Asylum camp on a military island – UN refugee agency criticizes Great Britain

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Diego Garcia: military base and asylum camp

Photo: New / REUTERS

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has criticized the conditions in which a group of Tamils ​​have been living in a makeshift camp on the island of Diego Garcia since October 2021, the BBC reports.

Representatives of the refugee agency visited the island at the end of 2023.

It was the first time they had been granted access since the migrants arrived more than two years earlier.

In October 2021, a dilapidated fishing boat with engine problems was found off the island.

On board: 89 Tamils ​​who said they had fled Sri Lanka around 18 days earlier.

According to Diego Garcia, she was essentially blown away by the wind after her boat's engine failed.

Apparently they were on the sea route to Canada.

They asked for protection on Diego Garcia, called “British Indian Ocean Territory” (Biot) by the British: The island is the location of a US military base and a small British naval contingent and is hundreds of kilometers from the nearest inhabited town.

The remote island in the Indian Ocean actually belongs to Mauritius.

However, it has been occupied by Great Britain since 1965 - illegally, as the UN General Assembly ruled in 1965 and confirmed in Resolution 73/295 in 2019, as the International Court of Justice in The Hague decided in 2019 and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea two years later.

After giving Mauritius and the Seychelles independence in 1965, Great Britain expelled all residents of the so-called Chagos Archipelago by 1973.

The British leased the island of Diego Garcia to the USA as a long-term military base.

The fact that the original inhabitants of the island were no longer allowed to go there is rarely discussed: this makes the affair, which has been unfolding since 2021 due to the arrival of the refugees, all the more embarrassing for Great Britain.

People without shelter

They declared that they belonged to the Tamil ethnic group, whose bloody uprising against the Sinhalese population, which lasted more than twenty years, failed in 2009.

Tamils ​​have been and continue to be subjected to repression in Sri Lanka ever since.

Their resistance organization, the Tamil Tigers, continues to be listed as a terrorist organization by numerous states - both sides committed numerous human rights violations during the long civil war.

Some of the refugees said they were associated with the Tigers.

The initial treatment of the refugees at Diego Garcia was correspondingly robust: a camp was built out of makeshift tents and barbed wire was put around it.

Accusations of violence, in several cases of sexual harassment and generally inhumane group accommodation arose.

Especially since the first boat was followed by others.

At times the camp swelled to over 150 people.

The first protests by the internees took place in 2022.

Several hunger strikes, in which children are said to have been involved, suicide attempts and self-harm attracted international attention.

However, there was no international willingness to take in the refugees.

Because they demanded and demand acceptance in a neutral third country.

Over time, some gave up, and some people managed to travel on to other countries.

Others were taken to Rwanda where they received medical treatment after attempting suicide.

However, overall, reports the BBC, around 60 people still remained in the primitive camp.

And representatives of the UN refugee agency judge that this is “not a suitable place” for such long-term accommodation of people: “We call on the United Kingdom to make a fair and efficient decision on the pending lawsuits and to find solutions for those who need international protection, in accordance with international law.”

The well-being and safety of the people stranded on the island is the “top priority” of the Biot administration, it said in a response.

We are working “with third countries to take in those who cannot be safely returned to their country of origin.”

So far, however, with manageable success.

The application for international protection was approved for five people.

A country to which they could have been resettled has not yet been found.

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