Photo Log: Diego Garcia II - Chagos, Indian Ocean - 'Footprint of a People'

FOOTPRINT OF A PEOPLE

Diego Garcia is called the "Footprint of Freedom" at the US Naval Support Facility...

Diego Garcia was once home to the Chagossians. They have left their imprint there. They want to return.


Footprint of the Chagossians at Diego Garcia:
These are photos primarily from the eastern rim of the Diego Garcia atoll where the Palm Oil Plantation existed. They were taken in August of 2004 during a Marine Biological Survey of the island.


Peering through framing fronds of palms at the cerulean blue waters of the lagoon...
and at the remnants of the Plantation's once busy dock.

Many Chagossians left on "Supply" trips from this dock to Mauritius and were never allowed to Return to their Homes here... Others were rounded up and forced onto ships with few belongings ... their dogs were gassed in front of the children to 'discourage' their return and to "encourage their exit...


Remnants of buildings in the 'jungle' ...
Abandoned in the 1970's - not in mist shrouded ages past like ancient ruins of temples in the jungles of Southeast Asia as these apear to be...



Our trusty van stopped on the way to the Plantation House as we spied ruins in the jungle
and we got out to investigate...



Peering at the jungle via empty windows and doors as the jungle peers in overhead...
Leaf litter unswept for 30+ years...



Reaching limbs and perching plants...

Diego Garcia and the Chagos Archapelago, of which it is part, sits seven degrees south of the equator. There is plenty of year-round sun, tropical breezes, and fresh rains...








Walls and Windows in the jungle...

The atoll rim is in actuality a very thin strip of land going around in an undulating ring forming an outline roughly resembling that of a human footprint. The Plantation itself exists on a wider trianglular section of land on the eastern rim and the bulk of the US Naval Support Facility exists on a bulging moon-shaped section of the far northwestern rim. Over the years of the US construction of the base, the atoll rim has been extended in places out into the lagoon using fill material from the beaches.

The atoll is one of the most enclosed atolls in the world with the encircling rim of land being nearly 90% continuous/unbroken except for the opening in the north where three small bird inhabited islands sit and watch the entrance channel to the lagoon. Some parts of the atoll are less than 50 feet wide and no 'natural' part of the island is higher than 15 feet above normal high tide levels, some much lower.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 2004 breached nearly 1000 feet of the eastern rim.
No "Signifcant" damage was reported by the US Navy to any Naval Facilities... (The eastern Rim supports a shooting range, and antenna facility, and Space Command facilities).


Doorstep to where???



Stones in the jungle...


Jungle trees keeping watch... blanketing a building in suspended crumbling sleep...


Approaching the "Plantation"






The "Gaol" (Jail)












Flagpole at the Plantation lacking any banner or pennant to flutter in the breezes comming off the lagoon...

A People without a flag? or Flagpole without a people?
Whom is it that this Flagpole announces?
What Identity is given forth to the World? to any that will Look...

Post 9-11, our Flagpoles sprouted our Identity across this Nation like a field of wildflowers bursting full of Pride...
Full of Fear of being overlooked...

What single Identity might dance here on this pole? on these breezes basking in this sunlight or sillhouetted against a cloudy sky or dripping with fresh rains?
What Identity might fly here in its Freedom while we Tromp through the World ensuring our American Freedom???

What Identity DID fly here, before OUR drive for Security thoughtlessly eliminated Theirs???



Where did the Chagossians go... departing off this dock???
Where in the World are they...
Where is their Identity?
...
Well... They are there... Out in the World...

AND THEY WANT TO COME BACK HOME...


(do we even Know they 'left' from this dock, from their homes, so that we could feel safer here in our homes?)

Were they taken care of and thanked... wherever they ended up ???
Where ever they were 'deposited'

Were they Thanked and Appreciated?


Stone and Iron... Silent markers of time...













Much of the stone bulding materials came from the fossil coral bedrock of the atoll...
Millions of years of homes... used to make homes...

Chagossian structures made from the coral reef identity of the atoll itself...

Darwin passed by Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands in his travels (while working aboard a survey ship). He did not stop here, but the islands of the Chagos helped him form his ideas on atoll formation. He published his ideas on the sinking of Sea Mountains and the rising of the Coral Reef platforms.

The Chagos are also sometimes called the peaks of Limuria... (the Indian Ocean's 'Atlantis')...













The donkies are decendents of those left by the Chagossions upon their 'exit' from the island...


They are kept from wandering onto the main portion of the US Naval Support Facility by a "Donkey Gate"




The Plantation's 'Main' house


The Chagossians were once slaves, working on the islands' copra (cocanut oil) farms...
After emancipation, they became owners and workers of the plantations on their Island homes...

The Chagos Islands were discovered by the Portugese in their burst of circum-African exploration and trans-Indian Ocean travel (on their way to 'Discovering' India)...

The Islands 'belonged' to France and England (Britain) at various times...

The Islands currently 'belong' to the United Kingdom as part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) ...
















Peering through a tunnel under the Main House... Light at the other end...


Peering under Foundations of Main House...


















Plantation Church Building...












Inside the 'Main House'...














The Chagossians were deposited and left, for the most part, on the Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius...
Very little compensation was alloted to the "Chagossian People" upon their removal from their homes...
Very little of that compensation reached the people who needed it...
The Chagossians were left in dire poverty with little resources or positive support...
The Chagossians experienced sudden separation and relocation with little Cohesivness or Structure of a "Nation without a Home"...
The Chagossians were left with little direction or hope or meaning ...
The Chagossians fell prey to poverty, drugs, prostitution, hunger...

The Chagossians HAVE Hope, Family, Memories of an Island Home and a Desire to Return...

The British Government, upon making the land available for the US Naval Support Facility, gained the right to purchase submarine launched nuclear missiles from the US and it furthered its support for military security policy in the Indian Ocean Asian Region...

The American Government gained a location from which to watch over the Indian Ocean region during the Cold War and during the Post Cold War. A location to hold wartime and emergency supplies. A location for Nuclear Submarines to dock. A location to store nuclear weapons. A location to launch air strikes in South Asia... and apparantely a location to send "Rendition" flights...

The British Government, with the support of the American Government, continues to Fight the Chagossians' right to claim and take ownership of their Islands and their right to inhabit them as their once and rightful home... the place where their ancestors are buried and where many of them were born...

The British Government continues to Lose the fight in the courts on basis of LAW but continues to drag out the obstruction of their return...

The Chagossians are willing to allow the US Naval Support base to remain for a time while they take up their home around it...

(think of all the native Hawaiians being removed from the islands of Hawaii and not being allowed to return to any of them because of the naval Base at Pearl Harbor...)

(think of getting on a bus in Anapolis, Maryland to go to the store and not being allowed to return when you were finished shopping because the Navy needed to put a Base there to protect the Eastern Seaboard of the United States...)

(There is the concept of Eminent Domain, which already is a touchy subject for those affected or potentially affected, and then there is Criminal Removal and Neglect with a lack of equal Hearing and Proper Adjudication)

The Chagos Archapelago is a Biological Jewel in quickly fading Oceans ...

Who Gets to Be the Gate Keeper of that Jewel??? The Tower of London? or the Rightful owners of that Jewel?



United States Support Facility Diego Garcia Head Quarters Building... on the edge of 'Down Town'


Space Command (Facilities Not Shown)







The Footprint of Freedom - The Footprint of a People

In our march to secure our Freedom, what Freedoms have our 'Footprints' squashed, obscured, and obliterated under foot, out of sight, out of mind???


What are the Footprints of a People... Any people???
Is it a trail that proclaims: "We were Here! We did this, we did that! We were Here!"
"We had an Impact on this World! We left an Imprint!"
What is the Footprint of the Chagossians?
Is theirs a trail on the course white sands of a beach:
disappearing at the edge of the washing surf...?
Where did it go...?
Does it re-emerge somewhere further down, heading again for home...?

If our Humanity is to survive, the Chagossians have more footprints to leave in their sands.






Clown fish guarding its anemone Home; seen through the shimmering, lightbending surface of the Ocean Jewel...


... in the shallow waters of the Lagoon...


... on the shoulders of the Atoll...


... majesty soars...


... colors dance...


... in the Ocean, the vanishing Sharks... Desperate for our Help, Beyond our Fears...

Unceratin Fate...





Yours Truly taking GPS Readings at the Plantation... (note the stylish socks with sandals look!!! They wouldn't let me in the Galley without socks and I really needed to wear sandles. I started to like the look of it actually...)


Surveying the length and bredth of the Atoll...

Visit:
The UK Chagos Support Association
http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/

Justice for the Chagossians - People's Navy
http://www.peoplesnavy.com

Let Them Return!
http://www.letthemreturn.com/

[All photos by David Evans and 'undisclosed' marine biological dive team members]