UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/uk-suffers-crushing-defeat-un-vote-chagos-islands

by kaisix • 7 years ago

79 76 7 years ago

User23• 7 years ago

It's not really crushing unless it's the Security Council. The GA is just talk.

netsharc• 7 years ago

The symbolism is telling though, US and UK used to be superpowers with diplomatic might, now countries are openly rejecting them.

papaf• 7 years ago

This is a British source that describes why the Chagos islands are so contentious:

https://politicsfirst.co.uk/editorials/britains-shame-the-et...

onyva• 7 years ago

Thank you for the link.

gedy• 7 years ago

That article is misleading, calling it ethnic cleansing of "indigenous peoples". These islands were uninhabited prior to European contact.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Garcia

ganeshkrishnan3• 7 years ago

Not true at all. Diego Garcia is just one island among these Archipelago and it was always inhabited by the native creole-speaking "Chagossians".

UK evicted them forcefully in the 70's or 80's I think.

inflatableDodo2• 7 years ago

Given that Madagascar was seemingly settled by Polynesians, I'd be amazed if Europeans and their slaves were actually the first ever inhabitants of Chagos, but that aside, if they were, then the Chagossian descendents of those first slaves would be, by definition, the indigenous people of the Chagos Islands.

Edit - and will people stop buying .io domains. They might look cool but it is straight up theft.

https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-...

https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-ac...

zakum1• 7 years ago

It is staggering to hear arguments justifying occupied land that has absolutely no connection to the uk. It shows how poorly the west still understands the evil of colonialism.

Regardless of the ancestry of the people living in any territory, they deserve to have sovereignty over their lives.

PunchTornado• 7 years ago

yes, USA should give Alaska and Hawaii to the local people

mattmanser3• 7 years ago

Err, we did actually pay for it.

And what connection do the "natives" have, they weren't native to it. They'd lived there less than 200 years and were French speakers.

It's not an indigenous population.

It's more complicated than you claim.

I'm pretty strongly anti-colonial, but this ain't that and it takes the piss to frame it like it is.

duxup2• 7 years ago

The UK retained possession of the Chagos archipelago after Mauritius gained independence in 1968, effectively paying Mauritius more than £4m for the islands.

Is the idea here that this deal was unfair?

kaisix2• 7 years ago

As I understand, there were 2 main issues (1) sovereignty over the Chagos islands (2) the int'l human rights issue because of the forced exile of the natives.

The natives are not allowed to return to the archipelago because of the US military base in Diego Garcia,

Mauritius argued that it leased the land to the UK and the UK sub-leased it to the US. On the other hand, UK said the archipelago is a British territory and it has sovereignty over the islands.

can £4m compensate for the human rights violations on that scale ?

duxup2• 7 years ago

Well that was the price a while back but:

The UK recently set aside £40m for exiled Chagossians who live mainly in the UK, Seychelles and Mauritius. Relatively little has been spent so far because programmes are being developed.

Not to say that automatically resolves anything of course.

klipt2• 7 years ago

Réunion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Réunion is much closer to Mauritius and claimed by France, I wonder if that's why France abstained on the vote?

sispeo• 7 years ago

No the folks there are happy to be French, enjoying the EU passport and French safety net.

klipt2• 7 years ago

I'm sure a bunch of people in third world countries would be happy to have US/EU passports, but it would still be colonialism for US/European countries to annex them, wouldn't it?

viraptor3• 7 years ago

It had it's own adventures with colonialism apparently https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/16/france-reunion... just not at the same scale as Chagos.

ilaksh• 7 years ago

Does this mean that people can return to those islands?

Certainly seems unlikely they would close the military base unless they were forced to so do by some military or substantial economic action.

This type of thing is what makes me worried about the long term sustainability of US security. The paradigm is not really rule of law when it comes right down to it, it's might makes right. This is an inherently insecure paradigm.

Whether there can actually ever be a different paradigm seems difficult though.

pc2g4d2• 7 years ago

I'd imagine this is the sort of situation where Mauritius uses this embarrassing (for the UK and US) defeat to pressure the UK/US for a lucrative base hosting agreement. There's little value to Mauritius themselves in having a massive naval complex on an isolated island, their economy can't sustain the sort of military that would benefit from it. Their best use of it would likely be to reestablish sovereignty and then "rent" it to "great powers" like the US/UK, Russia, China, India, etc.

hudibras• 7 years ago

Mauritius has made it clear to the US that they do not intend to change the status of the base in any way. It will simply be on a Mauritian island instead of a UK island.

ijuhoor• 7 years ago

Full disclaimer: I am Mauritian and work in the UK. I am happy about the regognition in the UN and the ICJ’s decision even that it is quite late and a lot of Chagosians already suffered a lot. I would say the Mauritian Gov is interested in the fishing rights provided by the islands which is critical for us. I would like to see .io domain be given back to a Chagosian association and let them use the income from it. It could be used to develop transport to the island and resume coconut farming, fishing, tourism... I would like to see more pressure being applied to UK, because to be honest i don’t see them doing anything and just do like they always did so far, ignore ans delay any actions to be done there. Ps: the Gigaom acticle about it is great to understand the situation. Pss: the US has no need for a base there, their base in Bahrain and Qatar are much closer to their illegitimate war interests.

perilunar• 7 years ago

What I don't understand is why the Chagossians can't return to the islands even if the US base remains. Looking at the islands on Google Maps it appears that the western half of Diego Garcia atoll is mostly uninhabited and could be used to resettle them, and there are other islands besides. We are talking about a thousand or so people—there's enough space for that many.

tangue3• 7 years ago

This is why you shouldn't use .io domains. It sounds cool but you're indirectly sponsoring a military base where people were tortured and because of which people were deported.

apasserby• 7 years ago

wait what?

fourthark• 7 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io

crowbahr2• 7 years ago

Based on cursory research the British government has refuted the claim that any money is given to them from .io domain registrations.

tangue3• 7 years ago

That's an answer to a question in the House of Lords. It needs to be read between the lines. Government doesn't effectively receive anything but according to the second article cited by Wikipedia, Paul Kane, who originally runned the .io domain said that the Crown Bank was receiving money :

"In a second conversation with Kane, he reiterated that “we do remit money to the Crown bank in accordance with our agreement. We pay X amount per name.” Kane did not say what “X amount” was, due to confidentiality."

Meanwhile it seems that in 2017 Affilias has bought the .io domain for 70 millions dollars...

raesene96• 7 years ago

Well whoever's getting the money, it's not the indigenous islanders who should be getting it.

briandear• 7 years ago

focusing dissatisfaction over its permanent seat on the UN security council.

But China isn’t having dissatisfaction focused on it for their permanent seat? That’s rich. When China gives back Tibet, then perhaps we can talk about dissatisfaction about the U.K. on the Council.

basementcat• 7 years ago

I think China will “give back” Tibet when the USA “gives back” Indian Territories.

tluyben2• 7 years ago

I am not really interested in politics, but I am curious why countries abstain. They surely have an opinion; my countries (born in NL, live in ES) had NL abstain and ES vote against the UK. Now I can understand why Spain voted; a lot of people are of the opinion that UK left EU and they should suffer a lot for it. It's a underbelly thing but it's quite accepted here. They want Gibraltar and they want to see them (UK) suffer for what they messed up (opinions vary but even my most angry brexit voting friends of mine would not do that in a re-vote). That the Netherlands didn't vote is also not a surprise; our gov has no backbone (see MH shoot down/Russia/Olympics crap; same jellyfish still is the boss; he is smart but people want to see a lot more action, not just moving with the tides) and just tries to be everyone's friend. But France & Germany? That must be political but why? Is that because ties to UK/US or ?

cs02rm0• 7 years ago

opinions vary but even my most angry brexit voting friends of mine would not do that in a re-vote

EU election polling may suggest otherwise. There's something slightly weird in UK politics where the media predominantly takes one side of a debate and then it seems to become socially unacceptable to be on the other side.

The brand new Brexit Party look to be getting double the vote of any other party, yet other than of parents and in laws no one I know has offered up that they were on the leave side. Yet I could name maybe 100 people who have talked about being on the remain side.

I've been brought up not to talk openly about politics anyway, but it seems a shame to me that there's a relatively silent majority.

Anyway, fully agree with your post otherwise. It looks worse than Eurovision!

pc2g4d2• 7 years ago

I think it's multiple things. First, they don't want to piss off their allies, the UK and US, by voting against UK occupation. Second, they may themselves have similar territorial arrangements and are concerned that this sets a precedent for use of the International Court of Justice to delegitimize such possessions.

Leherenn• 7 years ago

France has a few territories in a rather similar situation, and possibly the Netherlands as well. They probably don't want to anger the UK because they might need their support in the future if the same kind of vote happens to them, but at the same time, if they support the UK, a lot of countries will remember it and it could swing the vote against them.

At this point the best game is not to play.

For Germany, I do not know as they do not have overseas territories as far as I know. However, they are pretty keen on the UK staying in the EU, so that might be the reason.

Loic• 7 years ago

For France, it is even more sensitive as we are in the process of giving some of these territories more rights or simply full independence. This is a long and painful process for all the involved parties anyway because you dig again in the past often violent history of the territories.

toyg• 7 years ago

UN votes like these are a function of timing as much as of the actual content. Delegations trade votes to gain support in this or that ongoing issue, at the UN and elsewhere.

It just so happens that 1) the UK, thanks to Brexit, has basically lost all influence it had on other EU countries. EU members are more interested in gathering support on key votes in Bruxelles and Strasbourg; but the UK now cannot “trade” anything of that sort. 2) Again because of more and more stuff being cleared at EU level, the US has less and less to “sell” to individual member states. This goes double when the current administration is unabashedly isolationist, protectionist, and downright warmongering on trade issues, giving a first-line position to the likes of John Bolton who actively despise the UN and everything it stands for.

UK and US are currently isolated at the diplomatic level in ways unseen since WWII. The best they can expect from European countries, even when they share actual interests (like on decolonisation) is the occasional abstention. I expect we will see more and more similar votes coming to pass, in the next two years.

Al-Khwarizmi2• 7 years ago

I'm sure that Spain would vote against the UK irrespective of Brexit. If you have some territory illegally occupied by the British in your very country, it's obvious that you are going to vote against the British occupying territory elsewhere. It's coherent with Spanish foreign policy for many decades, from far before Brexit was even a talking point.

I haven't noticed any will of the Spanish government to punish the UK for Brexit. That might be an opinion of laypeople, but not of the government as far as I know. In fact, I think Spain was the first country to sign an agreement so that the British can keep entering the country without a visa after Brexit, as long as there is reciprocity.

narag4• 7 years ago

There's an obvious reason for that. Many Spaniards from the nearby towns work in Gibraltar.

I can't talk for everyone here, but most people I know couldn't care less about sovereignty. The huge problem with Gibraltar is smuggling and money laundering.

Edit: also, there's a common belief that we haven't pressured about the Gibraltar status because it could trigger that Morocco will do the same with Ceuta and Melilla. I can't really know, but it's really strange that after twenty years in the EU nothing has changed.

arethuza• 7 years ago

That would perhaps be a bit hypocritical of Spain given their own enclaves like Melilla and Ceuta in Morocco - both of which are claimed by Morocco?

dogma1138• 7 years ago

Gibraltar isn’t illegally occupied, that said Spain has always been stuck between a rock and a hard place since they have their own walled off enclaves in Morocco and they also have problems with independence movements internally with both Catalonia and the Basques claiming independence to various degree.

This is why regardless of how much Spain wants to push the UK to secede Gibraltar they can’t push too hard.

The Netherlands have the same problem they also have remote territories under their control so again they can only abstain.

kaisix2• 7 years ago

An interesting article about Australia’s Cocos Islands which was considered as an alternative to Diego Garcia

https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/australias-cocos-islands-can...

tomohawk• 7 years ago

Don't kid yourself that this is about the islander's claims. They are being used as human shields.

Diego Garcia is a very strategic location. It will always be controlled by one of the great powers. Who would benefit most if the US were to leave? Who has the most to gain? Countries like China and Iran.

tangue3• 7 years ago

True. And it's important not to over-estimate the value of this vote. France had been condemned by the UN for the return of the island of Mayotte to Comoros, New Caledonia is another example. And let's not talk about Palestine and Israel... UN votes have, in the best case, a symbolical value

[1] https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/165500

raesene96• 7 years ago

I don't think that's necessarily true. The UK has acted badly here and the islanders should have a right to live on their native islands.

Just because it would possibly help other powers, doesn't exclude the idea that the native islanders can legitimately want their homes back

ptah• 7 years ago

they are planning on putting it back with mauritius as it was before.

ed_balls• 7 years ago

Meta: This comment is 20 000 000 item on HN.

dalbasal• 7 years ago

What do people here think about thee role of the UN here?

Without unanimity in the security council, there doesn't tend to be much action they can take. Even with the SC, the track record of reaching resolutions isn't great.

In principle, it makes sense for there to be a formalized "community of nations" to express a decision. But, in terms of having a practical role that leads to resolving these kinds of issues... would it be better if they now aimed for a reperations/compromise solution?

I can't see british sovereignty or US occupancy changing. Is the right thing now to leave chagosians with a recognized moral right, with no hope of exercising it in practice or to go for compromise?

Just curious what people think.

jopsen• 7 years ago

The UN isn't perfect, but this is still a pretty official slap in the face.

thrower123• 7 years ago

The UN is precisely as powerful as the security council members make it. Most of them are increasingly loathe to bother with herding cats in the UN when its legitimacy is increasingly being undermined by corruption and hypocrisy.

It's not quite reached League of Nations irrelevancy, but it isn't far off.

UK suffers defeat in UN vote on Chagos Islands

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