Sunday, December 21, 2014

Is this speck in the Indian Ocean Britain's Guantanamo?

Lost in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, midway between East Africa and the southern tip of Asia, there is a footprint-shaped coral atoll where orange and blue coconut crabs scuttle across pristine white beaches and turtles wallow in the powder-blue lagoon.

Though it is called Diego Garcia, after the 16th-century Portuguese mariner who supposedly discovered it, it was ceded to Britain following the Napoleonic Wars and has belonged to us ever since, proudly flying a palm tree-embossed Union flag and retaining its old-fashioned Post Office pillar-box.

By rights, I ought to be sending this report to you from this remote and beautiful island, but regrettably that isn’t possible.

For in 1966 it was leased by Britain to the United States, which has turned it into a vast military base — ‘the Guantanamo of the East’ — and in the 48 years since then, journalists have been banned from going there.

Such is the cloak of secrecy surrounding Diego Garcia that a Time magazine executive once offered ‘a crate of the finest Bordeaux’ to the writer who filed the first despatch carrying the island’s dateline.

Though one landed there very briefly, when the presidential plane on which he was travelling with George W. Bush made a refuelling stop, the wine has not been claimed. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Diego Garcia, the real story...
  2. Pressure mounts on UK over CIA’s ‘black site’ jail in Diego Garcia...
  3. Paradise Lost: Ascension Islanders uprooted for US military base...
  4. Shame, lies and secrecy on Diego Garcia...
  5. Unsavoury truth revealed about secret US base in Diego Garcia...
  6. U.S. forcibly deported Diego Garcia islanders and gassed their dogs...
  7. British government under fire for allowing US to use Diego Garcia...

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