Chagos islanders win posthumous reprieve
‘No link’ to U.S. base evacuation
In a landmark ruling, Britain has granted seven worldwide exemptions from its Universal Declaration of Inhuman Rights.
The decision, by the Supreme Ordering Council for Postparliamentary Affairs (SOCPA), allows subjects to visit the British Isles’ Overseas Territories (BIOTs) “for as long as they have air in their lungs.”
Because all the BIOTs are now underwater, conservationists had lobbied to restrict civilian intrusions. As a compromise, scientists studying the islands’ fragile corals will be allowed to lease a disused submarine from the nearby Ronald Reagan nuclear base.
BIOT natives, who left during the Western Pacific Clearances of the 1960s and 70s, will also be entitled to return, provided they pass a skin-diving means test.
“Our records show there may be as many as seven of these Man Fridays still living,” said Sir Hoffman Diego-Garcia, SOCPA’s International Expropriation Officer.
“If they can prove they have Crusoe-like resilience, they’re welcome to go back and fish.”
Indigenous residents were given British passports in return for retroactively renouncing their homeland to the Reagan docking station, which has since been downgraded to a holding cell.
During the intervening years, most natives died in foreign slums, which they failed to drag themselves out of, despite being ferried there without charge.
Licensed malcontents welcomed the new concessions, but a lone protester strayed unTasered into the SOCPA exclusion zone. Before being tagged, the banned historian Kurt Marcus was allowed to plant a placard bearing the BIOTs’ traditional name: the Chagos archipelago.
“Even now, Chagossians are unpeople,” he shouted, angrily. “Most are dead, their islands are buried, and paradise has been poisoned with depleted uranium.”
Officials denied the ruling was linked to last week’s evacuation of the Reagan base, which imported workers because of the absence of local staff, an inconvenience that still causes some regret.
“Of course mistakes were made,” said a statement carried by Miliband Press, the SOCPA speakwrite. “But it’s preposterous to say defence interests tell us what to do.”
In the interests of peace, order and good governance, the statement continued, SOCPA is widening its powers to reform by decree. “Every responsible post-colonialist needs the right to disabuse subjects, as needs dictate,” it said.
Q&A
The what islanders?
They’re British slaves, now freed to go home.
Do they want to?
Some did, before they died. Most couldn’t.
Why not?
They were biohazards.
Why are they here?
Some stayed until they died, as was their right.
So why all the fuss?
They’ve been exploited by cynics with agendas.
So that’s alright then?
Not really.
