The U.S. forcibly deported an entire indigenous population to build a military base

Evidence

While the U.S. military was welcoming the families of American soldiers to overseas bases in the decades after World War II, it had very different plans for another group of families living on a small atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean. In the late 1950s, Navy officials began developing a plan to build a new U.S. base on the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago. During talks with their British counterparts, Pentagon and State Department negotiators insisted that the Chagos islands come under their “exclusive control (without local inhabitants).” … This tiny parenthetical phrase amounted to an expulsion order. Between 1968 and 1973, the two governments forcibly removed Diego Garcia’s entire indigenous population, deporting them to the western Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles, twelve hundred miles from their homeland. … The exiled Chagossians received no resettlement assistance. Decades after their expulsion, they generally remain the poorest of the poor in Mauritius and the Seychelles, struggling to survive in places that outsiders know as exotic tourist and honeymoon destinations. The U.S. military, having claimed the Chagossians’ former home, has nicknamed Diego Garcia “the Footprint of Freedom.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 160

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘Footprint of Freedom’ nickname given to a base built on a deported population is a dark, irony-laden detail that could anchor a piece on how military naming and PR gloss over displacement.
• QUESTION: Whether the deported Chagossians received any later compensation or return attempts is worth chasing for context on the scale of the harm.