ANOTHER PARADISE
A FILM BY OLIVER MAGIS
Synopsis
Fifty years ago, the entire Creole population of the Chagos Islands was expelled by the British authorities. This secret operation took place to facilitate the leasing of the main island, Diego Garcia, to the US government so that it could build one of its largest and most secretive military bases overseas.
As the military lease is about to expire, Chagossian exiles are attempting to recover their home in the middle of the Indian Ocean from Great Britain. The charismatic woman leading their fight in the UK is Sabrina Jean. Through unrelenting activism, including the exile community’s improbable participation in the World Football Cup for Stateless People, she strives to keep the flame of hope alive in her community with one single goal: to return home. But as the elders disappear and memory fades, time is running out.
STEALING A NATION
A FILM BY JOHN PILGER
One of John Pilger’s most remarkable documentaries, bringing a little-known story to a wide audience, is Stealing a Nation, about how British governments ruthlessly expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, a crown colony in the Indian Ocean, in the late 1960s and early 70s to make way for an American military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.
The truth about the brutal removal of 1,500 islanders and the official conspiracy to deny the presence of an indigenous population did not emerge for another 20 years. Secret official files were unearthed at the Public Record Office, in London, by lawyers acting for the former inhabitants of the coral archipelago, who wished to return to their homeland. Historian Mark Curtis described the enforced depopulation in Web of Deceit, his 2003 book about Britain’s post-war foreign policy. The British media all but ignored it, while the Washington Post called it a ‘mass kidnapping’.
WINNING BACK PARADISE
(2002) - A chilling account of the creation of the most remote and secretive US military base in the world. Diego Garcia forms part of the Chagos Archipelago, which lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, north-east of Mauritius. In 1966 the islanders were banished from their homes after the British negotiated a deal to lease the islands to the United States as a naval base. The Chagossians were systematically persecuted, and forcibly hounded out to neighbouring islands. By 1973 not a single islander remained. In the years since, the islanders have fought a protracted and heated legal battle in the fight to regain their homeland.
