THE ISLAND OF INJUSTICE

One nice aspect of isolated islands is also a troubling one: No one pays much attention to what goes on there, and that’s generally true of Diego Garcia as well. The island is the largest landmass in the Chagos Archipelago; it totals only 10 square miles of dry land, but it has great geopolitical importance. It lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean only 1,100 miles from India, 2,200 miles from Africa, and around 3,000 miles from Australia. Britain acquired sovereignty thanks to the 1814 Treaty of Paris and administered the archipelago from its colony in Mauritius until 1965, when Chagos was transferred to the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The next year Britain signed an agreement with the U.S. to allow defensive use of the BIOT until 2016, an agreement later extended to 2036. The population was forcibly resettled so a military facility could be constructed, and the people have never been allowed to return. The U.S. maintains an airfield with two 12,000-foot runways, a deepwater pier for the largest military vessels, storage for more than a million barrels of fuel, and housing for thousands of personnel. Recruitment literature for the U.S. Navy has described Diego Garcia as one of the world’s “best-kept secrets,” praising its natural beauty, recreational facilities, and living conditions. However the secret that the Navy doesn’t mention is the alleged use of Diego Garcia for the U.S. government’s rendition and torture programs. “Extraordinary rendition” is the euphemism for moving suspects to interrogation centers where they can be held outside the law. In 2008 the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, reported the receipt of credible evidence that the U.S. had held detainees on Diego Garcia. The human rights group Reprieve alleged that ships in the water surrounding the archipelago were also being used to hold suspected terrorists. Reprieve cited an allegation from a prisoner in Guantánamo, Cuba, that a fellow prisoner had been held with 50 others on a ship where the prisoners “were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo.” The U.S. typically denies such allegations.