A FEW MAN FRIDAYS
Public Debate 1
03/03/2012
Riverside Studios, London, UK

PANEL: 
Adrian Jackson (Writer & Director of A Few Man Fridays/Chair)
Sabrina Jean (Chagos Refugees Group UK)
Roch Evenor (Chagos Support Association)
Mark Spalding (University of Cambridge)
David Simon (Royal Holloway College)

Adrian Jackson: …for this important event. My name’s Adrian Jackson. I wrote and directed the play that some of you have just seen and some of you have seen before. And we wanted to have – I mean obviously the play brings up a number of important issues – and we wanted to have the chance to debate these outside the format of the drama, and we are fortunate to have a number of very distinguished speakers. This week we’re talking about the issue of the MPA – the Marine Protection Area – which is highlighted towards the end of the play and which I’m sure many of you are already up with. Next week we’re having a similar debate to talk about the broader issue of sovereignty of the Chagos Islands and the future. Yes, that’s better, thank you. That’s a bit more civilised. Then we can see you. 

So we’re on a fairly tight deadline here. We have Sylvia – where is Sylvia? – we have Sylvia there, who is available to interpret directly to/from English speaking Chagossians and we do expect a small group to appear but they haven’t yet appeared and when they walk in we’ll just direct them over to Sylvia. I suppose that’s all I have to say really. I’m going to be a strict timekeeper and try to make sure you have time to speak from the floor and ask any questions and make any statements which you wish to make, because I know that as well as the distinguished panel that we have here, we also have people in the audience who are very well informed on this subject. 

So first of all I was going to start by introducing the panel. We have Roch Evenor, who is here, who many of you will know is the Chair of the Chagos Support Association. We have Mark Spalding who is a Senior Marine Scientist at the University of Cambridge. We have Professor David Simon who does not, is nothing to do with Queen Mary University at all, as the programme says unfortunately. He is in fact from Royal Holloway College and he is Professor in Development Geography. And we have Sabrina Jean, who is the Chairperson of the Chagos Refugee UK Group. 

Okay. So without further ado, I was going to start with Roch, and what I wanted you to talk about, if you could, would be: what does the Marine Protection Area mean to Chagossians?

Roch Evenor: The way the MPA is written right now doesn’t mean anything for us because like the play portrayed, it will stop us from going back to live in Chagos and enjoy our way of life, I mean economically and financial, way of life. We are not against an environment – I mean ecology – keeping the ecological system in Chagos. What we are against is without the inhabitants. We had a meeting which was organised by Professor David Simon in Royal Holloway in 2009/2010, February, when we had a big snow. It took me two hours to get from London to Royal Holloway and we came out with another option and that option would have been endorsed by Chagossians whereby there would be people living on the island and limited within the twelve EEZ zone there will be some form of conservations, which we all agree, but outside that, we are going to have the fishing, the people… There will be sustainable fishing which we agreed is something to move forward that gives the … it give us, if tomorrow the government says we go back then it opens, the door is open, whereas what we have now is a closed door. And there’s a lot of bad publicity saying that Chagossians are against conservations. We Chagossians are not against conservation. We’ve conserved Chagos from back in the 1700s to 1960s-72. When the Americans took over the place was very pristine. We had over two thousand Chagossians living in Chagos at that time and everything was pristine. So I mean, like the play showed us, you know, that’s the way: we are always being pushed under the carpet. We are always being, I mean, scientist comes up with things that they half said it: half of us it is shown to the public, the other half, which is good for us, it is always hidden. That to us, what done before, it’s… I mean, the word sagren in the play, he says sad. It’s worse than sad. When Chagossians say sagren, it is worse than sad. I’m very emotional when it comes to talk about the Chagossians’ plight. Let me repeat myself again. We are not against any form of conservations but the way it is written into the MPA, we disagree —

Adrian Jackson: Maybe I’m making too much – maybe we’re making too much of an assumption about the level of familiarity people have with the Marine Protection Area, but as it’s currently constituted, my understanding is it’s a complete no-take zone which would mean that there would be no fishing there at all, whoever was there – 

Roch Evenor: Not only fishing – sorry to cut you – not only fishing but nobody is allowed to put their feet on the island to live, and the MPA covers all that – land and sea —

David Simon: Except for Diego Garcia, which is left out.

Adrian Jackson: Yes, let’s try and get these mics closer. I’ve got a loud voice. We tried quite hard to get some representation from some of the groups which have been most instrumental in setting up the MPA – notably Greenpeace and the Chagos Conservation Trust and Pew. Unfortunately we were unable to persuade anybody from any of those groups to speak so the panel is slightly skewed, probably, in favour of people who can see a way for both the MPA to exist and the Chagossians to possibly return. Mark, would you like to take us forward a bit on that? For one thing, is it as pristine as everybody, as we’re told it is? Is it this perfect reef?

Mark Spalding: It’s a pretty amazing reef but, you know, it was kind of disconcerting to hear – well, it’s a fantastic play but very disconcerting to hear almost words that I could have been speaking myself at various conferences being spoken by the marine biologist in the play…

Adrian Jackson: I might have heard you [inaudible]. Sorry…

Mark Spalding: You might have, yes. No, I mean coral reefs, they’re nature’s treasure-houses really, fantastic places and incredibly important. But they’re in a pretty dire state around the planet, you know. That’s been well known for many years. So when you go to somewhere like Chagos, you see a place that really is still in great condition. It’s not pristine. We have a technical definition of pristine. Chagos has been impacted by humans – there’s illegal fishing going on even today – but it’s in very good shape and it’s a huge area of reef and there are very few places like that anywhere else in the world where you’ve got a large area of healthy reef, so it’s extremely important, yeah. 
It might be worth just saying a few things about the kind of potted recent history. So knowing this place exists and that it is incredibly important, just wearing my marine scientist’s hat, clearly conservation is something I would love to see advanced, but as Roch has just said, it’s also something that the Chagossians support. Conservation isn’t something that they don’t want, so there’s no sort of fight there. I was involved – I’ve been there, very lucky, three times doing field research and I was involved in writing the first conservation management plan, campaigning with the Chagos Conservation Trust to set up the Ramsar site and some small marine reserve, so it was no surprise when some discussions started about making the whole place into a marine reserve. And there was a debate that was a small closed workshop that was hosted in Southampton, which you mention, to discuss this. And as far as I knew with no direct government involvement – I think I was wrong. I was invited to speak at that and I responded by saying ‘I would like to but show me the guest list’ and I saw the guest list and there was no Chagossians and no Mauritians on the guest list and I said ‘okay, but, you know, if you’re going to talk about the future of Chagos, you’ve got to bring in the stakeholders, the people who have a vested interest who may at some point have ownership or go back’. And they refused, at which point I pulled out of that workshop, and there became this sort of split, really, in what was seen to be needed. So there was a very powerful lobby of environmental groups, of science groups, who were saying ‘MPA, MPA (sorry, Marine Protected Area). We need this’. And there was a very much smaller group, really, who was saying ‘great idea, but actually, if you want an MPA and you want one that’s going to last, with the changes that everyone’s talking about, you’ve got to engage the key stakeholders’. There’s nothing wrong with having the Chagossians at the table to discuss what the MPA should be like. You can take the status quo which at the moment seems to be keeping the Chagossians out, but you — [Video skips]…lobby environmental and science organisations. 

Adrian Jackson: I’d like to come back to the question of who are the power brokers here in a moment but maybe it’s nice to pick up and ask Sabrina to talk about Chagossians and the attitude to the environment. I mean Mark’s saying that there’s no essential clash there: Chagossians and the environment could live together. Tell us something about that, culturally or historically, how things have been?

Sabrina Jean: Yes, like Roch said, we are not with the MPA. We Chagossians, we are not with the Marine Protected Area because when they have done it, they didn’t consult us. That’s the things why we are not with the MPA. But you told me about the life, when we came here in the UK, life is the same like we have been in Mauritius. Here also we got the injustice about… some of us have language problem. Housing is very, very expensive. Some who didn’t get good English language, English skills, can’t have a job. We need to fight and fight again here in the UK. 

Adrian Jackson: How did Chagossians live with the environment in the past, as you’ve heard?

Sabrina Jean: Yes, in the past the Chagossians lived in the environment on the island. They take care of everything. I don’t know why now they said ‘Chagossians can’t do it’. That’s our question every time: why? 

Adrian Jackson: You say you’re not part of it and you’ve rejected it. Have you been able to engage in any kind of dialogue with those people? Roch is smiling there.
 
Sabrina Jean: No. I’m with Roch too. I’m with Roch too. We are not with the MPA. Every time where we go, when we speak for MPA, we said we will not participate in it. 

Roch Evenor: Let me add…

Adrian Jackson: Please do.

Roch Evenor: Let me add something. I mean, I used to attend a lot of meetings with the Chagos Conservation Trust. They used to invite me. And one day they told me to talk – that was 2010, I was the Secretary of the UK Chagos Support Association – and when I talked, I was talking about what I’ve just said: we can live with the… people can within the environment in Chagos, together with the environment and everything. And from that day onwards, my name is never mentioned by anybody from CCT and I think I’m even barred. And sometimes I meet some of the scientists in meetings and when I try to talk to them, some of them either turn their back or… you see, that’s the kind of mentality that the so-called people of intelligence treat people like us, thinking we are little, like they say ‘ti dimunn’, small people, so we don’t have intelligence, therefore keep them, like I said before, under the carpet, and try to cover them with as much rubbish as possible so that nobody sees them. I mean, this is frustrating. We’re trying to work with those people. In the meeting at the Royal Holloway I pre-empt by saying that the government was going to create an MPA without Chagossians’ support, because the year before, before President Bush left the White House, he did the same thing with the Mariana MPA in the Pacific. The same thing, five minutes before he left office, he just signed an MPA for the Mariana, and the same thing happened in 2010, Mr Miliband did the same thing, so I pre-empted that in the meeting and it came a reality. 

Adrian Jackson: David, can I bring you in here? So you’re one of these ‘intelligent people’. So are there two kinds of scientist here? Tell us your take on the MPA and what’s happened here.

David Simon: Well, I’d like, in a sense, to broaden this out a little bit by way of answering your question. I think the key message coming across from everybody is that nobody from whatever perspective within the scientific community or the NGO community or the Chagossians, as we’ve already heard very powerfully from Roch and Sabrina this evening, is against the idea of environmental conservation in the Chagos Archipelago. But in order for conservation to be sustainable in the long term, it has to take account of and work with the people who inhabit those areas. Now why do I say that? Well, having grown up in apartheid South Africa, as I did, the history of environmental conservation in that part of the continent and right through east Africa was one predicated on the forced removal of the indigenous people from areas that were declared game reserves, wilderness areas or national parks. And invariably, as I saw myself growing up and frequenting some of those places, this was a recipe for conflict between the conservation authorities and the people who had thus been forcibly removed and who were generally dumped, to some extent or other, on the perimeter. And effectively they would, by whatever means, cut through the border fences, get in there to harvest reeds or bulrushes for thatching, other roots, fruit, poaching – as the conservation authorities would see it – the wildlife to subsist on. But of course from their perspective, these were the natural resources to which they had traditionally access and from which, by virtue of this formal conservation instrumentation being imposed from above, they had been excluded without consultation. And I remember very clearly at one point in the late 1960s reading a report in the newspaper about what was beginning to happen on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago, where the people were to be forcibly removed in a way that reminded me very much of what was going on at the time around me in South Africa, to make way for what was to become the largest overseas US military base in the world, and that is really the long-term history. 

So people were excluded, as the play demonstrates very powerfully, and there is, again, as we’ve heard, as we will continue to hear, this contestation over whether the Chagossian communities will, again, have the right to return to the islands restored to them. This point about the ‘pristine’ environment may be true to a very large extent on most of the northern and other atolls but categorically is not the case in Diego Garcia. It is a large military base. Several million cubic metres of coral were bulldozed – were dynamited – for the construction of that base. Of course, there are a couple of strict nature reserves on parts of Diego Garcia beyond the base. There is undoubtedly considerable effort expended to avoid the kinds of marine pollution and other forms of environmental contamination which are often associated with human settlements on coral atolls and tropical islands, but it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be termed ‘pristine’. And that is the largest and where the largest resident population was, and also where some of the traditional biodiversity was greatest. We also know, of course, that through two hundred years of settlement, plant species – not just the ones that were farmed, like coconuts were brought in from outside – some of these are now rampant because there is nobody there to control them. So we have a mixture of exotic and indigenous, in different combination, different places. So I think it’s very important to step back from this notion of somehow an island untouched by population, to admit that perhaps biodiversity is slightly greater today than it might have been had people been living there continuously on all the islands and atolls for the last forty years, but it isn’t somewhere untouched by human hands. It is not somewhere that is untouched by the coral bleachings that we’ve had periodically around the world with the sunspot cycles, with changes in the climate and the environment. 

And really, the conservation future of this archipelago to which everybody that I know subscribes, cannot be divorced from the future aspiration, or indeed the present aspirations of the Chagossian communities wherever they are – in the UK, in Mauritius, in the Seychelles, in small groups in Switzerland and elsewhere – wishing to have the right to return restored. If there is to be enhanced conservation through scientific monitoring, through a resident population of people that will be required on these scientific stations, and indeed even on Diego Garcia – why can the Chagossians not be part of that? The people on the bases are American servicemen. They are, in effect, contract workers largely from the Philippines. Why from the other side of the world? Why not from the communities who have been evicted forcibly from that? 

And periodically we hear that the reason to maintain an entire archipelago free of people is for security reasons. Well, apart from Diego Garcia, the nearest islands are a hundred kilometres or more away. If the same logic was applied to US military bases in Germany or indeed in the UK – and remember we had lots of protests here in Greenham Common and elsewhere over the last twenty or thirty years – if we had to have a hundred plus kilometre cordon sanitaire around every military or naval base in this country, sixty million Britons would have to be forcibly relocated because there is nowhere on these islands that is more than a hundred kilometres from any naval base, so I think we need a slightly different and more critical perspective.

Adrian Jackson: So that’s a specious defence. I wanted to ask about that before we open it up to the floor a bit because I feel I cut Mark off or caught him off guard. Is it your belief, Mark, that actually the Chagossian community would enhance – which is what David seems to be saying – could actually enhance that conservation effort by effectively becoming kind of guardians of the area, or would that require specialist training. What is the presence of human beings likely to mean?

Mark Spalding: It could mean many different things. I mean, to me, to be perfectly honest, quite often reefs and people don’t go all that well together. People do damage reefs and we see a lot of the destruction of the world’s coral reefs is linked to people. On the other hand, people benefit from reefs. Two hundred and seventy five million people live within very easy reach of reefs, and are getting food from reefs [Video skips]… Chagos is not fully pristine. Apart from the military base – and we can kind of think of many options for Chagossians going back to Diego Garcia, it’s crazy to say that they can’t go back when there’s three or four thousand people living there. The other islands, well, picture Chagos is a vast area of reefs and a handful of tiny islands. Now, it would be pretty hard for those people to impact that much coral reef. So I think to be brutally honest, if people did go back they would have some local impacts, but that is totally sustainable, that’s fine, that’s easily manageable. And they could have some very positive impacts. They could be the policemen on the ground that are needed to stop the poaching which is going on despite the presence of military vessels and patrols and so on. They could be patrolling the yachts. People could stop them breaking the rules. They could be collecting income from the yachtspeople. So there are many scenarios in which Chagossians could go back and have a minimal, low impact, and actually have many benefits as well.

Adrian Jackson: The last point from Roch or Sabrina before we open it up to the floor. When you’re thinking about return, what would Chagossians do in relation to the MPA? There have been some conversations about high-end tourism, some conversations about business and so on. Is there a clear idea about how Chagossians might enhance – if they decided to – might want to enhance that idea of the environment?

Roch Evenor: If Chagossians return, I mean, everything has to be very well managed, be it on the type of tourism that we want, I mean, what I foresee mostly would be ecotourism, people coming for the ecology. Anything that we do, because nowadays there are a lot of – how do you call that? – environmentally friendly ways of building houses, of recycling the waste and everything, which are very ecologically friendly and green. I mean, let me point to one particular island in the Seychelles which is the Desroches, which was mentioned recently when the Costa ship was supposed to go and visit. In there, there’s a five star hotel and it’s so, I mean, ecologically and green friendly, managed by the Seychelles government. I think if the technology is out there now, then everything that we do will have minimal impact anyway. I don’t know if Sabrina has got something to say. 

Sabrina Jean: No, it’s okay Roch.

David Simon: Can I make one more point. It might just help before we get to the discussion to put a few more figures on this. The extent of the area that is currently technically called the Environment Protection and Preservation Zone under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, runs to about 544 thousand square kilometres and when, in April 2010, the MPA was declared, its boundaries were declared to be exactly coterminous with that of the EPPZ. But there is another problem, and this is crucial: that Mauritius has also declared an exclusive economic zone, as indeed have the Maldives, and it won’t perhaps surprise you to know that all three of these zones actually overlap in one or more areas, and ultimately this still remains to be resolved through the arbitration and negotiation facilities attached to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. So really, until that has been done, no one of those three countries can actually technically enforce the MPA or the EPPZ in the way that the respective proclamations have intended, and this is a real problem. And indeed, what has happened since the MPA was declared by the UK, in order to give it concrete effect, the fishing licences that had been issued on an ongoing basis for many years, and which had been utilised mainly by fleets from Mauritius – not exclusively, some from Sri Lanka and elsewhere – these were allowed to expire in November 2010, so at the moment, there is indeed no commercial fishing within the MPA and that, in that sense, is helping undoubtedly with the conservation of the stocks of fish that had been caught. The difficulties, though, are firstly, that that revenue was put towards the cost of a single marine patrol vessel covering this vast area. And although a Swiss foundation has put up some money to replace that, and obviously that is helpful, the key problem is even before 2010 and this proclamation, there was ongoing poaching by vessels from various places, different pelagic species, demersal species and crucially also the so-called sea cucumber, a holothurian species on the sea bed, and this undoubtedly is still continuing. There is also ongoing fishing by people associated with the base on Diego Garcia, with people on various leisure crafts, the yachts that get permits to anchor off the northern atolls. So again, at the moment there is still pressure on the various marine species. It is not pristine and one might argue that with people on the islands or patrolling inland area or inner waters close to them, there might actually be greater ability to deter some of that poaching.

Adrian Jackson: Good, thanks for that, all of you. So let’s open it to the floor. Would anybody like to ask a question or make a statement? It would be nice if you could introduce yourself and if you’re representing an organisation, say that. By the way, we are recording this whole event. Yeah, Bashir, Bashir Khan.

Bashir Khan: Hi, Bashir Khan from Chagos Refugees Group from the UK. I have been kind of … kept fully aware of right from the very beginning but my own, I would like to, (inaudible) we have to make sure that the public who perhaps have very little knowledge of the issue we are talking about, that an MPA was created in the Chagos Archipelago but it applies only to the outer islands, excluding the Diego Garcia island itself. So, you see, whenever politicians who normally come up with a very noble cause to defend, you simply take it with a bit of salt if not downright cynical. How could it be that you want to protect an area, you then say ‘okay, it will apply to the outer islands but it will not apply to Diego Garcia’? Cynically, I was thinking ‘good lord, are they going to…’ When they talk about protecting stock, fish, I think there was some species of tuna that were being presented as ‘this is going to be depleted if we don’t do the protection’… So how the fish, the tuna, is going to think ‘alright don’t go near Diego Garcia because it’s going to get caught there – remain in the outer islands’. So automatically we knew. As far as I’m concerned, I got three signals that there was something very suspicious about the government attempt. One was, none of the stakeholders – the Chagossians – were consulted, were taken on board, like Mark quite rightly said. The second thing is when you see so much powerful lobbying, as the Pew Foundation, out of nowhere getting involved and trying to influence this decision, you should become very suspicious. Thirdly, the WikiLeak information that we have now has only confirmed that it was nothing to do with conservation issues. And that’s why it breaks my heart because I am also a scientific conservationist in my own way and I found that many of the scientists – I’m glad that Mark has kind of picked that up right from the very beginning and his position now is very clear – but when you hear about all the other conservationists, scientists, who have been taken for a ride really. That is something that we have to bear in mind.   

Adrian Jackson: Thanks very much Bashir. Yes, the gentleman behind. Could you hear, by the way? I’m sorry we don’t have a roving mic. We require you to speak loudly. The gentleman there with the glasses. Second row.

Charles Leader: Yes, I’ll speak loudly. Yes, my name’s Charles Leader. Although I’m currently across at the [inaudible] Centre, I spent sixteen years in Africa on development issues. 

[Camera makes loud mechanical noises]

Adrian Jackson: It’s not terribly loud.

Charles Leader: I’ll do my best. I hope you don’t mind if I use your first name, Roch. 

Roch Evenor: Yeah, no problem. 

Charles Leader: But something that I’ve written here is you said if the Chagossians return instead of maybe when the Chagossians return, but my comment would be: looking back at some of the things I’ve seen in Rwanda, when I spent time in Rwanda with the mountain gorillas, where the war just literally decimated them from six hundred to two hundred, or looking at the situation in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands where I needed a special visa for India and then another visa just to go onto the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, would, when you return, not if you return, when you return, would you consider – and also thinking about the Fiji Islands where there was a coup d’etat and the Maldives and different islands, it seems island people are in the news quite often for various reasons… But looking at all this context, when you return, would you put in the constitution something that would make it very clear that protecting the environment is fundamental to just being Chagossians, just being on those islands? And would you make it more difficult, instead of simpler, for non-environmentally friendly tourists to arrive in the Chagossian islands?

Adrian Jackson: Can I just gather a couple more questions and then we could deal with that. The gentleman behind, I think… Iain, was it?

Iain Orr: Okay, mine is partly in a way a contribution as well as a question. The contribution, I suppose, is my background is that I spent a career in the Foreign Office and in my very last job I was in, I set up the only biodiversity team that the Foreign Office had and I was responsible for coordinating, negotiating, a series of environment charters between the UK Government and all – well all but two, Gibraltar and British Antarctic Territory – but all the other Territories signed up to environment charters that were signed in September 2001. Now, what is very clear is that the way in which the MPA was, you know, introduced, simply failed to follow principles to which both the British Government and the Government of the British Indian Ocean Territory had, you know, committed themselves. There is an overall guiding principle in that environment charter which says that… you know, which says to seek expert advice and consult openly with interested parties on decisions affecting the environment. And, in terms of the commitment of the British Indian Ocean Territory, there is a commitment: commit to open and consultative decision-making of developments and plans which may affect the environment, ensure that Environmental Impact Assessments include consultation with stakeholders. I find it quite impossible to see how Chagossians cannot be considered – or were not considered – by the British government in drawing up the MPA to be stakeholders. They very clearly are. That’s the bit of information. 
My question is one about biodiversity and that is that the people who we nearly always hear from are the marine scientists. In terms of its pristine nature, I think some attention should be given to the land environment. It may be that the islands are very small indeed but typically, if you don’t have introduced species and rats and so on, a lot of islands would be much richer in bird life than some of the islands of Chagos are. There’s a huge number – as somebody mentioned – there’s a huge number of introduced plant species which are not particularly friendly to seabirds that would have used them, and of course there are rats on a number of islands, and, if you like, the environmental restoration work which undoubtedly needs to be done on the terrestrial work is one that would be immensely helped, I think, by the continuing presence of a resident population.

Adrian Jackson: Thanks very much Iain. So, Roch or Sabrina, would you consider putting something in the constitution about the idea about environmental responsibilities?

Roch Evenor: The gentleman said: I used the word ‘if’ rather than ‘when’. I use the word ‘if’ for the simple reason that we have a Prime Minister and a Deputy Prime Minister of this country. Before becoming leaders of this government, they gave their undertaking that they will look at the Chagossians’ plight and at least come with the solutions. They are coming to two years in government and nothing – nothing – is done. We are always being told ‘oh, the case is in court. We cannot discuss about the case’. For god’s sake, take the case out of the court and let us discuss. They can do that and they’re not doing that. Secondly, we Chagossians, we’ve said that, before we move onto the Chagossians, when we are going there, we are going to consult all Chagossians irrespective of where they are, to ask them what, how, they would like to see the Chagos from henceforth. Therefore it is going to be very difficult for me to answer your questions right now. But me, as Roch, what I will say – because I’ve seen a model being used in the Seychelles whereby you have tourism in Seychelles, you are not allowed to come with your tent or your caravan there. You have to book a flight, book hotels. So. And then secondly, you’re not allowed to building anything higher than the tallest coconut tree. So I think this kind of model may be used on Chagos in the future. But to answer your questions, for me, it’s very difficult to answer that because we have to consult the Chagossians first of what we want to do when we are going back. Thank you.

Sabrina Jean: I can answer this question. We Chagossians, we said, before when we were living on the Chagos islands, we preserve the environment. Why now we can’t preserve it? That’s all the Chagossians said: we can do it. 

Adrian Jackson [to Mark Spalding]: Questions about human populations on land and with rats done, because I know there was an expedition to one of these islands recently, wasn’t there, which spent three months getting rid of the rats there? 

Mark Spalding: It failed. 

Adrian Jackson: It failed?

Mark Spalding: Unfortunately. Yeah, perhaps it’s worth just giving me a minute to describe the Chagos. I guess most people here have not been and probably not many people have been. 

Adrian Jackson [to audience]: Who’s been to the Chagos here? Hands up in the room who’s been to the Chagos. One, two, three. This is larger than the average audience. Six of us have been to the Chagos. Lucky you.

Mark Spalding: So fifty tiny islands aside from Diego Garcia, which is an extraordinary place, all now overgrown. I mean amazing, stunningly beautiful.

Sabrina Jean [to Mark Spalding]: How many islands did you say?

Mark Spalding [to Sabrina Jean]: Just over fifty…about fifty two or something.

Sabrina Jean: We’ve got sixty five islands. 

[Laughter]

Mark Spalding: Okay, right, I’m sorry. 

Audience member 1: I was told fifty five by someone right behind me. 

Sabrina Jean: Sixty five.

Mark Spalding: A lot of small islands. 

Adrian Jackson: Between fifty and seventy islands.

Mark Spalding: Very beautiful islands. But as you go into these islands – most of them – the islands where people lived, it’s very sad to see they’ve obviously gone now to wilderness. The coconut plantations have gone wild, the houses – parts of them are still there but most of them are now gone – there are some of the ruins – the old manager’s house on Ile du Coin, I think, still has the writing on the wall of the last Chagossians who painted their urgent despairing messages before they were shipped off in these ships. It’s incredibly moving. The graveyards with the graves all tilted over and so on. But those are islands that were very much shaped by people. People lived there and they lived there, yes in harmony with the environment, but they did change. They’re not the original islands but they’re very special, beautiful places. Then there are a handful of islands where people never lived, where there are no introduced species and they are, in a different way, fantastic. So you can’t walk across them because of the density of nesting seabirds. If you walk across them you’ll kill seabirds every step. Heaving with life. So, of course the environmentalists get excited, particularly about some of those islands, and as you’ve just pointed out, there’s money in there to try and restore some of the other islands. And who better to do some of that work than a resident population? There’s no money to be made out of growing coconuts anymore but there is money to be made out of trying to maintain and restore the environment and I think that’s a very important suggestion. 

Adrian Jackson: And David, a response to the third question, was about the influences of all these processes. I wonder if you could speak at all about them? 

[Audio-visual recording skips]

David Simon: …models or different models for different parts of the archipelago. There can be royalties from hotels or from other activities – not least the naval base. There should actually be royalties from the US for use of Diego Garcia as a base which could provide a massive source of income both for resettling Chagossians on a sustainable base and indeed to ensure appropriate conservation and patrolling of the existing Protected Areas on whatever legal basis. Employment is provided in hotels in conservation jobs. Not everybody who is forcibly removed from game reserves and national parks in other parts of the world clamours to go back. There is negotiation, agreements are reached that some go in as rangers, as conservation authorities, to maintain or improve infrastructure; others live on the royalties, they sit on boards and have a decision-making role. And this is the sort of thing that really could and should resolve the conflict. We hear about sea level rise and the argument was put forward for a long time ‘well, these islands are going to disappear as the mean sea level of the Indian Ocean rises’. Well in fact the most recent scientific paper published just within the last two or three months suggests that in that part of the Indian Ocean, this is not an immediate or even a medium-term problem. So it is just an artificial conflict and the problem is it distracts everybody, including the Chagossians, from the real challenge of trying to find a way forward that addresses their human rights, their needs and aspirations, as well as the aspirations of the conservation and scientific communities. These should not be in conflict. That is an artificial construct. 

Adrian Jackson: Thanks very much. Gentleman at the back there, red hat.

Audience member 2: Um, yep, Joseph [inaudible]. There seems to be – I don’t know – a trend certainly when hearing scientists and politicians talk about the environment, that it excludes people. People are not apart from the environment; we are part of it. The Chagossians have been living on the island for I don’t know how many years, and they seem to have been living in harmony with their environment which is how it was able to be sustained. There seems to be one view that the way in which we in the West live is the way in which all people should live and against that all things should be measured. So with that in mind I can see that there could be a threat to the environment as it stands. But different civilisations evolved in different places for different reasons, depending on the people who lived there and the environment in which they lived because our way of life is shaped by our environment unless we choose to shape it. So I’m a little upset, I suppose, at this one track of thought on both the part of our scientists and our politicians, and I’m wondering if there is some way in which we could think outside of the box. Could you respond to that, please, the scientists?

Adrian Jackson: Could we have a few more questions if we may because we’ve got limited time. Is that Hengride there? 
Hengride Permal: Yes.

Adrian Jackson: Hengride, please. 

Hengride Permal: Hi. My name is Hengride Permal. I think some of you here know me. I am the Chairperson of Chagos Island Community Association, CICA, and we are based in Crawley. And further to what this gentleman just said, this is like a comment too because I have been to the islands myself with a few of my people here and I have seen also like there are people living there. There are the marines and Filipinos and different people. So that’s why I don’t understand like why can’t we, the Chagossian people, live there and be part of that? Here like we said okay the Marine Protected Area is okay but there are so many countries where they have a Marine Protected Area where they have also people live there on the island. It’s not, people are not excluded. And I found that a little bit funny too, because they said ‘okay, the Marine Protected Area will be for the two outer islands and not Diego Garcia’ and why not Diego Garcia? Before we won the case in court they said ‘yeah, okay, the Chagossian people can go and live in the outer islands but not Diego Garcia because of the military base’ and then now they turn it around ‘oh, okay, the Chagossians will not be able to go in the outer islands because of the Marine Protected Area’. But there will be people in Diego Garcia that can live there but not Chagossians. So they are making it like a game with us, and we the Chagossian people, we are very tired of that now. So suddenly we can go in the outer islands and now we cannot. So it’s like, you know, the Government are taking the Chagossian people for granted, like in the play we saw you say the, we say the ‘ti dimunn’ and the ‘gran dimunn’. So for them we are the ‘ti dimunn’. So nothing can be done to us because they think that maybe we the Chagossian people, we are stupid or something. But they have to realise that the Chagossian people, they are having like three generations has been living on this island which is very important. So there was human beings there on this island. And we the people, we have children that are grown ups that are educated, yeah. When they took the island from our native people, they put their thumbprints and said ‘okay, yeah, you sign the paper’. But now they cannot do that to us because we are not stupid and we, the Chagossian people, we are very aware of what is going on. We are very intelligent also. Our native people here, they might be illiterate in the past but not anymore. So they should really, I think the government, what they are doing, it’s really an injustice what they are doing to us. And we the Chagossian people, like we say in the play, we will not stop until the fat lady sing. So we will keep going until we get what we want because it’s really important that this government… like they are changing government from government, okay the next one say ‘okay, when I come in power, yes, I will protect you, I will do what you want’ and then when they come in power, nothing is being done to the Chagossian people, to help us. So what we the Chagossian people, we are saying enough is enough. So thank you Adrian for doing this play because lots of people around the world doesn’t know about this problem, about our struggle. Yeah, some people know but not everybody. Even when I went to the Chagos Islands, most of the military people, they didn’t even know the history what was, why are they there, you know, if there was people living there before. They didn’t know anything about our history. So it’s very important, you know, to bring awareness, you know, to people, so that they know that this big injustice that has been done and something need to be done for sure, in the near future. Like the gentleman say earlier: it’s when we are going back and we will go.

[Applause]

Adrian Jackson: Thank you. One last point – or two – from the floor and then we should find a way of rounding up. The lady here, please.

Laura Snoxell: My name’s Laura Snoxell. I’m representing my father David Snoxell. He’d like to be here but he’s ill tonight. And he’s helping to steer the Chagos All Party Parliamentary Group. And my question is: I understand that your case is before the European Court of Human Rights and Justice, and if you win, what will be the consequences? What will the British government be forced to do? I suppose it’s a question to all of you, really. 

Roch Evenor: Let me answer this. We had a meeting with the Secretary of State, I mean, Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary of State, last year and the same question was put to him. For the first question we ask him why don’t he take the case out of court and have an out of court settlement, which he says no because he wants to use that case as a ‘test case’; that’s his word.  Secondly, we say what will happen if we win, or… win the case? Because his bureaucrats were on him so he thought for two minutes and he answered by saying that we’ll wait for six months and after six months we’ll start to negotiate. So that’s the British Government view. Like Hengride just says, we always been taken as stupid people who doesn’t have a mind to think for themselves. I mean, we win, why it take six months to negotiate with us? Because he’s saying lose or win, he will negotiate. But if we win we have the upper hand, therefore maybe it will take more than six months to negotiate. 

Adrian Jackson: Tell us something about the possible outcome if you win. My understanding is there is general optimism, well there’s some degree of optimism, I believe, that you will win that case. What would the next step be in your long struggle?

Sabrina Jean: For me, if we win, we go straight away. Like they take us out, we can go straight away. When we arrive on the land, they will need to see where they will put us. 

Adrian Jackson: Okay, that’s direct action, clear. Now Mark, back to making…

Roch Evenor: Yeah, say one more thing: last… we had a meeting last year with the BIOT people, the B-I-O-T, who is the one in charge of the island right now and I asked them one question: I said ‘now that we have all the Chagossians around, why don’t they start a kind of a workshop where we train, not train but at least sensitise the population –‘  [Video skips] ….to other countries – India, for example, who is one of the powerhouses economically. Why can’t some of those monies be channelled to the Chagossians whereby setting a kind of training on…or sensitisations on how to, I mean, let me be blunt: how to behave when they go back, because they were thinking that we’re going to destroy the environment that we preserved before they even came there. Thank you.

Adrian Jackson: Mark, what happens from the scientific community if there’s a victory? How do you… You’ve got almost, it seems to me, a separate campaign within the scientific community which is about, sort of, getting people to be a little bit more accommodating to the idea of human rights, which you two guys seem to represent the sort of extreme wing of, as it were. What do you do? What do you do? How do you pursue that?

Mark Spalding: So one of my big concerns has been, from the start, that by creating this completely false dichotomy between – you know, we all want the same thing – we’ve actually created alienation where we should have been working together. So one of my arguments against, actually, other conservationists has been: even if you don’t give a damn about Chagossians, you shouldn’t be doing this because what may happen – and it would be totally understandable – would be that whoever takes power will want complete rid of the MPA which is crazy because it needs – it’s not crazy, it makes sense – but it would have been so much better if we’d have something in place that would have lasted the transition; not the MPA we’ve got but something not a hundred miles different. There’s enough reef there that you can protect it and use it and so that would be… that’s my concern is that what will happen next is whoever, if someone does move into that environment, they’re not going to turn to the Chagos Conservation Trust for advice, they’re going to kick them up the ass because it’s just crazy what those guys have done. 

And I want to respond just briefly to one of the comments about there seems to be this split between environmentalism and human rights, and actually that’s not true. I mean the conservation world generally has moved way beyond that. That’s the old model that David was talking about. The new model is completely about involving stakeholders, having them engaged, having them take part and lead conservation. So what’s going on here, and it fascinates me, is very old colonial conservation. And actually the play presents it really well. There’s a scientist running the show. Well, he’s a scientist. He knows about corals or fish or whatever it might be. He does not understand, he’s out of his depth in thinking about all the issues, okay, and maybe, you know, the scientist represents a very broad group of people. 

Adrian Jackson: But in the play, he abdicates responsibility. He says ‘it’s not my job as a scientist to have any thought about anything else...’

Mark Spalding: Yep, and you will find that written in multiple things but actually this is where I start to feel that the science itself is falling apart. A cardinal rule of good science is you foster debate so if… at the frontline of science we don’t know facts, we have ideas which become hypotheses, theories and so on. So we get to the truth from a complex dialogue. Okay, someone says something, someone says something else and you work it out. Well, we’ve just heard about the issue of sea level rise. So the Chagos Conservation Trust, which seems to be pulling a lot of the shots here, has said ‘sea level is rising really fast in Chagos’. But there’s a new paper out which says ‘no it’s not; in fact it’s rising less fast in Chagos than anywhere else’. Now that is kind of against the story of keeping Chagossians out because it gives more time for adaptation. So the Chagos Conservation Trust will not publicise the other paper. They’ll only publicise the one that tells their message. There’s another story going on about the historical – how many Chagossians were there? They’re putting out one story, they’re not putting out the other. There’s another story about how wonderful the military base is, it has so few impacts on the environment. Well, come on. You can’t have nuclear vessels and blasting the channels and maintaining the lagoon and registered oil spills not have an impact on the environment. So they’re only telling part of the story and they’re misleading us. That bothers me a lot.

Adrian Jackson: There is somebody from the Chagos Conservation Trust here but they may be off duty.

Audience member 3: He’s keeping quiet. 

Adrian Jackson: He’s keeping quiet.

Audience member 4: Well, I can hear him.

Adrian Jackson: We can’t tempt you to comment on…

Simon Hughes (Chagos Conservation Trust): I’ll just say about science: it does move on. When CCT had a fact sheet about sea level was many years ago. The latest scientific paper about local mean sea level rise, which is technically different from sea level, is not disagreed with. We do not disagree with it —

Mark Spalding: But it’s not publicised. Every effort that’s been made to get you to put it on your website or to do your factsheet—

Simon Hughes: It is in the bibliography where all the other papers are!

Adrian Jackson: The bibliography?

Simon Hughes: On our website we have a bibliography of all things to do with Chagos. It’s there for anybody to look at. 

Mark Spalding: And the sea level rise factsheet is still there telling a different story. 

Simon Hughes: The sea level rise factsheet is still there with a date on it, and when you read scientific papers it’s most important, especially with regard to sea level, which has been considered only in detail in the last decade…

Mark Spalding: No my point is that science is about a debate and if one only presents one half — 

Simon Hughes: Well here is a debate. We said it a long time ago. Science now accepts the latest paper, which is new news. 

Mark Spalding: Excellent. On record.

Simon Hughes: But it’s not against the paper.

Adrian Jackson: But it’s great to have that contribution to the debate because as you know, we tried to get contributions from the Conservation Trust and from Pew and others. We are—

Simon Hughes: No, that’s one scientist and another scientist over time. They’re both probably right at the time.

Adrian Jackson: Okay. We’re on the home straight now and we have to be quite strict because as those of you who have seen the show know, there’s a massive turnaround to do in a short time and probably we’re at the end of our, nearing the end of our time anyway. So if people have short last points to make then I’d encourage brevity and then ask our panel for roundup. 

Audience member 5: I’ve got a very brief question for Dr Spalding and Professor Simon: when you’ve spoken to colleagues of yours who have taken the opposing position to yours, because you talk about this very stark polarisation of opinion, how do they rationalise their position to you, when you discuss this with colleagues of yours in the community?

David Simon: Well in a sense you’ve just heard the snippet of it, perhaps, represented in that last exchange. But there are still many people who believe that the, as it were, global ecological environmental value of Chagos, as it currently is, reflects the absence of habitation. The problem is that Diego Garcia tends to get airbrushed out of that and is the largest and is also the only currently inhabited island and that rather does give the lie to the rest, which doesn’t, of course, reduce in any way, as Mark indicated earlier, the conservation value of many of the other islands. But it’s just very difficult to understand when, around the world, the conservation ethos and many examples of good practice represent very different solutions to very similar problems, why – and with much larger populations and equally very often environmentally sensitive areas with the exceptional biodiversity and the risk of damage to that – why some people simply try to pretend that the Chagossians don’t exist as a community and simply say ‘well, at the moment…’ – and this is how it is currently very often stated – ‘they don’t currently have the right to return therefore we’re planning on the base of what is and if that right is restored then we’ll reassess’. And I think both Mark and I are on the record on more than one occasion saying ‘well, hang on a sec. Wouldn’t it be sensible to plan that in right now and then not have to go back to the negotiating board through the Convention on the Law of the Sea or the administrations of MPAs, or any such conservation authorities? Start from now. There are going to have to be people staffing scientific research stations, marine patrols. Let them be the Chagossians. Let them be the instruments of the conservation of that biodiversity and the control of the exotic vegetation that has not been controlled, with one or two very small exceptions, for the last forty years. Conserve the cultural heritage, which is as important in many ways, particularly to them, as the natural heritage. It’s just a completely artificial, you know, and unnecessarily conflictual mindset. 

And all I would say by way of conclusion, and then you cannot come back to me later, is I think we are actually at a very important historical crossroads. One is we’ve heard from Roch already, the case currently before the European Court of Human Rights is due to be resolved during this year. And secondly, the base’s agreement, in terms of which the US has the use of Diego Garcia, was a fifty year agreement, which expires in 2016. Therefore we are right at the threshold of probably a once-off opportunity within all of our lifetimes to renegotiate the basis of that. Now there are people, of course, that say there should be no base, we want a nuclear-free Indian Ocean, and those are other debates. But even in terms of whether that base is still required for security, and let us assume for simplicity that the answer from both the US and the British governments is yes, neither of those positions negates the need to renegotiate the terms of that agreement, in terms of which, as I said a bit earlier, there could be a lease fee, royalties paid, which would provide the resources to do all the things that we’ve been talking about and put small donations, or the historic proceeds of fishing licenses, into the shade. We can be talking tens of millions here, which would resolve the financial equation and enable all the things that we all seem to want – or most of us seem to want – to happen, including the aspirations of the Chagossians who wish to return. And maybe not all of them do.

Adrian Jackson: Okay. I’m afraid I need to ask our panel to round off. I’m terribly sorry. 

Audience member 2: I just wanted to clarify: I wasn’t talking about environmentalism versus human rights. What I was saying is that people are part of the environment, that’s what I was…

[Mark Spalding nods and signals acceptance of point].

Adrian Jackson: You made your point very clearly. 

Bashir Khan: Just one last sentence. 

Adrian Jackson: This is going to be a short sentence Bashir. 

Bashir Khan: Yes, a caution to Roch. Be careful about this six month close, because you remember last time Act did an Order in Council which you [inaudible]. Just be careful.

Adrian Jackson: Okay. So can I ask the panellists – everyone except David – [Laughter] to make a slightly shorter end statement. Sabrina, would you like to say something? How would you like to end, briefly?

Sabrina Jean: I would like to thank everybody here who has come to see the show and also to listen to us. Thank you very much. 

Adrian Jackson: Thank you very much.

[Applause]

Adrian Jackson: I’d actually like to end with you, Roch, as a matter of principle, to end with a Chagossian would be good. So Mark, can I ask you to…?

Mark Spalding: It’s a brilliant play, Adrian, very, very moving and quite shockingly real, various bits of it.

Roch Evenor: Here, here. [Claps]

Mark Spalding: I heard my own words in the marine biologist but there’s… I would love more people to see it somewhere because… and I think it’s a wonderful record of an incredibly complex story and I think the discussion here has been part of that too. I think we’ve… it is complex, there’s no easy way out but there is lots of potential futures for Chagos and we should be thinking about them all. 

[Applause]

Roch Evenor: Anyway thank you Adrian for, I mean, for doing your small bit towards the Chagossians, to put the Chagossians on the map. And what really touched me, I mean, today was standing up by the bar, seeing the audience coming out, some of you wiping your eyes. This is only a snapshot of our life, of things we went through. I mean at least I know you’ve read a lot about Chagossians, about how we came here, how we went out, but by seeing it maybe not in pictures but live, this puts back flesh into all those what you’ve read. And secondly, our aim is to return to Chagos and we will return to Chagos; not this year, not next year, but we will return to Chagos. And when we do return, we will keep Chagos as it is now, I mean, as ecologically friendly, because we want not to keep it for ourselves but we want to keep it for our children and grandchildren and generations to come. Therefore we are not against conservations. Let me say it once again. And I thank you everybody for giving us your support. And please go out, like Jesus said, go and preach it out to the others to make them come and see the show before it finishes on the tenth. Thank you.

[Applause]

Adrian Jackson: To reiterate most of that: thank you all so much for coming. I think it’s been a very interesting debate and I’ve found it an encouraging debate, actually, after the run up to the debate was slightly less encouraging because of the number of people who seemed unwilling to engage in this really, really important debate, combining these issues which are both in their own right important and together, doubly important. Please do – an unashamed plug – send people to the show. We’re only on for another week and I have my doubts as to whether this play will surface again unless it really gets a lot of audiences. Please also can I encourage you to use Google to discover the Chagos Refugee Group in this country, and all the other different Chagossian support groups that there are here. And finally, can I ask you to give a very big hand to a very distinguished and entertaining panel.

[Applause]

-END OF TRANSCRIPT-