Diego Garcia: What is on the secretive UK-US island?

Diego Garcia, a distant island within the Indian Ocean, is a paradise of lush vegetation and white-sand seashores, surrounded by crystal blue waters.

However that is no vacationer vacation spot. It’s strictly out of bounds to most civilians – the positioning of a extremely secretive UK-US navy base shrouded for many years in hearsay and thriller.

The island, which is run from London, is on the centre of a long-running territorial dispute between the UK and Mauritius, and negotiations have ramped up in latest weeks.

The BBC gained unprecedented entry to the island earlier this month.

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“It’s the enemy,” a personal safety officer jokes as I return to my room one night time on Diego Garcia, my identify highlighted in yellow on a listing he’s holding.

For months, the BBC had fought for entry to the island – the biggest of the Chagos Archipelago.

We wished to cowl a historic courtroom case being held over the therapy of Sri Lankan Tamils, the primary folks ever to file asylum claims on the island, who’ve been stranded there for 3 years. Advanced authorized battles have been waged over their destiny and a judgement will quickly decide if they’ve been unlawfully detained.

Up till this level, we might solely cowl the story remotely.

Diego Garcia, which is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the closest landmass, options on lists of the world’s most distant islands. There aren’t any business flights and getting there by sea is not any simpler – permits for boats are solely granted for the archipelago’s outer islands and to permit secure passage by the Indian Ocean.

To enter the island you want a allow, solely granted to folks with connections to the navy facility or the British authority that runs the territory. Journalists have traditionally been barred.

UK authorities attorneys introduced a authorized problem to attempt to block the BBC from attending the listening to, and even when permission was granted following a ruling by the territory’s Supreme Court docket, the US later objected, saying it will not present meals, transport or lodging to all these trying to succeed in the island for the case – together with the decide and barristers.

Notes exchanged between the 2 governments this summer season, seen by the BBC, prompt each have been extraordinarily involved about admitting any media to Diego Garcia.

“As mentioned beforehand, the US agrees with the place of HMG [His Majesty’s Government] that it will be preferable for members of the press to watch the listening to just about from London, to attenuate dangers to safety of the Facility,” one notice despatched from the US authorities to British officers stated.

When permission was lastly granted for me to spend 5 days on the island, it got here with stringent restrictions. These didn’t simply cowl the courtroom reporting. Additionally they prolonged to my actions on the island and even a ban on reporting what the precise restrictions have been.

Requests for minor adjustments to the allow have been denied by British and US officers.

Personnel from the safety firm G4S have been flown to the territory to protect the BBC and attorneys who had flown out for the listening to.

However regardless of the constraints, I used to be nonetheless in a position to observe illuminating particulars, all of which helped to color an image of one of the vital restricted places on the earth.

Approaching by airplane, coconut bushes and thick foliage are seen throughout the 44 sq km footprint-shaped atoll, the greenery punctuated by white navy buildings.

Diego Garcia is one among about 60 islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) – the final colony established by the UK by separating it from Mauritius in 1965. It’s situated about midway between East Africa and Indonesia.

Pulling on to the runway alongside gray navy plane, an indication on a hangar greets you: “Diego Garcia. Footprint of Freedom,” above pictures of the US and British flags.

That is the primary of many references to freedom on the island’s signage, a nod to the UK-US navy base that has been there for the reason that early Seventies.

Agreements signed in 1966 leased the island to the US for 50 years initially, with a potential extension for an extra 20 years. The association was rolled over and is ready to run out in 2036.

As I make my manner by airport safety and past, US and UK influences jostle for predominance.

Within the terminal, there’s a door adorned with a union jack print and partitions hung with photographs of great British figures, together with Winston Churchill.

On the island itself, I spot British police vehicles and a nightclub referred to as the Brit Membership with a bulldog brand. We go roads named Britannia Means and Churchill Highway.

However vehicles drive on the proper, as they do within the US. We’re pushed round in a shiny yellow bus paying homage to an American college bus.

The US greenback is the accepted foreign money and the electrical energy sockets are American. The meals provided to us for the 5 days contains “tater tots” – a well-liked American fried-potato aspect dish – and American biscuits, much like British scones.

Whereas the territory is run from London, most personnel and assets there are below the management of the US.

Within the BBC’s bid to entry the island, UK officers referred questions as much as US employees. When the US blocked the courtroom listening to from happening on Diego Garcia this summer season, a senior official on the Ministry of Defence stated the UK “didn’t have the power to grant entry”.

“The US safety evaluation is classed… [they] have demonstrated that they’ve strict controls in place,” he wrote in an e-mail to a Overseas Workplace colleague.

Biot’s appearing commissioner has stated it isn’t potential for him to “compel the US authorities” to grant entry to any a part of the navy facility constructed by the US below the phrases of the UK-US settlement, regardless of it being a British territory.

In recent times, the territory has been costing the UK tens of thousands and thousands of kilos, with the majority of this categorised below “migrant prices”. Communications obtained by the BBC between international workplace officers in July concerning the Sri Lankan Tamils warn that “the prices are rising and the most recent forecast is that these might be £50 million every year”.

The environment on the island feels relaxed. Troops and contractors trip previous me on bikes, and I see folks taking part in tennis and windsurfing within the late afternoon solar.

A cinema advertises screenings of Alien and Borderlands, and there’s even a bowling alley and a museum with a present store connected, although I used to be not allowed inside.

We go a fast-food spot referred to as Jake’s Place, and a scenic patch of land subsequent to the ocean with an indication that reads: “Ye olde swimming gap and picnic space.” Diego Garcia-branded T-shirts and mugs are on sale on the island.

However there are additionally fixed reminders of the delicate base that’s right here. Navy drills could be heard early within the morning, and close to our lodging block is a fenced-off constructing recognized as an armoury.

On a regular basis, US and British navy officers hold an in depth eye on the courtroom’s actions.

The island has startling pure magnificence, from lush vegetation to pristine white seashores, and can be residence to the world’s greatest terrestrial arthropod – the coconut crab. Navy personnel warn of the risks of sharks within the surrounding waters.

Biot’s web site boasts that it has the “biggest marine biodiversity within the UK and its Abroad Territories, in addition to a number of the cleanest seas and healthiest reef methods on the earth”.

However there are additionally clues pointing to its brutal previous.

When the UK took management of the Chagos Islands – Diego Garcia is the southernmost – from former British colony Mauritius, it sought to quickly evict its inhabitants of greater than 1,000 folks to make manner for the navy base.

Enslaved folks have been delivered to the Chagos Islands from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on coconut plantations below French and British rule. Within the following centuries, they developed their very own language, music and tradition.

I get to see a former plantation on the east of the island, the place buildings stand in disrepair. The grand plantation supervisor’s home has an indication exterior studying: “Hazard unsafe construction. Don’t enter. By order: Brit rep [representative].” A big crab crawls up the door of an deserted visitor home.

At a church on the plantation web site, an indication, in French, beneath the crucifix reads: “Allow us to pray for our Chagossian brothers and sisters.”

Wild donkeys nonetheless roam within the space. David Vine, creator of Island of Disgrace: The Secret Historical past of the US Navy Base on Diego Garcia, describes them as a “ghostly remnant of the society that had been there for nearly 200 years”.

A Overseas Workplace memo in 1966 acknowledged that the article of its plan “was to get some rocks which is able to stay ours; there might be no indigenous inhabitants besides seagulls”.

A British diplomat responded that the islands have been residence solely to “some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius”.

One other authorities doc acknowledged that the islands have been chosen “not just for their strategic location but in addition as a result of that they had, for all sensible functions, no everlasting inhabitants”.

“The Individuals specifically connected nice significance to this freedom of manoeuvre, divorced from the conventional concerns making use of to a populated dependent territory,” it stated.

Mr Vine says the plans got here at a time when the “decolonisation motion was unfolding and accelerating” and the US was involved about shedding entry to navy bases all over the world.

Diego Garcia was one among many islands that have been thought-about, he says, nevertheless it grew to become the “prime candidate” due to its comparatively small inhabitants and strategic location in the course of the Indian Ocean.

For the UK, he says, it was an opportunity to take care of shut navy ties with the US, even with solely a “token British presence” there – however there was additionally monetary motivation, he provides.

The US agreed to a $14m low cost on the UK’s buy of its Polaris nuclear missiles as a part of the key deal over the islands.

In 1967, the eviction of all residents from the Chagos islands started. Canine, together with pets, have been rounded up and killed. Chagossians have described being herded onto cargo ships and brought to Mauritius or the Seychelles.

The UK granted citizenship to some Chagossians in 2002, and plenty of of them got here to reside within the UK.

In testimony given to the Worldwide Court docket of Justice years later, Chagossian Liseby Elysé stated folks on the archipelago had lived a “comfortable life” that “didn’t lack something” earlier than the expulsions.

“At some point the administrator informed us that we needed to depart our island, depart our homes and go away. All individuals have been sad. However we had no selection. They didn’t give us any cause,” she stated. “No one want to be uprooted from the island the place he was born, to be uprooted like animals.”

Chagossians have fought for years to return to the land.

Mauritius, which gained independence from the UK in 1968, maintains that the islands are its personal and the United Nations’ highest courtroom has dominated, in an advisory opinion, that the UK’s administration of the territory is “illegal” and should finish.

It stated the Chagos Islands needs to be handed over to Mauritius with the intention to full the UK’s “decolonisation”.

Clive Baldwin, senior authorized adviser at Human Rights Watch, says the “pressured displacement of the Chagossians by the UK and US, their persecution on the grounds of race, and the continued prevention of their return to their homeland quantity to crimes in opposition to humanity”.

“These are essentially the most critical crimes a state could be answerable for. It’s an ongoing, colonial crime so long as they forestall the Chagossians from returning residence.”

The UK authorities has beforehand acknowledged that it has “little question” as to its declare over the islands, which had been “below steady British sovereignty since 1814”.

Nonetheless, in 2022, it agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the way forward for the territory, with then-Overseas Secretary James Cleverly saying he wished to “resolve all excellent points”.

Earlier this month, the federal government introduced that former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of employees, Jonathan Powell, who performed a central function in negotiating the Good Friday settlement in Northern Eire, had been appointed to barter with Mauritius over the islands.

In an announcement, new Overseas Secretary David Lammy – who has criticised earlier governments for having for years “ignored the opinions” of assorted UN our bodies over the islands – stated the UK was endeavouring to “attain a settlement that protects UK pursuits and people of our companions”, as he careworn the necessity to defend the “long-term, safe and efficient operation of the joint UK/US navy base”.

Matthew Savill, navy sciences director at main UK defence assume tank Rusi, says Diego Garcia is an “enormously essential” base, “due to its place within the Indian Ocean and the amenities it has: port, storage and airfield”.

The closest UK facility is a few 3,400km (2,100 miles) away, and for the US, practically 4,800km (3,000 miles), he explains, with the island additionally an essential location for “house monitoring and commentary capabilities”.

Tankers working from Diego Garcia refuelled US B-2 bombers that had flown from the US to hold out the primary airstrikes on Afghanistan after the 9/11 assaults. And, throughout the subsequent “warfare on terror”, plane have been additionally despatched immediately from the island itself to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The bottom can be one among an “extraordinarily restricted variety of locations worldwide out there to reload submarines” with weapons like Tomahawk missiles, says Mr Savill, and the US has positioned a considerable amount of gear and shops there for contingencies.

Walter Ladwig III, a senior lecturer in worldwide relations at King’s Faculty London, agrees the bottom fulfils “loads of essential roles” – however that “there’s this stage of secrecy that appears to transcend what we see at different locations”.

“There was this hyper-focus on controlling entry and on limiting entry, which… appears to transcend what, given what we publicly know in regards to the belongings, capabilities and models are primarily based there.”

Throughout my time on the island, I’m required to put on a purple customer go and am intently monitored always. My lodging is guarded 24-hours-a-day and the lads exterior make a remark of after I depart and return – all the time below escort.

Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, British journalist Simon Winchester pretended his boat had run into bother subsequent to the island. He remained within the bay for about two days, and managed to briefly step on shore earlier than being escorted away and informed: “Go away and don’t come again.”

He tells me he remembers British authorities there being “extremely hostile” and the island as “terribly lovely”. Greater than 20 years later, a Time journal journalist spent 90 minutes or so on the island when the US presidential airplane stopped there to refuel.

Rumours have lengthy swirled in regards to the makes use of of Diego Garcia, together with that it has been used as a CIA black-site – a facility used to deal with and interrogate terror suspects.

The UK authorities confirmed in 2008 that rendition flights carrying terror suspects had landed on the island in 2002, following years of assurances that that they had not.

“The detainees didn’t depart the airplane, and the US Authorities has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations present no document of another rendition by Diego Garcia or another Abroad Territory or by the UK itself since then,” then-Overseas Secretary David Miliband informed parliament on the time.

On the identical day, former CIA director Michael Hayden stated that info beforehand “equipped in good religion” to the UK about rendition flights – stating that that they had by no means landed there – had “turned out to be unsuitable”.

“Neither of these people was ever a part of [the] CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation programme. One was in the end transferred to Guantanamo, and the opposite was returned to his residence nation. These have been rendition operations, nothing extra,” he stated, whereas denying stories that the CIA had a holding facility on Diego Garcia.

Years later, Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of employees to the previous US Secretary of State Colin Powell, informed Vice Information that intelligence sources had informed him that Diego Garcia had been used as a web site “the place folks have been quickly housed and interrogated every so often.”

I used to be not allowed close to any of Diego Garcia’s delicate navy areas.

After leaving my island lodging for the final time I obtained an e-mail, thanking me for my latest keep and asking for suggestions. “We wish each visitor to expertise nothing lower than a welcoming and cozy expertise,” it learn.

Earlier than flying out, my passport was stamped with the territory’s coat of arms. Its motto reads: “In tutela nostra Limuria”, that means “Limuria is in our cost” – a reference to a legendary misplaced continent within the Indian Ocean.

A continent that doesn’t exist looks as if a becoming image for an island whose authorized standing is doubtful and that few, for the reason that Chagossians have been expelled, have been allowed to see.