Chagos

Location of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean

The Chagos Archipelago.
(Atolls with areas of dry land are named in green)

Salomon Atoll is one of the many above water features of the Chagos Archipelago

The Chagos Archipelago is a hotspot of biodiversity in the Indian Ocean

The Chagos Archipelago ( /ˈtʃɑːɡoʊs/ or /ˈtʃɑːɡəs/; formerly Bassas de Chagas^[1] and later also Oil Islands, known as Foalhavahi ފޯޅަވަހި in Dhivehi, as Phehandweep फेहंद्वीप in Hindi and other North Indian languages, and as Paeikaana Theevukal பேகான தீவுகள் in Tamil), is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 individual tropical islands in the Indian Ocean; situated some 500 kilometres (310 mi) due south of the Maldives archipelago. This chain of islands are the southernmost archipelago of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge a long submarine mountain range in the Indian Ocean.^[2] The Chagos also form a terrestrial ecoregion together with the Maldives and the Lakshadweep.^[3] The islands and their surrounding waters are also a vast oceanic Environment Preservation and Protection Zone (EPPZ) (Fisheries Conservation and Management Zone (FCMZ) of 544,000 square kilometres (210,000 sq mi)), an area twice the size of the UK's land surface.

Officially part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Chagos were home to the Chagossians for more than a century and a half until the United Kingdom evicted them in the early 1970s in order to allow the United States to build a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands. Since 1971, only the atoll of Diego Garcia is inhabited, and only by military and civilian contracted personnel.

The Chagos group is a combination of different coralline rock structures topping a submarine ridge running southwards across the centre of the Indian Ocean, formed by volcanoes above the Réunion hotspot. Unlike in the Maldives there is not a clearly discernible pattern of arrayed atolls, which makes the whole archipelago look somewhat chaotic. Most of the coralline structures of the Chagos are submerged reefs.

The Chagos contain the world’s largest coral atoll (The Great Chagos Bank). It also has one of the healthiest reef systems in the cleanest waters in the world, supporting half the total area of good quality reefs in the Indian Ocean. As a result, the ecosystems of the Chagos have so far proven resilient to climate change and environmental disruptions.

The British government's Cabinet recently^[when?] established the The Chagos Archipelago as the world's largest marine reserve, larger than the country of France or the state of California. The protection of the marine reserve will be guaranteed for the next five years thanks to the financement of the Bertarelli Foundation.^[4]

Geography[link]

The entire land area of the islands is a mere 63.17 km², with the largest island, Diego Garcia, having an area of 27.20 km². The total area, including lagoons within atolls, however, is more than 15,000 km², of which 12,642 km² are accounted by the Great Chagos Bank, the second largest atoll structure of the world (after the completely submerged Saya de Malha Bank). The shelf area is 20,607 km², and the Exclusive Economic Zone, which borders the corresponding zone of the Maldive Islands in the north, has an area of 636,600 km² (including territorial waters).

The largest individual islands are Diego García (27.20 km²), Eagle (Great Chagos Bank, 2.45 km²), Île Pierre (Peros Banhos, 1.50 km²), Eastern Egmont (Egmont Islands, 1.50 km²), Île du Coin (Peros Banhos, 1.28 km²) and Île Boddam (Salomon Islands, 1.08 km²).

The number of atolls in the Chagos Islands is given as four or five in most sources, plus two island groups and two single islands, mainly because it is not recognized that the Great Chagos Bank is a huge atoll structure (including those two island groups and two single islands), and because it is not recognisd that Blenheim Reef has islets or cays above or just reaching the high water mark.

In addition to the seven atolls with dry land reaching at least the high water mark, there are nine reefs and banks, most of which can be considered permanently submerged atoll structures. They are listed in the table from north to south:

The deep oceanic waters around the Chagos Islands, out to the 200 nautical mile limit, include an exceptional diversity of undersea geological features (such as 6000m deep trenches, oceanic ridges, and sea mounts). These areas almost certainly harbour many undiscovered and specially adapted species. Although the deepwater habitats surrounding the islands have not been explored or mapped in any detail, work elsewhere in the world has shown that high physical diversity of the sea floor is closely linked to a high diversity of species.

Resources[link]

The main natural resources of the area are coconuts, and fish and the licensing of commercial fishing provides an annual income of about two million dollars for the British Indian Ocean Territory authorities.^[5]

All economic activity is concentrated on the largest island of Diego Garcia, where joint UK-US military facilities are located. Construction projects and various services needed to support the military installations are done by military and contract employees from the UK, Mauritius, the Philippines, and the US. There are currently no industrial or agricultural activities on the islands. All the water, food and other essentials of daily life are shipped to the island. An independent feasibility study led to the conclusion that resettlement would be "costly and precarious". Another feasibility study, commissioned by organisations supporting resettlement, found that resettlement would be possible at a cost to the British taxpayer of £25 million. If the Chagossians return, they plan to re-establish copra production and fishing, and to begin the commercial development of the islands for tourism.

Skipjack (Euthynnus pelamis) and yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) are fished for about two months of the year as their year-long migratory route takes them through Chagos waters. While the remoteness of the Chagos offers some protection from extractive activities, legal and illegal fishing have had an impact. There is considerable poaching of turtles and other marine life. Sharks, which play a vital role in balancing the food web of tropical reefs, have suffered sharp declines from illegal fishing for their fins and as bycatch in legal fisheries. Sea cucumbers, which cleanse sand, are poached to feed Asian markets.

Climate[link]

The Chagos Archipelago has a Tropical oceanic climate; hot and humid but moderated by trade winds. Climate is characterised by plenty of sunshine, warm temperatures, showers and light breezes. December through February is considered the rainy season (summer monsoon); typical weather conditions include light west-northwesterly winds and warmer temperatures with more rainfall. June to September is considered the drier season (winter), characterised by moderate south-easterly winds, slightly cooler temperatures and less rainfall. The annual mean rainfall is 2600 mm (100 inches), varying from 105 mm (4 inches) during August to 350 mm (14 inches) during January.

History[link]

Detailed map of the Chagos Archipelago

The Chagos as Bassas de Chagas on 1794 Samuel Dunn map section

Early history[link]

According to Southern Maldivian oral tradition, local traders and fishermen were occasionally lost at sea and got stranded in one of the islands of the Chagos. Eventually they were rescued and brought back home. However, these islands were judged to be too far away from the Maldives to be settled permanently by Maldivians. Thus for many centuries the Chagos were ignored by their northern neighbours. In Maldivian lore the whole group is known as Fōlhavahi or Hollhavai (the latter name in the Southern Maldives Adduan dialect of Dhivehi). There are no separate names for the different atolls of the Chagos in the Maldivian oral tradition.^[6]

16th to 19th century[link]

Portuguese explorers were the first Europeans to discover the archipelago. Although Portuguese navigator Pedro de Mascarenhas (1470–June 23, 1555) is credited with having discovered the islands during his voyage of 1512–13, there is little corroborative evidence for this; cartographic analysis points to 1532 or later. Portuguese seafarers named the group as Bassas de Chagas,^[7] Portuguese: Chagas (wounds) referring to the Holy Wounds of the crucifixion of Jesus.^[8] They named as well some of the atolls, like Diego Garcia and Peros Banhos Atoll, which was named Pedro dos Banhos in 1513 by Afonso de Albuquerque.^[9] Neglected by the Portuguese, this lonely and isolated group, economically and politically uninteresting, was never made part of the Portuguese Empire.^[10]

The earliest and most interesting description of the Chagos, before coconut trees grew widely on the islands, was written by Manoel Rangel, a castaway from the Portuguese ship Conceição which ran aground on the Peros Banhos reefs in 1556.^[11]

The French were the first to lay a claim on the Chagos after they settled Réunion and Ile de France (later renamed Mauritius).

On 27 April 1786 the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia were claimed for Great Britain. However, the territory was ceded to Britain by treaty only after Napoleon's defeat, in 1814.

In 1793, when the first successful colony was founded on Diego Garcia, the largest island, coconut plantations were established on many of the atolls and isolated islands of the archipelago. Initially the workers were slaves, but after 1840 they were freemen, many of whom were descended from those earlier slaves. They formed an inter-island culture called "Ilois" (a French Creole word meaning Islanders).

Commander Robert Moresby made a survey of the Chagos on behalf of the British Admiralty in 1838. After taking measurements of most of the atolls and reefs the archipelago was charted with relative accuracy for the first time.^[12]

20th century[link]

On 31 August 1903 the Chagos Archipelago was administratively separated from the Seychelles and attached to Mauritius.

In November 1965, the UK purchased the entire Chagos Archipelago from the then self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million pounds to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), with the intent of ultimately closing the plantations to provide the uninhabited British territory from which the U.S. would conduct its military activities in the region. On 30 December 1966, the U.S. and the UK executed an Agreement through an Exchange of Notes which permit the United States Armed Forces to use any island of the BIOT for defense purposes for 50 years (through December 2016), followed by a 20 year optional extension (to 2036) to which both parties must agree by December 2014. As of 2010, only the atoll of Diego Garcia has been transformed into a military facility.

In April 1966 the British Government bought the entire assets and real property of the Seychellois Chagos Agalega Company, which owned all the islands of the BIOT, for £600,000 and administered them as a government enterprise while awaiting U.S. funding of its proposed facilities, with an interim objective of paying for the administrative expenses of the new territory. However, the plantations, both under their previous private ownership and under government administration, proved consistently unprofitable due to the introduction of new oils and lubricants in the international marketplace, and the establishment of vast coconut plantations in the East Indies and the Philippines.

Between 1967 and 1973, the entire population was involuntarily removed from the islands and relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles to make way for a joint United States-United Kingdom military base on Diego Garcia. In March 1971, Seabee U.S. Naval construction battalions arrived on Diego Garcia to begin the construction of the Communications Station and an airfield. To satisfy the terms of an agreement between the UK and the U.S. for an uninhabited island, the plantation on Diego Garcia was closed in October of that year. The plantation workers and their families were initially relocated to the plantations on Peros Banhos and Salomon atolls in the northwest of the archipelago; those who requested were transported to the Seychelles or Mauritius. In 1972, the UK decided to close all the remaining plantations throughout the Chagos, and deported the Ilois to the Seychelles or Mauritius. The then-independent Mauritian government refused to accept the islanders without payment, and in 1973, the UK gave the Mauritian government an additional ₤650,000 to resettle the islanders. However despite this islanders often found themselves in woefully inadequate housing and living conditions.

Currently, the only human structures on the islands are located in the joint defence and Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia. Other uninhabited islands, especially in the Salomon Atoll, are common stopping points for long-distance yachtsmen traveling from Southeast Asia to the Red Sea or the coast of Africa, although a permit is required to visit the outer islands.

Current situation[link]

Diego Garcia is currently the only inhabited island in the Chagos, all of which comprise the British Indian Ocean Territory, usually abbreviated as “BIOT”. It is an Overseas territory of the United Kingdom, and the Government of the BIOT consists of Commissioner appointed by the Queen. The Commissioner is assisted by an Administrator and small staff, and is based in London and resident in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This administration is represented in the Territory by the Officer commanding British Forces on Diego Garcia, the "Brit Rep". Laws and regulations are promulgated by the Commissioner and enforced in the BIOT by Brit Rep.

There are no civilian residents or administrators, and the UK represents the Territory internationally. A local government as normally envisioned does not exist.^[13]

There are two transnational political issues which affect the BIOT, through the British government.

First, the island nation of Mauritius claims the Chagos Archipelago (which is coterminous with the BIOT), including Diego Garcia. A subsidiary issue is the Mauritian opposition to the 1 April 2010 UK Government’s declaration that the BIOT is a Marine Protected Area with fishing and extractive industry (including oil and gas exploration) prohibited.^[14]

Second, the issue of compensation and repatriation of the former inhabitants of several of the archipelago's atolls, exiled since 1973, continues in litigation and as of this writing (23 August 2010) has been submitted to the European Court of Human Rights by a group of former residents.^[15]

As these issues affect the BIOT as a political entity, they are more appropriately and completely addressed in the Wikipedia articles British Indian Ocean Territory and Depopulation of Diego Garcia. Litigation continues as of 2012 regarding the right of return for the displaced islanders and Mauritian sovereignty claims. In addition, advocacy on the Chagossians' behalf continues both in the United States and in Europe.^[16]

WikiLeaks CableGate disclosure (2010)

According to Wikileaks CableGate documents,^[17] the UK proposed in 2009 that the BIOT become a "marine reserve". The summary paragraph of the referenced diplomatic cable follows:

"HMG would like to establish a “marine park” or “reserve” providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a senior Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official informed Polcouns on May 12. The official insisted that the establishment of a marine park -- the world’s largest -- would in no way impinge on USG use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes. He agreed that the UK and U.S. should carefully negotiate the details of the marine reserve to assure that U.S. interests were safeguarded and the strategic value of BIOT was upheld. He said that the BIOT’s former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve."^[18]

People and language[link]

The islanders were known as the Ilois (one French Creole word for "islanders") and they numbered about 1,000. They were of mixed African, South Indian and Malay descent and lived very simple, spartan lives in their isolated archipelago. Few remains of their culture have been left, although their language is still spoken by some of their descendants in Mauritius and the UK.

The inhabitants of Chagos were speaking Chagossian Creole, also known as Ilois creole, a French Creole which has not been properly researched from the linguistic point of view.

The island names are a striking combination of Portuguese, Dutch, French, English and Creole names.

Ecology[link]

The biodiversity of the Chagos archipelago and its surrounding waters is one of the main reasons it is so special. But this incredible diversity is under threat as at least 60 species that call Chagos home are already on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.^{[citation needed]}

Coral

The brain coral Ctenella chagius is endemic to the reefs of the Chagos

The reefs host 220 species of coral including the endemic brain coral Ctenella chagius. The coral cover is dense and healthy even in deep water on the steep outer reef slopes. Thick stands of branching staghorn coral (Acropora sp) protect the low lying islands from wave erosion. Despite the loss of much of the coral in a bleaching event in 1998 the recovery in the Chagos has been remarkable and overall coral cover increases year on year.

Fish

The reefs are also home to at least 784 species of fish that stay near to the shores of the islands including the endemic Chagos clownfish (Amphiprion chagosensis) and many of the larger wrasse and grouper that have already been lost from over-fishing in other reefs in the region.

As well as the healthy communities of reef fish there are significant populations of pelagic fish such as manta rays (Manta birostris), sharks and tuna. Shark numbers have dramatically declined as a result of illegal fishing boats that seek to remove their fins and also as accidental by-catch in the two tuna fisheries that operate seasonally in the Chagos.

Birds

Seabirds nesting on South Brother island in the Chagos Archipelago

Seventeen species of breeding seabirds can be found nesting in huge colonies on many of the islands in the archipelago, and 10 of the islands have received formal designation as Important Bird Areas, by Birdlife International. This means that Chagos has the most diverse breeding seabird community within this tropical region. Of particular interest are the large colonies of sooty terns (Sterna fuscata), brown and lesser noddies (Anous stolidus and Anous tenuirostris) wedge-tailed shearwaters (Puffinus pacificus) and red-footed boobies (Sula sula).

Turtles

The remote islands make perfect undisturbed nursery sites for nests of green (Chelonia mydas) and hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) turtles. The populations of both species in Chagos are of global significance given the "Critically Endangered" status of hawksbills and the "Endangered" status of green turtles on the IUCN Red List. Chagos turtles were heavily exploited during the previous two centuries, but they and their habitats are now well protected by the administration of the British Indian Ocean Territory and are recovering well.

Crabs

Coconut crabs are the world's largest terrestrial arthropod and live in one of the most undisturbed populations in the Chagos

The coconut crab (Birgus latro) is the world’s largest terrestrial arthropod, reaching over one metre in leg span and 3.5-4 kilos in weight. As a juvenile it behaves like a hermit crab and uses empty coconut shells as protection but as an adult this giant crab climbs trees and can crack through a coconut with its massive claws. Despite its wide global distribution, it is rare in most of the areas it is found. It is primarily threatened by over-collection for food, but also as ornaments for sale to tourists and as bait for fish traps. Demand for coconut crabs as souvenirs is strong, and other threats include habitat destruction and predation from introduced species such as rats. The coconut crabs on Chagos constitute one of the most undisturbed populations in the world. An important part of their biology is the long distances their young can travel as larvae. This means the Chagos coconut crabs are a vital source for replenishing other over-exploited populations in the Indian Ocean region.

Insects

A total of 113 species of insect have been recorded from the Chagos Islands.

Plants

The Chagos Islands have been colonised by plants since there was sufficient soil to support them – probably less than 4,000 years. Seeds and spores arrived on the emerging islands by wind and sea, or from passing sea birds. The native flora of the Chagos Islands is thought to comprise forty-one species of flowering plants and four ferns as well as a wide variety of mosses, liverworts, fungi and cyanobacteria.

Today, the status of the Chagos Islands’ native flora depends very much on past exploitation of particular islands. About 280 species of flowering plants and ferns have now been recorded on the islands, but this increase reflects the introduction of non-native plants by humans, either accidentally or deliberately. Because some of these non-native species have become invasive and pose a threat to the native ecosystems, plans are being developed to control them. On some islands, native forests were felled to plant coconut palms for the production of copra oil. Other islands remain unspoiled and support a wide range of habitats, including unique Pisonia forests and large clumps of the gigantic fish poison tree (Barringtonia asiatica). Unspoiled islands provide us with the biological information that we need in order to re-establish the native plant communities on heavily altered islands. These efforts will ultimately help to improve the biodiversity of the Chagos Islands.

Conservation efforts[link]

Past[link]

The Chagos is one of the few marine locations in the world where there are almost no ongoing, direct human impacts over almost all of its areas. In April 2010 the Chagos was designated as a marine reserve by the UK government. That will, among other things, allow the area to serve as a reference site for global scientific research to aid in understanding of such things as climate change, tropical marine ecosystems and the impacts of commercial fisheries.

Successive UK governments, both Labour and Conservative, have supported environmental conservation of the Chagos and have resisted attempts to allow the exiled Chagossians to return. They have committed to treat the whole area as a World Heritage site. In 2003, the UK government established an Environment (Protection and Preservation) Zone under Article 75 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. This zone extends 200 nautical miles from the islands. On eastern Diego Garcia, the largest island of the Chagos and the site of a UK–US military facility,^[19] Britain has designated the very large lagoon and the eastern arm of the atoll and seaward reefs as a “wetland of international importance” under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (the Ramsar Convention).^[20]

Present[link]

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (May 2011)

On 1 April 2010 Britain issued a declaration that the Chagos Islands had been legally constituted into the world's largest nature reserve with an area of a quarter of a million square miles.^[21][22][23]

This followed an effort led by The Chagos Environment Network,^[24] a collaboration of nine leading conservation and scientific organisations seeking to protect the rich biodiversity of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters. It currently urges the UK Government to declare the Chagos archipelago and waters, out to its 200-mile (320 km) Environmental Preservation and Protection Zone, a full no-take marine reserve in which extractive activities such as fishing would be prohibited.^[24] The Chagos Environment Network cites several reasons for supporting a protected area:

Wildlife 

The Chagos no-take marine reserve would maintain the pure and allegedly unpolluted waters of Chagos, providing a safe refuge for its rich marine life, including many threatened animals, such as turtles and sharks. Seabirds and nesting turtles too will benefit from the additional conservation measures that a protected area will bring. Both groups are recovering from severe depredations of the past in a way that is not possible in most places.

Fisheries 

World fish stocks have declined because the human race exploits the sea. A large ‘no-take’ protected area could assist fish population recovery, potentially increasing fish numbers over a much wider area. The protected area could also provide a temporary refuge for migratory species, such as tuna, from exploitation. However there are arguments for keeping a controlled fishery, the fees from which could be used to support conservation efforts in the area. The absence of a controlled fishery in the area makes it vulnerable to pirate fishers.

People 

In regards to the forcibly removed Chagossian people, whatever the outcome of legal challenges brought by Chagossian groups against the UK government, the Chagos Environment Network believes that the Chagos need conservation now and that this will be beneficial to everyone under all future legal scenarios. The Chagos Environment Network urged that the Chagos Islands and their surrounding waters be designated as a no-take marine reserve "without prejudice” to the outcome of the legal process. This designation would mean that the Chagos Islands and their resources would remain healthy no matter what the future holds, but that conservation arrangements could be modified if necessary in the light of a change in circumstances.

Science 

The Chagos is one of the few marine locations in the world where there are almost no ongoing, direct human impacts over almost all of its areas (with the obvious exception of the huge military base on the main island). The marine reserve could serve as a reference site for global scientific research to aid in our understanding of such things as climate change, tropical marine ecosystems and the impacts of commercial fisheries.

Deep ocean 

The deep oceanic waters around the Chagos Islands, out to the 200 nautical mile limit, include an exceptional diversity of undersea geological features (such as 6000m deep trenches, oceanic ridges and sea mounts). These areas almost certainly harbour many undiscovered and specially adapted species.

UK international commitments 

The creation of the Chagos Protected Area would be an important contribution by the UK to at least seven international environmental conventions. It would also contribute to the UK’s global commitments, such as halting the decline of biodiversity by 2010, establishing marine protection networks by 2012, and restoring depleted fish stocks to sustainable levels by 2015.

The UK government had opened a three-month public consultation which ended after the 5th of March 2010 about conservation management of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters.^[25]

See also[link]

• List of islands in Chagos Archipelago
• Depopulation of Diego Garcia
• India–United Kingdom relations
• List of island countries and territories in the Indian Ocean
• British Indian Ocean Territory

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Pilger, John (2006). Freedom Next Time. Bantam Press. ISBN 0-593-05552-7.  Chapter 1: Stealing a Nation, pp. 19–60
• Padma Rao, Der Edikt der Königin, in: Der Spiegel, 5 December 2005, pp. 152–4.
• Xavier Romero-Frias, The Maldive Islanders, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient Ocean Kingdom. Barcelona 1999, ISBN 84-7254-801-5
• David Vine, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia. Princeton University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-691-13869-5

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Chagos Archipelago

• Chagos Environment Network
• Chagos Conservation Trust
• Let Them Return - The Chagos People's Homeland Campaign
• 5 minute film about Chagos Islanders campaign to return
• Indian Ocean Pilot (Portable Document Format)
• Diego Garcia timeline posted at the History Commons about removal of Chagos Islanders
• Chagos Conservation Management Plan
• Coral Reef Degradation in the Indian Ocean
• The US military presence on the Chagos Archipelago
• Article about the real history and life of the Chagossians
• Stealing Diego Garcia by John Pilger
• The UK Chagos Support Association
• A Return from Exile in Sight? The Chagossians and their Struggle, from the Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights

News

• "Exiles lose appeal over benefits". BBC Online. 2 November 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7075361.stm. 
• Eilperin, Juliet (2 April 2010). "Britain protects Chagos Islands, creating world's largest marine reserve". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040102894.html?hpid=artslot. 

Film and video

• Chagos: A Documentary Film
• Stealing a Nation (TV documentary, 2004), a Special Report by John Pilger

Coordinates: 6°00′S 71°30′E / 6°S 71.5°E / -6; 71.5

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2011)

John Pilger
Born	9 October 1939[1] Sydney, Australia
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	Australian
Occupation	Journalist, writer, documentary filmmaker
Website
johnpilger.com

John Richard Pilger (born 9 October 1939)^[1] is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London.

Since his early years as a war correspondent in Vietnam, Pilger has been a strong critic of American and British foreign policy, which he considers to be driven by an imperialist agenda. Pilger has also criticised his native country's treatment of Indigenous Australians and the practices of the mainstream media. In the UK print media, he has had a long association with the Daily Mirror, and writes a fortnightly columnn for the New Statesman magazine.

Pilger has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries, screened internationally, have gained awards in Britain and worldwide, and the journalist has received several honorary doctorates.^[2][3]

Early life and career[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2010)

Pilger was born and raised in Bondi, a suburb of Sydney.^[2] He attended Sydney Boys High School,^[2] where he started a student newspaper, The Messenger, and later joined a four-year journalist trainee scheme with the Australian Consolidated Press.^[2] Beginning his career in 1958 as a copy boy with the Sydney Sun, he later moved to the city's Daily Telegraph where he was a reporter, sports writer and sub-editor.^[2] He also freelanced and worked for the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, the daily paper's sister title. After moving to Europe, he was for a year a freelance correspondent in Italy.^[4]

Settling in the UK in 1962, working as a sub-editor, Pilger joined British United Press and then Reuters in London on their middle-east desk,^[4] and was recruited by the English Daily Mirror in 1963, again as a sub-editor at first.^[4] Later, he was a reporter, a feature writer and Chief Foreign Correspondent for the title. Working in the United States, on 5 June 1968 he witnessed the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.^[5][6] During the next twenty years, Pilger became the Daily Mirror's star reporter, particularly on social issues. He was a war correspondent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. Nearly eighteen months after Robert Maxwell bought the Mirror (on 12 July 1984), Pilger was sacked by Richard Stott, the newspaper's editor, on 31 December 1985.^[7]

Early television work[link]

His career on television began on World in Action (Granada Television) in 1969, for whom he made two documentaries broadcast in 1970 and 1971, the earliest of more than fifty involving Pilger. The Quiet Mutiny in 1970 was the first of these. Filmed at Camp Snuffy, the film presented a character study of the common US soldier during the Vietnam War, revealing the shifting morale and open rebellion of Western troops. Pilger described the film as "something of a scoop" - it was the first documentary to show the open rebellion within the drafted ranks of the US military that led to the withdrawal of the land army in 1973.^{[citation needed]} "When I flew to New York and showed it to Mike Wallace, the star reporter of CBS' 60 Minutes, he agreed. "Real shame we can't show it here"", Pilger said in an interview with the New Statesman.^[8] Later films about Vietnam followed The Quiet Mutiny, Vietnam: Still America's War (1974), Do You Remember Vietnam? (1978) and Vietnam: The Last Battle (1995).

Following a brief unhappy period on the BBC's Midweek television series during 1972-73,^[9] five reports were completed, but only two were broadcast, the journalist was given a regular television outlet at ATV. The Pilger half-hour documentary series was commissioned by Charles Denton, then a producer with ATV, for screening on the British ITV network. The series ran for five series from 1974 until 1977,^[9] at first runnng in the UK on Sunday afternoons after Weekend World; later it was scheduled in a weekday peak-time evening slot. The last series included "A Faraway Country" (broadcast in September 1977) about dissidents in Czechoslavakia, then part of the Communist Soviet bloc. Pilger and his team interviewed members of Charter 77, and others, secretly using domestic film equipment. In the documentary Pilger praises the courage and commitment to freedom of Charter 77 and describes the communist totalitarianism as "fascism disguised as socialism".^[10]

Pilger's programmes were then extended to fill an hour, placed in the 9pm slot before News at Ten, and gained the journalist a high profile in Britain. After ATV lost its franchise in 1981, he has continued to make documentaries for screening on ITV, initially for Central, and later via Carlton Television.

Documentaries and career: 1978-2000[link]

Cambodia[link]

In 1979, Pilger and two colleagues with whom he collaborated for many years, documentary film-maker David Munro and photographer Eric Piper, entered Cambodia in the wake of the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime. The result was a series of world exclusives, the first of which occupied almost an entire Daily Mirror, which sold out. This was followed by an ITV documentary, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, which brought to people's living rooms the suffering of the Khmer people. Some $45 million was raised, unsolicited, in mostly small donations following the showing of Year Zero, including almost £4 million raised by schoolchildren in the UK. This funded the first substantial relief to Cambodia, including life saving drugs like penicillin and the manufacture of clothes to replace the black uniforms people had been forced to wear. According to Brian Walker, director of Oxfam, "a solidarity and compassion surged across our nation" from the broadcast of Year Zero.^[11] Pilger and Munro made four later films about Cambodia. During the filming of Cambodia Year One, they were warned that Pilger was on a Khmer Rouge 'death list' and, in one incident, they narrowly escaped an ambush. The British Film Institute (BFI) has described Year Zero as one of the ten most influential documentary films of the 20th century.^{[citation needed]}

Pilger himself described the British reaction to Year Zero in 2006:

The documentary as a television "event" can send ripples far and wide... Year Zero not only revealed the horror of the Pol Pot years, it showed how Richard Nixon's and Henry Kissinger's 'secret' bombing of that country had provided a critical catalyst for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It also exposed how the west, led by the United States and Britain, was imposing an embargo, like a medieval siege, on the most stricken country on earth. This was a reaction to the fact that Cambodia's liberator was Vietnam - a country that had come from the wrong side of the Cold War and that had recently defeated the US. Cambodia's suffering was a wilful revenge. Britain and the US even backed Pol Pot's demand that his man continue to occupy Cambodia's seat at the UN, while Margaret Thatcher stopped children's milk going to the survivors of his nightmare regime. Little of this was reported. Had Year Zero simply described the monster that Pol Pot was, it would have been quickly forgotten. By reporting the collusion of "our" governments, it told a wider truth about how the world was run... Within two days of Year Zero going to air, 40 sacks of post arrived at ATV ... in Birmingham - 26,000 first-class letters in the first post alone. The station quickly amassed £1m, almost all of it in small amounts. "This is for Cambodia," wrote a Bristol bus driver, enclosing his week's wage. Entire pensions were sent, along with entire savings. Petitions arrived at Downing Street, one after the other, for weeks. MPs received hundreds of thousands of letters, demanding that British policy change (which it did, eventually). And none of it was asked for. For me, the public response to Year Zero gave the lie to clichés about "compassion fatigue", an excuse that some broadcasters and television executives use to justify the current descent into the cynicism and passivity of Big Brotherland. Above all, I learned that a documentary could reclaim shared historical and political memories, and present their hidden truths. The reward then was a compassionate and an informed public; and it still is."^[12]

In a 2007 speech, "Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire", Pilger described his experience with executives of the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) who refused to screen Year Zero, which, according to Pilger, has never been broadcast in the USA.^[13]

A claim in one of those later Pilger documentaries, Cambodia - The Betrayal (1990), led to a libel case. The Times of 6 July 1991 reported:

Two men who claimed that a television documentary accused them of being SAS members who trained Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge to lay mines, accepted "very substantial" libel damages in the High Court yesterday. Christopher Geidt and Anthony De Normann settled their action against the journalist John Pilger and Central Television on the third day of the hearing. Desmond Browne, QC, for Mr Pilger and Central Television, said his clients had not intended to allege the two men trained the Khmer Rouge to lay mines, but they accepted that was how the program had been understood.^[14]

Australia's indigenous population[link]

Pilger has long been a critic of Australian government policy, particularly of what he regards as its inherent racism and the poor treatment of its indigenous population. He has made several documentaroes on this subject, such as The Secret Country-The First Australians Fight Back (1985), and has wriiten the book A Secret Country published in 1989.

Pilger wrote in 2000 that the 1998 legislation that removed the common law rights of Indigenous Australians "is just one of the disgraces that has given Australia the distinction of being the only developed country whose government has been condemned as racist by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination."^[15]

East Timor[link]

In 1993 Pilger slipped into East Timor and shot Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy. The revelations of this film alerted the British public to the horror of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, which began in 1975. Death of a Nation prompted an international outcry which ultimately led to Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor and eventual independence in 2000. When Death of a Nation was screened in Britain it was the highest rating documentary in 15 years and 5,000 telephone calls per minute were made to the programme's action line.^[16] When Death of a Nation was screened in Australia in June 1994, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans declared that Pilger "had a track record of distorted sensationalism mixed with sanctimony."^[17]

Documentaries and career since 2000[link]

Later newspaper career[link]

In 1987 Pilger was a founder of News on Sunday in London, and titular Editor-in-Chief, but resigned before publication. Pilger has a fortnightly column in New Statesman, his most frequent outlet, which began in 1991 while Steve Platt was editor of the magazine.^[18] Reportedly, Pilger has described his role at the Statesman as a "fig leaf".^[19] In 2001, while Piers Morgan was editor of the Mirror, he returned to his old paper in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks.^[20]

[edit] Palestine Is Still the Issue

Following broadcast on ITV in the UK, Pilger's documentary Palestine Is Still the Issue (2002) was alleged by the UK press to be inaccurate and biased. The UK television regulator, the Independent Television Commission (ITC), ordered an investigation. Based on the results of the investigation, the ITC rejected the complaints made about the film, stating:

The ITC raised with Carlton all the significant areas of inaccuracy critics of the programme alleged and the broadcaster answered them by reference to a range of historical texts. The ITC is not a tribunal of fact and is particularly aware of the difficulties of verifying 'historical fact' but the comprehensiveness and authority of Carlton's sources were persuasive, not least because many appeared to be of Israeli origin.

Pilger's documentary, the ITC added, "was not in breach of the ITC Programme Code... Adequate opportunity was given to a pro-Israeli government perspective."^[21]

In 2010, Pilger endorsed the Canadian Boat to Gaza ^[22], part of the Freedom Flotilla 2 ^[23] which aims to end the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip.

Diego Garcia[link]

Pilger's 2004 film Stealing a Nation told the story of the people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. In the 1960s and 70s, British governments expelled the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago, dumping them in the slums of Mauritius. The aim was to give the principal island of this Crown Colony, Diego Garcia, to the Americans who wanted it as a major military base, from where US planes have since bombed Afghanistan and Iraq. The International Criminal Court later described this act as "a crime against humanity". Pilger strongly criticised Tony Blair for not making any real response to the 2000 High Court ruling that the British expulsion of the island's natives to Mauritius in order to make way for a United States Air Force base had been illegal.^[24]

In March 2005, Stealing a Nation was awarded Britain's most prestigious documentary prize, the Royal Television Society Award.

In May 2006, the UK High Court ruled in favour of the Chagossians in their battle to prove they were illegally removed by the UK government during the depopulation of Diego Garcia, paving the way for a return to their homeland. The leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, Olivier Bancoult, described it as a "special day, a day to remember". In May 2007, the UK Government's appeal against the 2006 High Court ruling was dismissed and they took the matter to the House of Lords. In October 2008, the House of Lords ruled in favour of the Government, overturning the original High Court ruling.

Latin America[link]

His 2007 film The War on Democracy was Pilger's first cinema release and was named Best Documentary at the 2008 One World Media Awards.^[25] The film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Using, among other sources, archive footage sourced by Michael Moore's archivist Carl Deal, the film explores the role of US intervention, overt and covert, in toppling a series of governments in the region since the 1950s. This includes, for example, discussing reports of US involvement in the overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende in 1973 and its replacement by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet. Pilger interviews several ex-CIA agents who purportedly took part in secret campaigns against democratic countries. He investigates the School of the Americas in the US state of Georgia, where Pinochet’s torture squads were reportedly trained along with tyrants and death squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.

The film also explores the attempted overthrow of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of Caracas rose up to force his return to power. It looks at the wider rise of populist governments across South America led by figures calling for loosening ties with Washington and a fairer redistribution of the continent's natural wealth. "[The film]" says Pilger, "is about the struggle of people to free themselves from a modern form of slavery". These people, he says, "describe a world not as American presidents like to see it as useful or expendable, they describe the power of courage and humanity among people with next to nothing. They reclaim noble words like democracy, freedom, liberation, justice, and in doing so they are defending the most basic human rights of all of us in a war being waged against all of us".^[26]

In May 2007, Pilger co-signed and put forward a letter supporting the refusal of the government of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez to renew the broadcasting licence of Venezuela's largest television network Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), as they openly supported a 2002 coup attempt against the democratically elected government. Pilger and other signatories suggest that if the BBC or ITV used their news broadcasts to publicly support a coup against the British government, they would suffer similar consequences.^[27] Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists have described the RCTV decision as an effort to stifle freedom of expression.^[28]

Western leaders[link]

In addition to criticizing the policies of former United States President George W. Bush, Pilger has also taken aim at former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he believes to be just as culpable as President Bush for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

On 25 July 2005, Pilger ascribed blame for the 2005 London bombings that took place the same month to Blair, whose decision to follow Bush helped to generate the rage that he maintains precipitated those bombings.^[29]

In the same column a year later, Pilger described Blair as a war criminal for supporting Israel's actions during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. He also asserted that Blair gave permission to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 to initiate what would ultimately become Operation Defensive Shield.^[30]

Pilger has also criticised United States President Barack Obama, describing him as "a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan."^[31] and whose theme "was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully." Pilger asserts, "In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government." ^[32]

He is a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society, other leading members include Noam Chomsky and David Graeber,^[33] launched in 2012.^[34]

Other issues[link]

Critic of mainstream media[link]

He is a strong critic of the institutions and economic forces that structure 'mainstream' journalism. In an address at Columbia University on 14 April 2006, he said:

During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. 'I have to tell you,' said their spokesman, 'that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?'

Pilger said, while speaking to journalism students at the University of Lincoln, that mainstream journalism means corporate journalism, and as such represents vested corporate interests over those of the public.^[35]

He is particularly scornful of pro-Iraq war commentators on the liberal left, or 'liberal interventionists', such as Nick Cohen and David Aaronovitch.

In 2003 he was interviewed by the New Zealand journalist Kim Hill on her television show Face to Face With Kim Hill. The interview became infamous in New Zealand. Pilger, being interviewed via a live-cross, complained that Hill had not researched him before the interview, saying "You waste my time because you have not prepared for this interview, as any journalist does, and I've done many interviews. The one thing is to prepare for them and this interview, frankly, is a disgrace." Hill, who had commenced the interview by proposing that the Iraq war was "a just war", eventually threw Pilger's book at his image on the screen.

Honours and awards[link]

Pilger has received human rights and journalism awards, including the Richard Dimbleby Award for factual reporting at the 1990 BAFTA Awards, as well as many honorary doctorates.^[2] The jury’s citation reads as follows: "For work as an author, film-maker and journalist as well as for courage as a foreign and war correspondent in enabling the voices of the powerless to be heard. For commitment to peace with justice by exposing and holding governments to account for human rights abuses and for fearless challenges to censorship in any form."^[36]

Other awards include:

• One World Media Awards - TV Documentary Award for his ITV1 film The War on Democracy, on the role of Washington in Latin American politics. (2008)^[37]
• The Grierson Trust Award, UK (2011)^[38]

Praise and criticism[link]

Praise[link]

• In Breaking the Silence: The Television Reporting of John Pilger, his appraisal of the journalist's documentaries, Anthony Hayward wrote, "For more than a generation, he has been an ever stronger voice for those without a voice and a thorn in the side of authority, the Establishment. His work, particularly his television documentaries, has also made him rare in being a journalist who is universally known, a champion of those for whom he fights and the scourge of politicians and others whose actions he exposes."^[39]
• Noam Chomsky said of Pilger: "John Pilger's work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration."^[40]
• According to Harold Pinter, Nobel Laureate and member of the Stop the War Coalition, "John Pilger is fearless. He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is... I salute him."^[3]
• Martha Gellhorn, the American novelist, journalist and war correspondent, said that "[John Pilger] has taken on the great theme of justice and injustice... He documents and proclaims the official lies that we are told and that most people accept or don't bother to think about. [He] belongs to an old and unending worldwide company, the men and women of conscience. Some are as famous as Tom Paine and William Wilberforce, some as unknown as a tiny group calling itself Grandmothers Against The Bomb.... If they win, it is slowly; but they never entirely lose. To my mind, they are the blessed proof of the dignity of man. John has an assured place among them. I'd say he is a charter member for his generation."^[41]
• John Simpson, the BBC's world affairs editor, has said, "A country that does not have a John Pilger in its journalism is a very feeble place indeed."^[42]

Criticism[link]

• The English writer Auberon Waugh, writing in The Spectator in the 1970s in response to an article Pilger had written alleging Thai complicity in child trafficking (whose research was challenged), coined the verb "to pilger", defined as: to present information in a sensationalist manner to reach a foregone conclusion.^[43] The word was included in the Oxford Dictionary of New Words in 1991, but removed from the subsequent edition after Pilger complained^[44] and, according to some sources, threatened legal action.^[45] Noam Chomsky responded to Waugh's neologism by stating that "pilgerize" was "invented by journalists furious about his incisive and courageous reporting, and knowing that the only response they are capable of is ridicule."^[46]
• The writer William Shawcross, considers him "one of the worst journalists writing in the English language".^[47]
• The Anglo-American writer Christopher Hitchens said of Pilger: "I remember thinking that his work from Vietnam was very good at the time. I dare say if I went back and read it again I’d probably still admire quite a lot of it. But there is a word that gets overused and can be misused – namely, anti-American – and it has to be used about him. So that for me sort of spoils it... even when I’m inclined to agree."^[48]
• Gerard Henderson, a Conservative Australian newspaper columnist, has accused him of "engaging in hyperbole against western democracies."^[49]
• The Economist's Lexington columnist commented on Pilger's account of the Arab uprising:

Next up is the egregious John Pilger, who thinks the Arab revolts show that the West in general and the United States in particular are "fascist":

The revolt in the Arab world is against not merely a resident dictator, but a worldwide economic tyranny, designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and the World Bank, which have ensured that rich countries such as Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with 40 per cent of the population earning less than $2 a day. The people's triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.

... Maybe he hasn't noticed, but what most of the Arab protesters say they want are the very freedoms that they know full well, even if Pilger doesn't, to be available in the West. No doubt he believes they are labouring under some massive mind-control delusion engineered by the CIA.^[50]

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

Plays[link]

• The Last Day (1983)

Selected documentaries[link]

References[link]

See also[link]

• Media Lens

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Pilger

• John Pilger - official website
• John Pilger Videos - documentaries online, official website
• John Pilger at IMDb
• Freedom Next Time: Filmmaker & Journalist John Pilger on Propaganda, the Press, Censorship and Resisting the American Empire, Democracy Now!, 7 August 2007.
  Listen and Watch.
• John Pilger at Random House Australia
• John Pilger: There Is a War on Journalism - video interview by Democracy Now!
• John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism - video report by Democracy Now!
• Desert Island Discs - John Pilger, BBC Radio 4, 18 February 1990 - Download page

Paul Watson
Paul Watson, in front of the "MV Steve Irwin" docked in Hobart. January 2009
Born	(1950-12-02) December 2, 1950 (age 61) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Activist, television personality
Spouse	Starlet Lum Lisa DiStefano Allison Lance
Website
SeaShepherd.org

Paul Watson (born December 2, 1950) is a Canadian animal rights and environmental activist, who founded and is president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a direct action group devoted to marine conservation.^[1]

The Toronto native joined a Sierra Club protest against nuclear testing in 1969. He was an early and influential member of Greenpeace, crewed and skippered for it, and later was a board member. Watson argued for a strategy of direct action that conflicted with the Greenpeace interpretation of nonviolence, was ousted from the board in 1977, and subsequently left the organization. That same year, he formed Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The group is the subject of a reality show, Whale Wars.

He also promotes veganism, voluntary human population control, and a biocentric, rather than anthropocentric, worldview.^[2]