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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65777863
I could cut and paste any sentence from this tragic situation. Let me ‘clickbait’ you with this “All can agree that the Diego Garcia military base was not a place intended to house asylum seekers”
The phrase ‘hoisted by your own’ just isn’t enough…_
Contrary to the impression I may have delivered, this is not ‘breaking news’. I have to admit it is all ‘breaking news’ to me though. If anybody has anything else on this tragedy please post.
A bit more ‘click bait’ for you…_
DiggerUK, thanks for posting this. Yes, it’s news to me too. I’ll post here if I find out anything more.
I did some more ferreting around and came up with this Guardian article from October 2022.
Then it got worse, this from The Tamil Guardian, May 2022.
Then I find this Crowd Funding appeal which claims they have been there since October 2021. Excuse my sums, but that comes in at 20 months on my abacus.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/urgent-appeal-helping-sri-lankan-tamils-stranded/
As I can’t find anything from Pepe Escobar, John Pilger, Johnathan Cooke etc., or our host, I’m wondering if I’m reading all this right…_
More thoughts.
Which ministry is responsible?… Defence, Foreign, Home, Cabinet. Is it the Americans, or is this one for the UN…_Some of the Sri Lankans in limbo on the Chagos Islands did get legal aid granted by the UK Supreme Court on May 5th 2023.
As it was the day prior to the coronation of our unelected head of state it probably slipped under a lot of radars. The legal points are interesting in themselves.Makes me wonder if the refugees count as inhabitants of the Islands, meaning that the Islands cannot be classed as being uninhabited anymore…_
Sri Lankan asylum seekers stranded in Diego Garcia win right to legal aid – Leigh Day, 5 May 2023
Ten Sri-Lankan asylum seekers who landed on Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT) in October 2021 won their judicial review claim for granting of legal aid in the Supreme Court of the BIOT in a judgment handed down today.I’m sure there will be more to hear over the weekend. Daily Mail seems to be first out of the traps. What becomes of the refugees now I wonder…_
A BBC update. Do we even have a foreign affairs minister anymore? Oh yes, Lord Cameron…_
The command’s mission is “To provide logistic support to operational forces forward deployed to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf”
These islands are quite close to Iran.
I can’t think that the U.K. or the U.S.A. will let them go. Currently China is on the move, in this part of the World.“Maldives [ .. ]
Analysts view the victory as strong backing for Mr Muizzu’s policy to achieve close ties with China.Mr Muizzu, who is widely seen as pro-China, wants to reduce India’s longstanding influence in his country.
Local media have described the PNC’s win, which will be ratified in several days’ time, as a “super majority”. It has achieved the two-thirds in parliament that is required to amend the constitution.”
It is 3,300 miles from the Australian naval base near Perth to Diego Garcia.
It is 2,500 miles from Diego Garcia to the Strait of Hormuz.
As the U.S.A. and Australia and the United Kingdom have entered into AUKUS, there is no way this asset will be let go for the Chinese to gobble up.Maldives
the new political decision to send the Indian troops home has strained the Maldives ties with Delhi and Beijing has appeared keen to exploit that.Mr. Muizzu went on a state visit to Beijing in January and signed several agreements for investments.
In March Male signed a “military assistance” agreement with China!
I guess AUKUS is mainly about countering China in the Indo – Pacific – Arabian arena.
Grant Shapps Minister of Defence has been giving speech to The Royal Navy
He seemed to suggest more submarines for AUKUS, more apprenticeships for Naval Shipbuilding in Scotland.
More naval bases, probably shared with U.S.A. and Australia. Much more money and many more ships and some more navy personnel.
As Rishi said the U.K. is ramping Defence spending, especially for submarines.
No actual mention of the BIOTBut you can take it that the U.K. will not be giving up Diego Garcia anytime soon, nor will the U.K. be giving up The Falkland Islands anytime soon.
No, you could not make it up.
U.S.A. has dominance over U.K. colony.“The U.S.A. government has blocked a British court hearing from taking place on a British territory, citing security concerns, the BBC understands.
The supreme court of British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot) was due to hold a hearing this week, attended by the BBC, on whether a group of migrants was being unlawfully detained on the island of Diego Garcia.
The island hosts a secretive UK-US military base and access is heavily restricted.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxe2v2mdg7vo
Britain went on to evict its population of more than 1,000 people to make way for the military base.
The United Kingdom has announced it is giving up sovereignty of a remote but strategically important cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean after more than half a century.
The deal – reached after years of negotiations – will see the UK hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
I can’t believe the Americans are allowing the Labour government to do this?
It’s the U.S.A. base to bomb the Middle East/Iran.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98ynejg4l5oThe deal expressly permits the US base on Diego Garcia residence for the next 99 years and the UK airbase too.
BBC correspondent just reported that the US needs to keep its huge base at Diego Garcia *until at least the 22nd century* because of the “danger of the extension of Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean”.
As always, the American empire just vanishes from view.This is all very strange, I did not have any idea we would be dumping the BIOT
Mr. Muizzu went on a state visit to Beijing in January and signed several agreements for investments.
In March Male signed a “military assistance” agreement with China!
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), an archipelago of 58 islands covering some 640,000 sq km of ocean, is a British Overseas Territory. It is administered from London and is located approximately halfway between East Africa and Indonesia.
https://www.biot.gov.io/
Essentially, other than the military nobody lives in The BIOT.
If the Maldives are leaning towards China, why would the U.K. give the BIOT to the Maldives.
If we are retaining the military bases for the next centuary, and nobody else lives on any of these coral reefs, does this mean the Maldives will be settling the coral reefs?What do you make of this? The British Indian Ocean Territory has, or had, the internet top-level domain country code .io but in 1997 the British Government absent-mindedly let it pass to a certain Paul Kane. But Paul Kane isn’t just anyone:
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Kane_(entrepreneur)&oldid=1091673986
– “Paul Kane is chief executive of the British technology firm CommunityDNS[1] and from 2010 to 2017 was one of seven people entrusted with a credit card-like key to restart portions of the World Wide Web or internet which are secured with DNSSEC, after a catastrophic event such as a major security breach or terrorist attack.[1][2] If such a situation arises, five keyholders will travel to the United States to meet up and restart the DNSSEC system.[3]
– Kane runs ICB, registrars for the controversial .io ccTLD.[4] “
ICB is Internet Computer Bureau Limited, “an Internet top-level domain custodian based in the United Kingdom. The custodian is responsible for maintaining the .io, .sh, and .ac country code top-level domains”. So that’s Indian Ocean, Saint Helena and Ascension Island:
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_Computer_Bureau&oldid=1250330964
Dealings between Kane and Westminster were opaque from the start:
en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.io&oldid=1251515007#History
– “The .io domain was delegated by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to British entrepreneur Paul Kane in 1997 together with the ccTLDs .ac (Ascension Island), .sh (St Helena), and .tm (Turkmenistan). Kane operated them for private benefit under the trade name “Internet Computer Bureau” from 1997 until 2017.[3] In 2014, Kane claimed that “profits are distributed to the authorities for them to operate services as they see fit” and that “Each of the overseas territories has an account and the funds are deposited there because obviously the territories have expenses that they incur and it’s offsetting that.” However the UK government has repeatedly stated that this is untrue: “There is no agreement between the UK Government and ICB regarding the administration of the .io domain” and “the Government receives no revenues from the sales or administration of this domain.”[4][5] The first subdomain was registered under .IO in 1998, when Levi Strauss & Co. registered the domain levi.io.[6]”
Then in 2017 the .io domain looks to have become a hot potato due to some sort of security breach. ICB sold it for 70 million, and then it got passed from company to company for undisclosed sums. Now the Chagossians are asking what has happened to their domain:
– “In July 2021, the Chagos Refugees Group UK submitted a complaint to the Irish government against domain-name speculators Paul Kane and Afilias, seeking repatriation of the .IO (“Indian Ocean”) country-code top-level domain and payment of back royalties from the $7m/year in revenue generated by the domain.[14] While attempts to repatriate top-level domains are not uncommon, this one is notable in that it cites consumer and human rights violations of the OECD’s 2011 Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises rather than multistakeholder representation under ICANN policy, and because the .io domain has enjoyed commercial success, particularly among cryptocurrency companies, with more than 270,000 domains registered.[7][15][16]”
Priti Sushil Patel, new Shadow Foreign Secretary,
has been asking questions, in Parliament about The Chagos Islands.
She is against giving them away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sEKDrzSoCc
In the same clip, Nigel Farage, also asks about the Chagos Islands, he is also against giving them away.
It, also seems, Donald Trumps transition team, are very upset with Labour for attempting to give these islands away.Quote BBC
“Migrants stranded for more than three years on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia have been brought to the U.K.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy45d954yzo
They can stay for six months.Quote BBC
“Successive governments have previously said that bringing the Tamils to the UK would risk creating a “backdoor migration route”.But the government said on Monday that arrangements had been made to ensure this did not happen, citing a deal to send future arrivals to St Helena – another UK territory some 5,000 miles away.
“Once a sovereignty agreement with Mauritius is fully in place they would then take responsibility for any future migrants,” the spokesperson said.”
A far away problem.
I guess as the U.K. falls into economic decline, the new government need to divest themselves of liabilities, as quickly as possible.Mauritius
The deal to palm off The Chagos islands, is falling through.
Mauritius, is not sure the deal will be good for Mauritius.
I suspect someone from the incoming Trump team, has rang the new leader of Mauritius and explained to that person that if they want an economic future and reasonable relations with the Trump administration, they best think, very carefully, indeed, about taking this deal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy9441lrjzo
