Hacker Cinema
Stealing a Nation
2004 · Film · documentary · 56 min
Directed by John Pilger, Sean Crotty
This tells a story literally 'hidden from history'. In the 1960s and 70s, British governments, conspiring with American officials, tricked into leaving, then expelled the entire population of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean. 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. Indeed, from Diego Garcia US planes have since bombed Afghanistan and Iraq. The story is told by islanders who were dumped in the slums of Mauritius and in the words of the British officials who left a 'paper trail' of what the International Criminal Court now describes as 'a crime against humanity'
4 positive1 neutralfrom 5 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
5 comments on Hacker News
For those curious about this history, you can watch John Pilger’s 2004 documentary Stealing a Nation for free on his website: https://johnpilger.com/stealing-a-nation/
For those who prefer to read, historian Mark Curtis has published online an excerpt regarding Chagos from his 2003 book Web of Deceit: https://www.markcurtis.info/2007/02/12/the-depopulation-of-the-chagos-islands-1965-73/
There is a good documentary about it, "Stealing a Nation". Free on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/17401157
There's a good 2004 documentary by famous film maker John Pilger on the topic of Chagos: "Stealing A Nation".
Fully available on youtube, about 1h long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zhGvId4fcc
It seems that now also startup companies are (unwillingly, I presume) contributing to this lasting injustice.
I might me misremembering it, but I think this was told in the documentary Stealing a Nation [1].
According to Wikipedia, there is a commissioner with the Foreign Office that acts as administrator, but that commissioner is directly appointed by the Queen [2].
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealing_a_Nation
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_the_British_Indian_Ocean_Territory
John Pilger's "Stealing a Nation" documentary goes into the Chagos Islands in quite a lot of detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zhGvId4fcc