BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY
CAN THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION BE COMPARED TO THAT
OF THE ILOIS IN THE BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY?
5.
The honourable Member has raised what he sees as an
unfair comparison between the way the Falkland Islanders'
views on self-determination have been made paramount and the
apparent disregard of the views of the Ilois when the
decision was taken to create the British Indian Ocean Territory
for defence purposes in 1965.
6.
I would state quite clearly that, for the Ilois, the
issue of self-determination does not arise. The comparison
is misconceived, for the Ilois did not constitute a settled
and self-sustaining community with its own institutions and
civil administration such as were built up over many years
in the Falklands. The Ilois lived in the Chagos purely
because they had contracts to work on the plantations, which
provided the only employment on these remote islands. When the
plantations closed there was no alternative to resettlement.
7. In the Falkland Islands a self-sustaining society had
established itself, with its own civil administration, as
early as the 1840s. From this base the local inhabitants
gradually built up the economy and their institutions to
present levels.
4
/8.