The
UK’s hostile environment show a strategy which persecutes
passport-holding British citizens of colour. Having been forcibly
evicted from their own home, Chagos Islanders are being
systematically targeted in an attempt to get them to leave the UK. The community of Chagossians in Crawley, West Sussex,
have faced a lengthy campaign putting pressure on them to leave the
country, which has been corroborated by internal government emails.
“Marie”,
40, who moved to Crawley from the Seychelles eight years ago with her
infant son. When she approached the council for help with social
housing she said she was told they would only pay for plane tickets
to return to the Seychelles. “When the housing officer spoke to me
he was angry. He said he didn’t like the Chagossians coming to the
UK and asking for houses. He asked me why I came. I was asked if I
wanted a plane ticket to go back. I said no, I have nowhere to go.”
Chagossians living in the Seychelles and Mauritius say they are subject to xenophobia and denied education and employment opportunities.
The
local council offered to pay for flights to the Indian Ocean rather
than provide them with housing assistance in the UK, which is
potentially unlawful. Others allege that council officials
aggressively told British passport holders seeking housing assistance
that they should return to the Seychelles or Mauritius. One British
Chagossian described the approach of Crawley borough council as
“racist” and said many had been affected. The council appears to
have routinely categorised British Chagossians as “intentionally
homeless”, increasing the pressure for many to leave the country.
This, the council argues, is because they moved to the UK of their
own accord and should return to the Seychelles and Mauritius.
Satbir
Singh, chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants, said: “This is another shameful reminder that the
hostile
environment is regularly weaponised against people of colour, and
must be scrapped to ensure all Chagossians have a right to stay and a
scandal like this is never repeated.”
Clare
Collier, advocacy director for the human rights group Liberty, said:
“The apparent targeting of British Chagossians is deeply worrying,
potentially discriminatory, and symptomatic of the mission creep of
the government’s hostile environment.”
Chagossians living in the Seychelles and Mauritius say they are subject to xenophobia and denied education and employment opportunities.
Jonathan
D’Offay, 50, a British passport holder who was just four years old
when he was evicted from his home on the Chagos
Islands by the British military. His mother and siblings were
displaced to Mauritius while he was sent to the Seychelles with his
father, who later died. Last
year he moved to the UK with his wife, Lindy, and nine-year-old
daughter to make a fresh start. He settled in Crawley and after
finding a job applied for housing assistance from the council because
private rentals, with hefty deposits, were not affordable on his
salary.
“She
[the housing officer] was shouting ‘why don’t you go back to
Seychelles?’” said D’Offay. “She said you’re a British
passport holder, not a British citizen. I said that in the passport
it says I’m a British citizen. They just wanted to get rid of us.”
He
said he felt so ashamed that he considered leaving the UK. Now the
family lives in a caravan that gets extremely cold during the winter.
The
fact that they are prohibited by the UK from returning to their
homeland is not acknowledged during the housing application process,
several Chagossians have said.
A
British Chagossian in her 40s who gave her name as Maita, moved to
the UK five years ago with her two children and elderly mother. When
she asked the council for assistance with housing, she felt pressured
to leave the UK. “He [the housing officer] said, ‘why did you
come here?’ I told him the British government stole my mum’s
country,” she said. “He said, ‘why did you make yourself
intentionally homeless? Why don’t you go back?’ A lot of
Chagossians got this from people from the council. A lot.”
Bernadette
Dugasse, 62, who came to the UK from the Seychelles 10 years ago and
has repeatedly applied for council housing, said: “Some [housing
officers] are aggressive. They asked why I can’t go back. Every
time I mentioned we came from Diego Garcia, she said: ‘Excuse me,
do you think because you were born on Diego Garcia you were born with
a golden spoon in your hand?’”
Britain took control of the Chagos archipelago in 1814 and in 1965 separated the territory from Mauritius, which was a British colony until 1968. The UK then forcibly evicted Chagossians to Mauritius and the Seychelles to make way for a US military base. The UK has since apologised for the way the evictions were conducted. In February the International Court of Justice ruled that the UK’s sovereignty over the land should end “as rapidly as possible”. The United Nations recently voted for Britain to give up the islands.
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