A test case for the African Union: the British high court has thrown out a compensation claim brought by the Ilois people of the Chagos Islands against the British government, saying the case was "an obviously unmeritorious" one. The stunned islanders say they will appeal and ask for the support of the African Union.

The Namibian president, Sam Nujoma, says in the interview published on page 33 of this issue that the African Union (AU) "must not sit and watch as people of African descendant suffer discrimination abroad." The AU, he says, "must protest strongly against [such discrimination]. We must not allow our people to be badly treated".

The plight of the Ilois people (also known as Chagossians), some of whom have now come to live in Britain (30 years after their forceful removal from their homes by the British government to make way for an American military base on the largest of the Chagos islands, Diego Garcia), is a serious test case for the nascent African Union.

In 1980, the OAU passed a resolution affirming that the Chagos and its prime island, Diego Garcia, were an integral part of Mauritius, and thus of Africa (see NA, Sept. 2002). The Chagos Archipelago consists of 65 islands and lies 1,200 miles northeast of Mauritius.

The southernmost of the islands is Diego Garcia. It is now one of the most precious jewels in the US defence structure, although the archipelago ("an integral part of Africa") still technically "belongs" to Britain. In November 1965, it was renamed the British Indian Overseas Territory. Until the name change, the archipelago was part of Mauritius and administered by the British governor of Mauritius.

But in 1965, in high secrecy, the British leased Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands to die US for 50 years. The lease runs out in 2016 but it could be extended for another 20 years. "When the Americans expressed interest in the islands, the Chagos dropped off public discourse and scholarship", writes Borgna Brunner of infoplease.com.

After the deal, the indigenous people of the archipelago, the Ilois, were tricked by the British government and shipped out of their homes between 1965 and 1973 to make way for the American military base. Many of them were dumped in Mauritius, but some went to the Seychelles. Forgotten was the word. They were neither officially recognised as Mauritian citizens nor British. In fact, the British refused to grant them automatic right of abode in the UK, and thus denied them British passports, until last year.

In Mauritius, the Ilois were badly treated by the locals mad many died. The rest lived in abject poverty, forcing them to want to return to their native homes in the Chagos. Their many years of campaign was crowned with victory in the British high court three years ago. The court said their "wholesale removal" was "an abject legal failure", mad ruled that they could return, though not to Diego Garcia proper, but to the other surrounding islands. The court asked the British government to facilitate their return by providing the needed infrastructure for human habitation on the islands that were destroyed when they were shipped out.

The British government initially accepted the ruling but has since stalled, claiming that the islanders could not return because the needed infrastructure investment was too prohibitive on "what are remote islands with few resources".

London now claims that the Chagossians' return is "impractical and inconsistent with the existing defence facilities" on Diego Garcia. According to the Foreign Office, the British "position on the future of the territory will be determined by our strategic and other interests, and our treaty obligations to the USA". That is the rob.

The Americans do not want the islanders back, even on the surrounding islands because they might pose a security threat to their Diego Garcia base which is now home to the Stealth and B-52 bombers, and also some "Al Qaeda" prisoners. Washington has thus put pressure on London to stop the islanders return despite the November 2000 high court ruling that they could do so.

The Americans have already sought British permission to extend the Diego Garcia base by "developing the island as a forward operating location for expeditionary air force operations--one of only four such locations worldwide". This means, therefore, that access to the archipelago will continue to be "by permit only", and the British and American navies will continue to stop anybody (Ilois or otherwise) from getting near. Last year, named and shamed (including in the pages of New African) for the appalling treatment given to the Chagossians, London was finally moved to give the remaining 8,000 Ilois and their descendants British passports. Some of them saved money for their airfares From Mauritius to Britain. And several hundred of them have since arrived only to find that the "mother country" was not a "mother" after all.

Arriving via Gatwick Airport, they were immediately headed into temporary accommodation in the nearby town of Crawley, where the Sussex County Council now says the upkeep of the Ilois is not its responsibility but the central government's. But Tony Blair's government that preaches about "human rights" in Africa and elsewhere, will not provide the money for the Chagossians' upkeep.

Fed up, the county council threatened last month to stop paying for the Ilois' stay in Crawley, thus forcing them to go to court to seek compensation from the British government on behalf of 5,000 Chagossians in and outside Britain.

On 9 October, Justice Duncan Ouseley, sitting in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, threw out the ease saying it should not be allowed to proceed because it was "hopeless" and "unmeritorious". According to him, though the Ilois could claim to have been treated shamelessly by successive British governments, "it will be a waste of public money to continue with the case". The Chagossians who had filled the court and the corridors outside were shocked beyond belief. The judge told them: "Justice does not require an obviously unmeritorious case to be allowed to proceed. Ill-treatment does not require a hopeless case to be allowed to continue."

The judge even claimed that successive British governments (seven since 1965) had not known that their actions were unlawful, and that there was no legal basis for the islander's "unlawful exile".

In his infinite mercy, Justice Ouseley ordered that the islanders should pay one-third of the defence costs. He said the Chagossians "left behind their homes, their pets and domestic animals, their larger items of moveable property, taking only a small quantity of personal possessions". The conditions on the ships that carried them away, the judge admitted, were "dreadful" and "engendered many bitter memories of the horses being better cared for than the passengers". Yet he still ruled that the Chagossians' claim had "no reasonable grounds".

Justice Ouseley added: "The Chagossians alone were made to pay a personal price for the [American] defence establishment on Diego Garcia", but said they [had twice been compensated already--650,000 [pounds sterling] in the 1970s and 4m [pounds sterling] in the 1980s.

This, the judge said, was meant to "improve their sad conditions, but was not evidently generous ... Their poverty, sadness and sense of loss and displacement impel their continuing desire to return to the islands which were their home."

The British Foreign Office proclaimed itself "pleased" with the judgement. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are pleased with the decision from the judgement bur we need time to study it closely to see what implications there might be."

Which forced Mark Curtis, the author of the book, Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World, to write in the British daily, The Guardian, a day after Justice Ouseley's judgement: "Britain's treatment of the Chagossians is a national disgrace. Their struggle will continue in the US courts. Meanwhile, we might honour the Chagossians if only by laughing whenever Tony Blair professes his support for human rights."

The lawyer for the Chagossians, Richard Gifford, said his clients were "in a state of shock", but added that "when you have been kicked around for 30 years, you get a bit used to setbacks". He said, they would appeal and fight on until they got justice. This is where they sorely need the voice and muscle of the African Union.

As Mark Curtis put it in his Guardian article: "The giant lie at the heart of British policy [in 1968] was that the Chagossians were never permanent inhabitants of the islands but simply 'contract labourers'. The then foreign secretary, Michael Stewart, wrote a secret note to [Prime Minister] Harold Wilson in 1969 saying: 'We could continue to refer to the inhabitants generally is essentially migrant contract labourers and their families', and added that it would be helpful 'if we can present any move as a change of employment for contract workers ... rather than as a population resettlement.' Seven successive British governments have maintained this fiction."

And now is the time for London to pay for that fiction.