Wednesday, May 23, 2007
THE RIGHT OF RETURN Chagos Islanders--displaced by the US base at Diego Garcia--win the right to go home in a British appeals court:
The families--ordered from the islands by the British government--packed the court of appeal to hear the ruling, which condemned government tactics preventing their return as unlawful and an abuse of power.The British secretly leased the island to the US in 1966.
The court ruled that thousands of people who were tricked, starved and even terrorised from their homes could return immediately, with the decision likely to draw a line under what is widely seen as one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history
