Chagos Archipelago

Chagos Archipelago (Military base, Black site)
Locations	Indian Ocean
Subpage(s)	•Chagos Archipelago/Depopulation
US & UK operated black site in the Indian Ocean. Plays a mysterious role in vanishing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The Chagos Archipelago is in a remote but strategically very useful location in the Indian Ocean. It has been exposed as black site operated by MI6 and the CIA. Its role in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is denied by most authorities, although much evidence points to it playing some role.

British Indian Ocean Territory

Full article: Chagos Archipelago/Depopulation

The islands were administered with Mauritius as part of the British Empire. When granted independence, the Mauritian was "frightened" into accepting continued UK control of the islands amid an indication that other wise it would not be given independence. The UK paid the self-governing colony of Mauritius £3m for the islands.

Denis Greenhill's 1966 cable

The islands were were cleared of inhabitants by the UK from 1965 onwards to prevent interruptions to military operations when the US established a military base. Britain formally has sovereignty, and keep a handful of military personnel there to maintain this fiction.

US military base

Diego Garcia is a large Navy and Air Force base and a central node in U.S. military efforts to control the Greater Middle East and its oil and natural gas supplies, and the Indian Ocean. No journalist has gotten more than a glimpse of Diego Garcia, one of the most secretive military bases in the world, in more than 30 years. And yet, it has played a key role in waging the Gulf War, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, and the bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. the island is also used for operations off the Horn of Africa and to pressure Iran and even China.

After the 1991 Iraq war, the military began transforming the island into one of a handful of major "forward operating bases" as part of a shift of U.S. forces eastward away from European bases. The dream for many in the military became the ability to strike any location on the planet from Barksdale Air Base in Louisiana, Guam in the Pacific, or Diego Garcia.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

Flight MH370: 'Most probably the plane was shot down'

Full article: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

A December 23, 2014 article from the New Zealand Herald and France24 reported that Marc Dugain, the former chief executive of now defunct Proteus Airlines had a new theory regarding the plane; It was shot down. after being hacked around Diego Garcia. His claims were met with a lot of scepticism. Malaysian President Mahathir Mohamad was visible spooked when discovering - after pushing for questioning how a plane in 2010s could disappear with satellites hovering above the entire world - the media globally refused to investigate or start questioning Boeing (who have a remote autopilot patented since the 2000s for their newest planes) or the CIA (who work with British intelligence agency MI6 at Diego Garcia).

Extraordinary Rendition

The US used the Chagos Islands for "extraordinary rendition".

The Guardian reported that "the publication last week of a long-awaited US Senate intelligence report has raised fresh questions about what the UK knew about the CIA’s torture programme – and in particular the role played by an obscure overseas British territory. Al-Jazeera reported earlier in the year that the committee had seen evidence that Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean, had been used for extraordinary rendition “with the full cooperation” of the UK. But when the heavily redacted report was published, it made no mention of Diego Garcia, raising questions about whether references to it had been removed at the request of the UK."

UK Policy

A UK Foreign Office memo of 1980 recommended to then Foreign Secretary that “no journalists should be allowed to visit Diego Garcia” and that visits by MPs be kept to a minimum to keep out those “who deliberately stir up unwelcome questions”. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague was reported by The Guardian to be pressured by an alliance of former detainees, an abducted military officer from the 2011 Attacks on Libya and NGOs to confess Diego Garcia, be running a MI6 black site.

In 2000, UK foreign secretary Robin Cook resisted pressure from the US and promised the displaced citizens of the Chagos Islands the right to return to the Outer Chagos Islands. His successor Jack Straw reneged on this promise.

2019 ICJ ruling

The ICJ ruled that the UK should hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius "as rapidly as possible" and that continued UK occupation of the remote archipelago is illegal. The General Assembly reaffirmed this decision by a vote of 116 in favour, to 6 against (Australia, Hungary, Israel, Maldives, UK and the US). The UK ignored the ruling, prompting the prime minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, to exploring the possibility of bringing charges of crimes against humanity against individual British officials to the ICC.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Boeing	“Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over ‘uninterruptible control’ of commercial airliners of which MH370 B777 is one. Someone is hiding something, it is not fair that… Malaysia should take the blame. For some reason, the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA"”	Mahathir Mohamad	2014
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	“This report makes no attempt or claim to prove that the large low flying jet plane seen over Kudahuvadhoo that fateful early morning was MH 370. It merely sets the record straight that the jet plane that overflew Kudahuvadhoo has not yet been identified. The Maldives government first claimed there was "no plane", then the plane was a "private jet", then fifteen months later a "domestic propeller plane flight", then back to "no plane", then finally to say it cannot be discussed due to "national security".”	Blaine Gibson	2016
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	“Clearly Boeing and certain agencies have the capacity to take over ‘uninterruptible control’ of commercial airliners of which MH370 B777 is one. Someone is hiding something, it is not fair that… Malaysia should take the blame. For some reason, the media will not print anything that involves Boeing or the CIA"”	Mahathir Mohamad	2014
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	“My own view is that probably control was taken of that aeroplane, the events that happened during the course of its tracked flight will be anybody's guess of who did what and when. I think we need to know who was on this aeroplane in the detail that obviously some people do know, we need to know what was in the hold of the aeroplane, in the detail we need to know, in a transparent manner.”	Tim Clark	November 2014
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370/Blaine Alan Gibson's research	“This report makes no attempt or claim to prove that the large low flying jet plane seen over Kudahuvadhoo that fateful early morning was MH 370. It merely sets the record straight that the jet plane that overflew Kudahuvadhoo has not yet been identified. The Maldives government first claimed there was "no plane", then the plane was a "private jet", then fifteen months later a "domestic propeller plane flight", then back to "no plane", then finally to say it cannot be discussed due to "national security".”	Blaine Gibson	2016

 

Event Witnessed

Event	Location(s)	Description
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370	South China Sea Indian Ocean	A commercial airliner which went missing. Reported to be seen flying towards black site, Diego Garcia. The prime-minister of Malaysia became visibly concerned that Boeing and the CIA were covering up something.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Depopulation of the Chagos Islands 1965-73	book extract	12 February 2007	Mark Curtis
Document:Falklands and Chagos - A Tale of Two Islands	essay	21 March 2012	Peter	The UK official narrative of the Falklands War is that its primary objective was to free a plucky island people from subjugation by Argentina. This article compares their treatment with that of a similar sized settled, British-protected population, on a similarly remote island archepelago, a decade earlier.
Document:The World War on Democracy	article	19 January 2012	John Pilger	An illustration of the true nature of 'Globalisation' by recounting the story of the Chagos Islanders and their Machiavellian abuse at the hands of the UK government.

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