Introducing the other Guantanamo

While few know about the base on Diego Garcia - it has long been off-limits to all non-military personnel - it is hardly better known how it came into being. To create the base, the United States, with the help of Great Britain, exiled all the indigenous people of Diego Garcia and the surrounding Chagos Archipelago. Between 1968 and 1973, US and British officials forcibly removed about 2,000 people, called Chagossians, 2,000 kilometers away to islands in the western Indian Ocean. Left on the docks of Mauritius and Seychelles with no resettlement assistance, the Chagossians, whose ancestry in Chagos dated to the 18th century, have grown deeply impoverished in exile. Diego Garcia has become another Guantanamo in more ways than one: the product of years of deception and lies, a far more secretive detention facility than the Cuban prison, the cause of immense suffering and pain for an entire people, it has become a mark of shame for the United States that must be repaired. Introducing the other Guantanamo By David Vine