China is rightly criticised for building islands for military purposes in the South China Sea while ignoring an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) brought by the Philippines. But what of the US in Diego Garcia?
With the cooperation of the UK, the US has occupied Diego Garcia and turned it into a vast military base in defiance of an ICJ advisory opinion and an overwhelming vote by the UN General Assembly.
I wonder if our media know where Diego Garcia is or can even spell its name! Let alone know anything about its history.
Diego Garcia is very significant because the US, with UK cooperation, has defied international rules and norms to build an enormous military base from which it is able to attack a wide arc of countries including Southern China.
Consider the following:
- Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands. Chagos is an archipelago scattered across the middle of the Indian Ocean. It was the last British possession in Africa.
- In 1965 it was excised by the British from Mauritius and renamed the ‘British Indian Ocean Territory’.
- Between 1968 and 2003 the entire population of about 2000 people was rounded up by the UK and forcibly removed from BOT to Mauritius, Seychelles and Britain.
- One of the islands, Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago was leased in 1966 by Britain to the US for 50 years with a 20-year extension option, despite the island being claimed by Mauritius.
- The US has built an enormous airforce and naval base on Diego Garcia. It became fully operational in 1968 and now has over 5,000 US service personnel and contractors. It was used as a base for attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a key US military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Amongst other things, it is used for bomber training missions over the South China Sea. It was used for rendition flights.
- In 2017 the UN General Assembly voted by a large majority(94-15) to refer the request for an advisory opinion on Diego Garcia to the International Court if Justice.
- In September 2018, 13 of the 14 judges of the ICJ concluded that the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia were illegally separated from Mauritius.
- In May 2019 the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly(116-6) to endorse the Court’s opinion that the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia, belonged to Mauritius. Apart from the US and the UK only four countries AUSTRALIA, Hungary, Israel and the Maldives voted in favour of the British neo-colonial claim.
- In November 2019, Britain refused to abide by the ICJ opinion and for the US to leave Chagos/Diego Garcia.
- This year, the UN published a map showing Chagos/Diego Garcia as part of Mauritius.
Despite all this, the US sits tight on its key military base of Diego Garcia which is thousands of kilometres from its mainland. In contrast, China’s building of islands in the South China Sea is adjacent to its own territory. China is ringed by enormous US bases particularly in Japan and South Korea.
Presumably, the US will stay on Diego Garcia until 2036 when the lease, granted illegally by the UK, expires.
Our mainstream media reminds us incessantly of China’s action in the South China Sea. But is scarcely publishes a word about the serious breach of international rules and norms by the UK and the US in Diego Garcia and elsewhere. As always, our media and the government is drawn along in the US slipstream.
The dishonest and dangerous anti-China paranoia in Australian mainstream media is revealed time and time again. It may be just ignorance and laziness rather than prejudice.
We saw an example of this by Phillip Coorey in the AFR on Wednesday this week. He said ‘…the concern is that China does not adhere to the rules based order’. He should know better. The US, China and Australia abide by the ‘rules based order’ when it suits as I outlined above. Even more importantly think of the illegal war that the US, with our support, waged against Iraq with disastrous consequences for millions of people.
For more details concerning Diego Garcia see the two following links:
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/23/britains-colonial-legacy-on-trial-at-the-hague/
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
9 responses to “The US blatantly ignores international laws and rules in Diego Garcia (Repost 3 July 2020)”
The idea of the NWO, every version, is that the USA enforces commonly agreed rules. JFK might have been up to this, but the owners of the USA etc have decided to plunder the world first.
Urbanification in India will kill millions and has already quite a score.
It seems that enrichment means weirder scarcities and greater threats are needed to control us all.
All the while, the cosmological clock is ticking …
Generosity can kill the recipients, but meanness shows something of the occupier?
During a carefree youth mucking around in boats I enjoyed a few days on a yacht at anchor in the middle of the Diego Garcia lagoon, watching the Yanks at work. That was 1975 and major construction work was in progress in the industrious hands of the US Navy’s Seabees outfit. I’m not sure if the base was fully operational in 1968 but otherwise John has it right. All the same, I’m glad they are there.
China is weaponising some of the island, shoals or reef it claims or has reclaimed. And on the face of it, it makes itself liable for criticism in the process. But as Kishore Mahbubani has pointed out, Xi Jinping offered to not weaponise the bits of reclaimed land if the the US stopped weaponising the surrounding waters. This the US rejected. This is a tit for tat equation in which the ‘tat’ is emphasised and the ‘tit’ completely ignored. Also it is a common strategy used by the US and its allies to provoke an ‘enemy’, hide the provocation, and then focus on the reaction and treat it as a casus belli.
We used to say:
“Britain rules the waves, and waives the rules.” Yes good old British imperialism and colonialism.
Now the USA rules the waves everywhere, and waives the rules to suit its own agenda whenever and wherever it likes. Another country’s sovereignty means nothing to the US, they’ll invade where they like, and fire drones and missiles into anyone’s country that suits their purposes. Using the CIA they’ll manipulate any country’s politics. Often many innocent civilians are killed/murdered, but hey, that’s just collateral damage.
Australia is like a child following daddy’s orders, does not rule the waves, but waives the rules when either of the two daddies above tell it to do so. It always has.
The hypocrisy is clear, but its a case of ‘do what I say, not what I do’, from any the three amigo countries. They don’t care in the least about being hypocrites. They’ll laugh at anyone over that. And the US has always considered itself “exceptional”, just look up American exceptionalism, it gives them a ‘god given right’ to do anything.
The US leads the charge over the South China Sea, yet ironically the US is not even a signatory to UNCLOS – it has just decided to be UNCLOS’ policeman. Funny how that happens when they also have a China containment policy, to cut its economic growth.
Since American imperialism started during the era of Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt (Theodore) and Taft, there is nothing but a long history of political manipulation around the world accompanied by the theft of land and resources. Annexing Hawaii is also a very good example. They just moved in and took the place.
In Australia the press avoids telling us about the huge concentration of threatening US bases on China’s doorstep, and the constant US driven war games being played out in the region. Given the huge importance of the South China Sea to China’s ship trade and fishing industry, and the fact that everybody wants the oil it contains including India, it seems perfectly obvious why they built the sand islands. Defence. And why should they listen to the US if it is not even a signatory to UNCLOS?
We feel uncomfortable because China wants to start a fishing industry on Daru Island in Papua New Guinea (in conjunction with the government of Papua New Guinea), around 200 kms from the tip of crocodile infested Cape York. But it is 2,260 kms from the major city of Brisbane, and 1,154kms from Darwin. US air and naval bases in Japan and South Korea are only 500 -600 kms from many major Chinese coastal cities and even Beijing.
They carry out war games in the region regularly. If China did this to the US in close proximity there would be all hell to pay.
The hypocrisy of the US is even more exacerbated given that they have delivered 19 years of wrath in Afghanistan and created an illegal disaster in Iraq, yet when 100 times the amount of people die from coronavirus, compared to those who died in September 11, the most incompetent president in American history faces no justice while he pardons some of the most corrupt or human rights violating people on Earth.
waives, not waves?
Thanks for correcting
Although I agree with the sentiments, I am not the author. It should be credited to John Menadue.
A footnote to this excellent piece: China occupies the same features in the SCS today as it has occupied since 1987, when the other littoral states, at American urging, began a land grab–in which China was the last claimant with the fewest claims.