Indian Ocean islanders win new British court victory

Indian Ocean islanders win new British court victory

A British court on Wednesday upheld a ruling letting families return to their Indian Ocean island homes, from where they were forced out 30 years ago to make way for a US military base. The Court of Appeal backed a High Court ruling in May last year that allowed the families to return to the Chagos Islands, except for Diego Garcia, a launch pad for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The British government, whose tactics to prevent their return were denounced by the court Wednesday as unlawful and an abuse of power was expected to seek a final challenge at the highest court in the land, in the House of Lords.

Britain expelled some 2,000 people from the Chagos Islands, 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of the Maldives, to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing it to lease Diego Garcia to Washington for 50 years. Lawyers for the Chagossians had argued in court that, although they cannot live on the main island of Diego Garcia, they should be allowed to return to the other 64 islands of the Chagos archipelago.

The Chagossians thought they had won the right to return to the British possession after a High Court victory in 2000. But the government used a royal prerogative in 2004 to introduce a so-called Order in Council which continued the islanders’ state of exile. High Court judges last May ruled that the use of an Order in Council, effectively acting by decree in the queen’s name, was a”repugnant” way to “exile a whole population”.

In rejecting Wednesday the subsequent appeal by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, Lord Justice Stephen John Sedley said the government’s resorting to the royal prerogative was unlawful and an abuse of power. Lord Justice George Mark Waller said the decision had been taken by a government minister “acting without any constraint.”

“Indeed, the crown may be doing something that, if she only knew the true position, she would prefer not to do, and yet it is then said that the government can hide behind the “crown’s prerogative,’” Waller said. Richard Gifford, the lawyer for the islanders, hailed the Court of Appeal’s decision.

“It has been held that the ties which bind a people to its homeland are so fundamental that no executive order can lawfully abrogate those rights,” Gifford said in a speech outside the courts.

“This is now the third time that Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian Community in exile, has proved to the satisfaction of English judges that nothing can separate his compatriots from their homeland,” he said.

“They now call upon the British government for a new start in this abusive relationship and to proceed with the utmost urgency to restore these loyal British subjects to their homeland,” he said. Rejecting British government efforts to delay implementation of the decision, the judges said the islanders were free to return home immediately.

Beckett will now have to show “good cause” if she wants the appeal judges to order a stay. The judges also refused the government permission to take the case to the House of Lords. However, the government can appeal directly to the highest court within a month and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was studying such a move.

“We are disappointed that our leave to appeal today’s decision has been declined,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.