Chagos Islanders win legal battle over return
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 11th May, 2006


Families exiled from the Chagos Islands decades ago by the British so the Americans could build a major airbase on Diego Garcia won a victory today in their British High Court battle for the right to return.

The families forced out of their Indian Ocean home in the mid-1960s and early 1970s overturned measures introduced by the British government under the royal prerogative to prevent their return.

Solicitor for the islanders Richard Gifford said: "The British government has been defeated in its attempt to abolish the right of abode of the islanders after first deporting them in secret 30 years ago."

Mr Gifford said two judges had ruled that the islanders were entitled to return to their "beautiful islands".

Lawyers for the islanders had argued in court that, although they cannot live on the main island of Diego Garcia, they should be allowed to return to other islands in the Chagos Archipelago, which is composed of 65 islands.

Leader of the Chagos Refugee Group Olivier Bancoult thought he had won the right to go home to the British colony after a High Court victory in 2000.

The court ruled then that a 1971 Immigration Ordinance banning people without permits from entering or remaining in the colony was unlawful.

But the government used the royal prerogative to introduce a fresh order in 2004 which continued his exile.

Last December, Mr Bancoult returned to court to argue the royal prerogative could not be used "to remove or exclude British citizens from the territory to which they belong".

Today he won a landmark second legal victory when the High Court ruled the government's action irrational and unlawful.

The judges said the order made under the royal prerogative preventing the islanders from returning was, on its face, concerned with the interests of the United Kingdom and United States but failed properly to take into account the interests of the island territory.

The Queens biggest fan in Australia, lil' Johnnie Howard, said he's not such a fan of Charles and won't support a constitutional monarchy once Ol Lizzie goes Kaput. His successor and the Labor 'opposition' aren't exactly the strongest supporters of constitutional monarchy, either.

Good riddance, really.

Don't austrailians have to pay thru taxes each year to support the British Monarch?? they appear to be a charity nowadays, a true line of inbreeds

Oi!

Nah, we only have to fork out the money when she and her kiddos come visit. Best that they never do, again.

No, they don't. And neither do you.

yes they do, my other half is an aussie citizen, and of course i dont have to pay for the british mongols as i'm Irish thank god

I'm pretty sure my dad read this headline in the papers twenty years before I was born.

Actually since the end of WW2 more like.

touchy subject for you royalists eh

??



I'm not sure I figure you. No-one gives a flying fuck about the monarchy (at least no-one that I know), yeah sure they're there, but to use a quote:



Saying that all us Brits are monarchists is like saying that all Irish are Sinn Fein supporters. Totally baseless...

its's totally different, i dont care either i'm just glad the brits had to give up some more land theat they stole of innocent people, thats all. i like to see the little guy win...

and i can say all the baseless stuff i want you just don't HAVE to read it

Fine, then from now on I shall ignore your inane, spurious Anti-British drivel. Being as much Irish as I am English, (actually I hold dual nationality, v handy) I can officially say that your ill-infomed comments are very irritating.

I've got dual nationality too, and I can also say it's very handy.

o darn

Oh, for the love of good fuck. Way to antagonise people. This "I'm Oirish and I'm so repressed by the evil, nasty British!" shit should be restricted to the shitty Holywood movies where it belongs.

The British Empire is crumbling?

Welcome to 1937.

The only film I have seen regarding the Brits AND the Irish was some shitty Tom Clancy thing, and then Sean
Bean played the part of an IRA operative and the British as being the victims of the Irish, so there's one counter example. Additionally Americans are generally down with the British and can only consider them evil when it comes to the events leading up to 1776 and continuing to 1812.

Nobody gives a fuck about Ireland, aside from the many drunken, seething, red-haired abortions that compose the potato-blighted lavatory that is Ireland. Nobody cares.

TROLL!