British government will go ahead with its appeal to the House of Lords that seeks to stop Chagossians from returning to their homeland ? the Chagos Islands. The decision has been confirmed to the House of Lords by UK?s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on Tuesday, despite the Law Lords? warning to the FCO that they will have to meet the costs of a further appeal, whatever the outcome.

This decision comes despite pleas from several parliamentarians from all British political parties, urging the FCO not to press ahead with an appeal to the House of Lords. ?We urge the prime minister to follow his speech ?On liberty? (Oct 25) by accepting the right of the Chagossians to return to their islands. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has lost three times in the courts on this issue. (?) After losing in the High Court in 2000, the FCO accepted the Chagossians? right to return. Then, in 2004, it used two orders in council to remove that right. The unanimous judgment of the Appeal Court on May 23rd was that this was illegal: The two Orders in Council negate one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings, the freedom to return to one?s homeland (?) For the FCO to proceed with a further appeal would waste more public funds, delay justice for the Chagossians and expose the prime minister?s words as hollow. Can we please have a return to good sense, justice and British liberties?, asks a group of parliamentarians in their letter.

Their pleas have been ignored. Just as those of an overwhelming majority of British public opinion, if online newspapers are to be believed. Among them, former high commissioner to Mauritius, David Snoxell. Currently ambassador to Senegal, Mali, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Snoxell writes to The Times after reading the letter from the group of parliamentarians (quoted above). ?We cannot preach human rights until the islanders get justice.? The diplomat argues that the UK?s reputation ?for defence of human rights and basic freedoms is brought into question?. To continue on this path would ?put us on par with those countries we condemn for lesser human rights violations. I do hope the foreign secretary will try to see how this looks to the rest of the world, especially in Africa?.

The use of delaying tactics

Ironically enough, British PM Gordon Brown proposed a few months ago to review the uses of the royal prerogative - the orders in council are one such prerogative. It is through the orders in council that the British Government denied the Chagos islanders their right to return home, by striking down a court judgment that had allowed to do so.

In 2000, the Chagossians won an extraordinary legal victory allowing their return to the Chagos Archipelago from where they were forcibly removed in the 1960s and 1970s. The British government decided then not to appeal but the decision was kept in abeyance while the government said it was conducting a feasibility report on the advisability of such a return.

Some say it was a delaying tactic. And then September 11 happened and Diego Garcia, the biggest of all the islands of the archipelago, suddenly regained its attractiveness in the eyes of the US military.

Great Britain ever the good friend and ally (of the US if of no one else), duly obliged and ensured that Diego Garcia remained available to US interests; the British Government then issued orders in council in June 2004.

This tactic has been condemned by the High Court and Lord Justice Sedley said the method used by the British government to stop the islanders from returning was ?unlawful and an abuse of power? by the government executive. The judges condemned as ?repugnant? the British government?s decision to ?exile a whole population? from the Indian Ocean Islands in the 1960s and 1970s.

The forcible removal of Chagossians from their homeland has been declared a crime against humanity by the English High Court. ?Unfortunately, along with the birds go some Tarzans and Men Fridays?, wrote a Foreign Office official when the deal of removing the Chagossians was done. That was some 40 years ago. It seems that, for some, those people are still regarded as ?Tarzans? and ?Men Fridays? regardless of what the courts of law have said. Or may say in the future.

MAURITIUS AND HER SOVEREIGNTY

Mauritius? countless appeals to the UK Government to revert the Chagos Archipelagos back to it so it can exercise its sovereignty on them have met with steely silence. Great Britain has assured Mauritius on several occasions that it recognised its claim to sovereignty on the Chagos islands and that it would cede the islands back to Mauritius when they were no longer needed for defence purposes.

It is not clear when that would be. The lease between the US and the UK expires in 2016 but its is believed that will be renewed for another? 50 years. Mauritius? demands to exercise its sovereignty over the other remaining islands pending the return of Diego Garcia to Mauritius has also fell on deaf ears with successive UK governments refusing to engage into talks.

UN Resolution number 1514 is quite unambiguous in referring to the inalienable right of colonial peoples to independence. In addition, there have been a number of bold UN resolutions about the illegality of Anglo-American occupation of the Chagos and the necessity for the retrocession of the Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, for example Resolution 2066 (XX) of 1965, which the UK government naturally did not sign, instructing Britain ?to take no action which would dismember the Territory of Mauritius and (not) to violate its territorial integrity?.