At the same time the U.S. maintains it has a humanitarian duty to militarily intervene in other nations such as Serbia and Darfur to prevent ethnic cleansing, Britain engaged in its own form of ethnic cleansing of thousands of Indian Ocean Islanders from Diego Garcia, one of 64 coral islands of the Chagos Archipelago. No moral justification was given for the removal of these islanders. Instead, Britain cooperated with America to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands to make it suitable for building an American military base (Pilger 1). A British High Court ruling criticized the behavior of previous British governments, opening a route for the islanders to return to Diego Garcia. However, the Foreign Officer circumvented the ruling by changing the law by use of orders in council, what MacAskill (1) calls the "remnant of the once all-powerful royal prerogative." Even though the high court ruled the expulsion of the islanders was illegal, the order in council overturned the ruling.
The Diego Garcia expulsion is not only an executive order to expel British citizens from the realm, but it also shows "how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie" (Pilger 1). Both Britain and the U.S. have lied about the island, from outright denying islanders were ever expelled from their lands to claiming that in modern times, the island is sinking and climate change will make it difficult to re-inhabit. At the same time, U.S. military forces continue to expand their base there and it was used in both Iraq wars, being a strategic location for the U.S. to attack the Middle East and Afghanistan. The new order in council declares "as a principal of the constitution, that no person has the right of abode in the territory or has unrestricted access to any part of it" (MacAskill 1). Practically no remunerations were ma...