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i u t ’ k-'Mandela meets with ‘Chagossians’ over disputed islandSAINT DENIS, Reunion (PANA)—South African former President Nelson Mandela and current Vice-President Jacob Zuma met in Pretoria with a delegation of “Chagossians” and assured them of South Africa’s support to be allowed back to their Chagos archipelago homeland after 30 years of exile in Mauritius.Official sources from Mauritius said the delegation was led by Olivier Bancoult head of Chagos Refugees (GRC) in Mauritius, according to a GRC’s lawyer.“Mr Zuma was shocked to hear what we revealed to him on the suffering that the Chagossian people had been undergoing for 30 years amid the criminal indifference of the international community. He deemed it urgent and necessary to call former President Nelson Mandela, who later came to join us,” the lawyer added.The GRC official said, “The former South African leader proposed to raise the issue with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, during a meeting... He also asked us to prepare for him a detailed report on the issue that he will officially transmit to the British authorities.”“Mr. Nelson Mandela was really moved and he said he shared the pain of the Chagossian people,” the lawyer added.Bancoult said he was “extremely satisfied and sure of the support of Mandela as well as that of the South African government, the ANC andmany South African human rights organizations.”The delegation mentioned the complaint lodged before British tribunals against the deportation of Chagossians in the 1960s and 1970s by the British, to pave way for an American base at Diego Garcia.The delegates said they relied on South African support to lobby the US Congressional Black Caucus on the issue.“Our opinion is that the American Congress had been misled in 1975 by the Pentagon,” explained the GRC official. “When the Pentagon asked for funds from the Congress to set up the American military base of Diego Garcia, Congressman Lee Hamilton had asked if the islands were inhabited, and he wasanswered no. From there originated the Machiavellian entente between the United Kingdom and the United States, to mislead the United Nations.”The Chagossians said the “black American congressmen must know that 5,000 black people have been cast away from their ancestral lands to set up an American base.”“The Chagossians were not against the base as they saw that all around the world, people lived in harmony beside bases. So why were the people expelled from their homeland, that is the question,” Bancoult queried.The GRC has filed a case at a Washington court on the plight the Chagossians, which came up for hearing May.I
Newspaper Details
Fort Wayne Frost Illustrated
Fort Wayne, Indiana, US
Wed, Jun 05, 2002
Page 16
Full Page
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USA 14 Nov 2023
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