Diego Garcia

Producer Andrew Tkach and correspondent Christian Amanpour report on the hushed up eviction of the indigenous people of Diego Garcia to make way for one of America's most strategic air and navy bases.

Ethnic cleansing by the British

The ethnic cleansing by the British of an entire small population and culture – the Chagos Islanders – is probably the most despicable act by Britain of my lifetime.  As if the Iraq War and Extraordinary Rendition were not enough, New Labour’s moral dereliction – or more properly evil – was confirmed by the breathtaking cynicism of David Miliband’s proclamation of a Marine Protected Zone around the islands, designed to protect the American base on Diego Garcia and make it impossible for the Chagos Islanders to return to their living as native fishermen, and keep away any eyes that might see the secret prison inmates.

Extraordinarily and to their eternal shame, a number of prominent British environmentalists and conservationists lent their support to the Diego Garcia marine protected zone.  These purblind fools, obsessed with a single cause and blind to wider policy and justice, are in the same category as the ridiculous “feminists” who were co-opted by the neo-conservatives agents (be they propaganda media or secret service or both) to frustrate the aims of Julian Assange and Tommy Sheridan.

In truth, if colonial conquest and force majeure are legitimate grounds of sovereignty, and if extermination of a population can wipe out the legal right to self-determination, then in international law Britain has the right to Diego Garcia and to give it as tribute to their US overlords.  But if international law has any relationship of any kind to principles of justice, then Britain should not be permitted to reap the dubious benefit of genocide.  What international law actually is in the neo-conservative era is the real question before the UN tribunal now looking at the Diego Garcia question.

More on the Craig Murray website

Israeli children deported to South Sudan succumb to malaria

Three months ago, Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai deported several hundred families from Israel to South Sudan, despite unequivocal statements by human rights group that mere fact of the established state is far from the offering the safety that would allow for these families’ return; the request was at least to extend the group exemption from deportation – Israel’s mechanism of neither denying nor granting asylum – a few months longer. Even that demand was ignored. The deportees’ baggage, all 14 tons of it, was delayed for two months and kept at a warehouse in Israel, simply because the state felt that it could not be bothered to bear the expenses of sending it along. In the baggage was medicine collected for the families by Israeli volunteers from Israeli donors; it was only finally sent to South Sudan a week or so ago, but not before reports began to surface which claimed that immigration officials were helping themselves to the more precious possessions from the pile.

Dwell with me on that image for a second: Families herded into a transport which will take them to the very danger they were running from, leaving a silent pile of suitcases and clothes behind.

Within a week, the deportee children – Israeli children, either born or raised in Israel, speaking better Hebrew than most of this government’s apologists in the United States – began to die. So far, at least seven of them have succumbed to disease

Read further on +972 Magazine

Israel deports Sudanese asylum seekers as South Sudanese nationals

Sudanese citizens seeking asylum in Israel are being issued with South Sudanese documents in order to deport them, according to a report published on Saturday.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that “the breach of our borders by infiltrators could threaten the Jewish and democratic state […] we will begin by removing the infiltrators from South Sudan and move on to others.”Also, Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, has said “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”

Amid violent, 1,00-strong anti-immigrant protests in May in which African residents were attacked, Miri Regev, a legislator and member of Knesset (the legislative arm of the Israeli government), said that Sudanese refugees are a “cancer in our body.”

Sudan Tribune

French Riot police smash camps and hundreds rounded up for deportation as Socialists take on gipsies

French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. Dozens of officers in riot gear descended on a settlement near Lille shortly after dawn to oversee the evacuation of some 200 Roma living in mobile homes.

One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. Caravans and huts were destroyed in the Belleville area of central Paris on Wednesday, making another 100 people homeless. The policy being pursued by France’s socialist government was formulated by former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was frequently accused of pandering to the far right.

Mail Online

Coming Back

On May 18, 1944, Joseph Stalin deported 218,000 Crimean Tatars to Central Asia. Using personal testimonies, this film tells the story of the Tatars' expulsion from their homeland and their long struggle to return.
It was only in 1989, with the opening up of the Soviet Union, that they were able to come back in large numbers. Most, finding Russians living in their former homes, built shacks in which to live. Today, 300,000 Tatars live in Crimea - 5,000 of them still in shacks. Even those with houses suffer because they only have minority status. Despite this, 150,000 more are still hoping to return home.

Al Jazeera

UK seeking to change the European Court of Human Rights

David Cameron is seeking to change the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) so that it no longer serves as an automatic last resort for criminals, including foreigners awaiting deportation. But the proposal has been attacked by Labour who believe the prime minister may be paving the way to "walk away" from the court.

The prime minister will use Britain's presidency of the Council of Europe to attempt to make changes to the court and clear the massive backlog of cases across Europe awaiting consideration. However Downing Street has admitted that getting agreement on how to speed up the Court's operation will be an enormous challenge.

Huffington Post - Asylum airlines - your one-way flight to deportation (Telegraph)

Little hope for Mauro

The Dutch Christian Democratic party voted to work towards a more humane policy on young refugees, but that does not mean 18-year-old Angolan boy Mauro can stay, party officials said on Saturday. (DutchNews.nl)

Abigail R. Esman is appalled. she writes this because she finds it unfathomable that a Western, civilized country that dares to boast of its “tolerance” (a fable, but people still believe it) and its “openness” (ditto), a country that professes to believe in human rights and human dignity, can be committing this kind of sin against an innocent young man. She write this because she thinks the world should know.

Mauro Manuel arrived in the Netherlands as a child of nine – frightened, alone, sent off by his parents who feared for his safety in their war-torn homeland of Angola. Their son, they knew, would face a better future in the West.

And so he came to live in the Netherlands, where he has, in the nine years since, learned to speak the language fluently, with the unmistakeable drawl of the province of Limburg, where he now lives with a foster family. He has been a good student. He plays soccer with the best of them. His foster parents gave birth two years ago to a son Mauro calls his brother, and loves as if they had been born to the same family.

But Mauro is now 18 years old. And the Dutch government wants to send him back to Africa. Mauro no longer speaks his native language. He no longer knows the cultural mores of his homeland. He has been raised a Westerner, a Dutchman, and this is the culture of which he feels a part.

Abigail R. Esman on Forbes.com