How the U.S. Stole an Island

out here in the Indian Ocean there's a lot of emptiness but if you scan long enough you'll see something right here equidistant between Africa and Australia you'll see a cluster of incredibly remote bits of land hardly peeking out of the ocean this is the Chagos archipelago a chain of around 60 remote atolls and Islands a thousand or so kilometers from any landmass there used to be people here local Islanders who lived here for many generations but those Islanders are gone now and today the main island called Diego Garcia looks like this it's a United States military base and instead of a local community of coconut farmers this island is now a little slice of America transplanted into one of the most remote places on earth but this weaponized island doesn't even belong to the United States it's technically British territory that was secretly rented to the US in a covert deal 50 years ago so what's going on here what's the deal with this American base on a technically British island and whatever happened to the thousands of Islanders that used to live on this side [Music] the British gained control of the Chagos archipelago in 1814 taking it from the French the few thousand locals that lived in this chain of Island mainly worked in coconut cultivation for European companies but by the middle of the 1900s the UN had been founded and one of the first things that it undertook was decolonizing the map basically getting all these empires to wind down their rule over their colonies so the British started leaving much of its territory abroad downsizing its empire around the same time the US was kind of doing the opposite looking to expand its military power and influence around the world they wanted a base in the Indian Ocean where they didn't have any territories so the u.s. set their sights on this archipelago specifically this main island called Diego Garcia all of these islands were a part of Mauritius which was a British colony at the time but Mauritius was soon becoming independent from Britain part of this decolonizing of the map Britain would soon be giving these islands back to the people who lived there so the u.s. made a secret deal with their allies the British at the time the British owed the United States a bunch of money for helping them develop these submarine missiles so the u.s. said that they would wipe out fourteen million dollars worth of that debt if the British could secure them this island but remember that the British were close to leaving all of these islands trying to decolonize so they pulled a fast one and told Mauritius that they could have their independence plus three million pounds if they would let the British just kind of break off this little archipelago so that the British could hold on to it even as Mauritius gained independence from Britain the reason they paid the three million pounds is so that they could technically say that they purchased the islands and appear as if they were still in keeping with the UN effort of decolonizing the map and yet they were still able to hold on to these islands for the US the US and the UK didn't sign any treaties or formally transfer any money during this process all of that would require congressional approval and public scrutiny and all of these things that would make it not possible so instead they kept the deal secret like literally secret like in the letters that they wrote back and forth they said quote there is a secret agreement and that the US would quote effectively but indirectly pay the British for these islands meaning there was no money changing hands but they still paid them by wiping out the debt and that they would be taking quote special measures to maintain the secrecy of this arrangement oh and there was the fact that this letter was officially classified as secret so yeah when I say secret I really mean secret by the late 1960s it was looking like the Americans were gonna get their base in the Indian Ocean they were ready to move in but there was still one big problem here which is that there were over a thousand locals still on this main island of Diego Garcia but in the eyes of the US and the UK this wasn't a problem in a government memo the British assured the Americans that there will be no indigenous population except the seagulls and indeed they made good on their promise the locals were herded onto cargo ships and shipped off to the islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles and they were left there in a world that many of them had never seen before to fend for themselves many had never worked outside of their Island that no skills in a way of getting work back on the island their pets were rounded up and gassed their houses left to crumble the indigenous population was gone [Music] and then the building began the US now had their base in the middle of the Indian Ocean giving them direct access to big regional hotspots like the Middle East and Asia Diego Garcia became more and more militarized with time soon it had a deep-sea port where nuclear submarines could dock and it soon took on the nickname the footprint of freedom and yet with time it became more and more secretive no journalists are allowed to visit Diego Garcia few civilians have ever arrived here and among those civilians by the way are NFL cheerleaders who came to boost morale of the troops the island was also used as a CIA black site used to interrogate suspects after 9/11 both the US and the British government's denied this and then finally admitted it we did some things that were wrong we tortured some folks after 9/11 this island became more important because it was a launch pad for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so a new housing complex was built to accommodate the influx of soldiers this new complex is called Camp justice speaking of justice those Islanders who were forcibly evicted and deported from their Island yeah they wanted some of it so over the years they've been fighting for some form of justice and the British government has tried to compensate them sometimes with money or by giving them an option to become British citizens but even still many live in very difficult circumstances displaced from their homeland what they really want is to go back and through years of legal action they've made a strong case that they have a right to do so well the Foreign Office review its current position on the Pacheco's Islanders who should be granted immediately the right to repatriation in their home we are a currently in dispute with Mauritius about the issue of these you gaussian Islanders and about I Diego Garcia remember all those in direct payments and loopholes that the British and u.s. pulled during decolonization that stuff that they made very clear was very very secret well last year the International Court of Justice ruled that this was totally illegal and not in compliance with the process of decolonizing the General Assembly of the UN voted 116 to 6 that the UK never decolonized Mauritius because they held on to this archipelago and halt for them to immediately finish the process of returning the archipelago to the people who lived there but despite these legal rulings and this global consensus the US and the UK aren't likely to budge the UK continues to defend its claim to this island and as long as they do the US military will have a home there in this country we're doing our best to ensure that we are Asmus humane has been possibly thank you so much for watching this video there's so much more information on this topic that I was able to fit into this video but I wanted to make it four years and I finally did I want to thank story blocks for supporting this channel and for sponsoring today's video you may not have noticed but a lot of the footage that I used especially in the intro of this piece was story box footage this moment right here in the intro resume in that's all story blocks footage it's beautiful stuff and I was able to browse and find loads of stuff of the ocean and islands that I was able to use in this video i've been using story blocks for years because they really are the best place to find good stock footage and audio and After Effects templates for so incredibly cheap you have access to a giant repository of visuals that you can use to create whatever you're creating I could have never gone to the Indian Ocean to record this footage and yet on story blocks I have a huge abundance of stuff I can use so I'm so grateful that it exists and grateful that it's affordable I'm grateful that it is a subscription service so you don't paper clip you pay a monthly subscription which is incredibly cheap and then you can just download as much of this big beautiful footage as you want super high-res I can't say enough about it and again that's not just because they sponsored this video I've been using story blocks for years so I have a link in my description its story blocks calm slash Johnny Harris if you go to that link and go sign up for story blocks it definitely helps support my channel but it definitely will help you support whatever you're doing if you are a creative a filmmaker wants to learn how to edit better the story blocks is a great way to have tons of footage at your fingertips for an incredibly low price Thank You story blocks for sponsoring this video thank you all for watching lots more to come soon have a good day [Music]

Channel: Johnny Harris

Views: 552,021

Rating: 4.9319458 out of 5

Keywords: diego garcia island, diego garcia island tour, diego garcia navy base, johnny harris, vox, johnny harris vox, borders, DG island, secret military bases, secret military, military, united states, britian, mauritius, us secret torture, indian ocean military, indian ocean us bases, chagos, chagossians

Id: e1EymGBTl-A

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/wwarnout]

"...'Camp Justice' while original inhabitants...are displaced from their homeland."

Just let that sink in.

[u/nim_opet]

Brits didn’t take Chagos from Mauritius because Mauritius didn’t exist in 1967 when the UK expelled Chagosians; it was a British colony until 1968.

[u/mrbbrj]

arewethebaddies?

[u/dudecancode]

"Camp Justice" - that's cold.