the GSA, the area had been uneven and hilly in Colonial times, so engineers, probably in the 19th century, attempted to make the land level by covering it with landfill through decades of construction. The landfill helped preserve the burial ground, now 20 feet below street level.