CNN: UN court ruling puts future of strategic US military base Diego Garcia into question
(CNN)The UK must return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius "as rapidly as possible," the United Nations' highest court ruled Monday, branding its occupation of the Indian Ocean archipelago illegal.
The islands, which are home to US military base Diego Garcia, were separated from the former British territory of Mauritius during decolonization in 1968. The international Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that act was illegal under international law.
For years, the US base has been vital to the military, serving as a landing spot for bombers that fly missions across Asia, including over the South China Sea. The UN ruling raises questions about its future.
The decision by the ICJ is merely advisory. The matter of who holds sovereignty over the Islands, located more than 2,000 miles off the east coast of Africa, will now be debated by the United Nations General Assembly -- which referred the case to the ICJ despite London's protests.
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WNU Editor: This international Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling is only advisory. The next step is to have this debated at the United Nations General Assembly, where I suspect that any decision is going to take a long time to be made. So for the moment, the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia is going no where.
sooooo soooory...google and discover how they got it!
ReplyDeleteNot going to happen.
ReplyDeleteSorry. the UN is really a joke. And the media writes up this bullshit like it really means something.
ReplyDeletecomment a joke...you mean nothing
ReplyDeleteDidn't a UN agency tell the Chinese to give some islands back to the Philippines? Did anybody notice China ignored that august judicial decree?
ReplyDeleteDiego Garcia is too important to the USA to give it up. This is a meaningless judgement with the force of a butterfly's fart.
Mauritius has ships and a functioning government?
ReplyDeleteI thought they were an area of reefs a thousand miles away from Diego Garcia.
Diego Garcia had no permanent inhabitants when discovered by the Spanish explorer Diego García de Moguer in the 16th century, then in the service of Portugal, and this remained the case until it was settled as a French colony in 1793.[19]
ReplyDeleteFrench settlement[edit]
Main article: Chagossians
Most inhabitants of Diego Garcia through the period 1793–1971 were plantation workers, but also included Franco-Mauritian managers, Indo-Mauritian administrators, Mauritian and Seychellois contract employees, and in the late 19th century, Chinese and Somali employees.
A distinct Creole culture called the Ilois, which means "islanders" in French Creole, evolved from these workers. The Ilois, now called Chagos Islanders or Chagossians since the late-1990s, were descended primarily from slaves brought to the island from Madagascar by the French between 1793 and 1810, and Malay slaves from the slave market on Pulo Nyas
So the French bought slaves from nice Muslims slave traders.