The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy

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However, it got bogged down in minute details that distracted me from really caring about the Chagossian people. L’ultima colonia, tradotto da Elisa Banfi, ha un nucleo centrale rappresentato da una serie di conferenze tenute da Sands all’Accademia Internazionale di Diritto dell’Aja, e una parte “personale” affidata alla storia di Liseby Elysé. E’ un libro più specialistico di La strada verso est, che tradisce le sue origini didattiche, pur avendo una notevole piacevolezza di scrittura. Ma è anche un libro che invita a riflettere su alcuni temi di rilievo internazionale, anche se apparentemente a noi lontani: vedi la cosiddetta “eccezione inglese” che ha permesso al Regno Unito, in piena era di decolonizzazione, di dare nel 1968 l’indipendenza alle Mauritius, ma di tenersi le Chagos con un’operazione di “distacco illecito” dalle Mauritius- e addirittura di svuotarle per concederle agli americani, che da cui avrebbero in seguito lanciato l’attacco all’Iraq.

There is a but. “The climate change issue is very worrisome indeed, there I don’t know what the law is going to do. The law is dependent on political will, if the political will is not there, the law can’t deliver.” The judges faced a landmark decision: Would they rule that Britain illegally detached Chagos from Mauritius? Would Liseby Elyse sway the judges and open the door, allowing her and her fellow Chagossians to return home—or would they remain exiled forever?The thing is, living in post-Brexit Britain, this new status quo on the international stage isn't being reported widely. I feel quite suffocated by the gas-lighting that goes on in the media and as each year of the new Brexit dawn winds on, the angrier I feel. They removed my freedom of movement - the option to leave this awful country is made much harder, and the feeling of brotherhood with those nations across the water has been slashed. We are on our own.

o Strategic Island concept applied to Diego Garcia at Washington request. Jan 1965 Americans wanted the entire archipelago to be detached Overall its an okay book that makes you ponder some of the questions, just wish that there had been more of a human side to the story, then just one ladies. This is more the history of the World Court in the Hague and other international law bodies, than a single case study. But structuring it around the, eventually triumphant case of the Chagos Islands lets Sands write a story with a heartwarming ending, which makes it a bit easier to take. Mr Jugnauth re-iterated Mauritius’s strong commitment to the continuation of the US military base at Diego Garcia, and the return of the displaced Mauritians to Peros Banhos. Mauritius was willing to negotiate a treaty with the Americans, and if the British wanted a role they could have one. The last photo in the book is of Liseby Elysé sitting on the trunk of a palm tree that leaned horizontally over a patch of sandy beach on Île du Coin. Like Sands, I remember seeing her there, bouncing gently. Whether from clear-eyed memory or the ache of nostalgia, the Chagossians often speak of the archipelago as a lost Eden. The sight of Elysé sitting on a tree trunk seemed to capture a moment from her long-ago youth, before the expulsion.First, she recalled, the British shut down the islands’ plantations and cut off food supplies to the remembered paradise of her childhood. The hundreds of Chagossian families were told that they had no option but to leave by ship by 27 April 1973 or slowly starve. “We were like animals in that slave ship,” she remembered of her 20-year-old self. “People were dying of sadness.” Elysé was four months pregnant. Her child was subsequently stillborn.

o Joe Biden “rings hollow”( 149.) in his criticism of Russia in Ukraine/ China in South China Seas, with regard to the Chagos ruling. There are several ways to tell this story, but Sands, who represented Mauritius in international tribunals in its attempts to recover the Chagos, uses the lens of international law. He starts with his key witness in the final case at The Hague just a few years ago: If this version of Britain’s postwar imperial history is unfamiliar to us, it is in part because of the dishonesty with which the UK separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius in the 1960s. The plans for a military base at Diego Garcia were carried out by the UK and the US with the utmost secrecy, bypassing domestic legislative oversight, while withholding their intentions from the Mauritian leaders – with whom Britain was in the process of negotiating Mauritius’s independence. Despite her short tenure as UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss set about following up on the cause of the Chagossians. James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary is making certain pronouncements on the Chagos Islands, and some changes to the existing status quo between Mauritius and Britain appear to be underway, and ongoing.

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The book is a great read into the functioning of the UN courts and how they go about hearing cases.

Maybe I feel particularly strongly because I’m Scots, with the history of the Clearances, Highland and Lowland, of the suppression of Gaelic and Scots languages The cynical sale (lease) of this distant archipelago by UK government to USA for a military outpost required uninhabited islands- so those who lived there had to go! By fair means or foul… Eighty-nine nations voted in favour of Resolution 1514, none voted against and nine abstained, including Britain, France, the US and Australia. The British delegate said it could accept self-determination as a principle, but not a “legal right”, and said nothing about territorial integrity. Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for:The Last Colony shares the elements that shaped East West Street: a personal angle and a discussion of international law, here revolving around a particular case. The personal dominates the book in two ways. First, the author uses the voice of Liseby Elysé, born on the Chagossian island of Peros Banhos in 1953 and compulsorily resettled two decades later, to provide an emotional, perhaps sentimental, dimension to the narrative. Second, the author’s own perspective runs through the book – there is quite a lot of ‘I did this’ and ‘I did that’, which I can understand (occasionally having written this way myself), but some might find it a little irritating. The use of firsthand accounts of the Chagossians in this book brings their suffering to life and breaks up the legalistic nature of the rest of the text. When I listened to the voice of Liseby, brought brilliantly to life by the narration of Adjoa Andoh, it was easy to see why her testimony moved the ICJ to rule in the Chagossians' favour. I think this book is perfect to consume in audio format for this reason, and because Philippe makes the legal parts of the book easy to digest.