Indian Ocean islanders won a key legal battle Wednesday in their long campaign to return to their homes, from where they were evicted more than 30 years ago to make way for a US air base. The Court of Appeal backed a High Court ruling in May last year that allowed families to return to the Chagos Islands archipelago, except for Diego Garcia, a launchpad for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The British government, whose tactics to prevent their return were denounced by the court Wednesday as unlawful and an abuse of power, was expected to seek a final challenge at the highest court in the land, the House of Lords.
Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian community in exile, said he hoped the government would respect the ruling, which is the third in favour of his people in the last seven years. "It is a special day for justice because even though we are a small people we have shown big people that we have rights," he said. "It is time for them to put an end to this story."
Britain expelled some 2,000 people from the Chagos Islands, 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of the Maldives, to Mauritius and the Seychelles in the 1960s and 1970s. This allowed it to lease the main island, Diego Garcia, to Washington for 50 years. Lawyers for the Chagossians, most of whom worked on coconut plantations, had argued in court that, although they cannot live on Diego Garcia, they should be allowed to return to the other 64 islands of the archipelago.
The Chagossians thought they had won the right to return after a High Court victory in 2000. But the government used a royal prerogative in 2004 to introduce a so-called Order in Council which continued the islanders' state of exile.
High Court judges last May ruled that the use of an Order in Council, effectively acting by decree in the queen's name, was a "repugnant" way to "exile a whole population".
One of the three judges rejecting the subsequent appeal by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, Lord Justice Stephen John Sedley, said the government's resorting to the royal prerogative was unlawful and an abuse of power. Lord Justice George Mark Waller said the decision had been taken by a government minister "acting without any constraint." Richard Gifford, the lawyer for the islanders, hailed the Court of Appeal's decision.
"It has been held that the ties which bind a people to its homeland are so fundamental that no executive order can lawfully abrogate those rights," Gifford said in a speech outside the courts.
Rejecting British government efforts to delay implementation of the decision, the judges said the islanders were free to return home immediately. However, the islanders and their supporters who have been disappointed in the past worried about more delays. The court said Beckett will now have to show "good cause" if she wants the appeal judges to order a stay. The judges also refused to grant court permission for the government to take the case to the House of Lords.
However, the government can still appeal directly to the highest court within a month and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was studying such a move. "We are disappointed that our leave to appeal today's decision has been declined," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.