Though small in num­ber, the indige­nous peo­ple of Diego Gar­cia and the Chagoss­ian Islands in the Indi­an Ocean have endured a suf­fer­ing both relent­less and intense. In the ear­ly 1970s, they were bru­tal­ly dera­ci­nat­ed and dumped in Mau­ri­tius and Sey­chelles to make way for a U.S. mil­i­tary base.

Anthro­pol­o­gist David Vine reports in his new book, Island of Shame: The Secret His­to­ry of the U.S. Mil­i­tary Base on Diego Gar­cia (Prince­ton, May), the islanders had homes – idyl­lic though mod­est – employ­ment, health­care, a diet of fish, fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, envi­able longevi­ty, tra­di­tions, the mem­o­ries of their ances­tors and a cul­tur­al life extend­ing back over cen­turies in the Cha­gos arch­i­pel­ago. But through a num­ber of legal­is­tic and diplo­mat­ic deceits pro­mul­gat­ed by the British and U.S. gov­ern­ments, the archipelago’s 2,000 islanders was expelled, cart­ed away in over­crowd­ed ships with­out food or sanitation.

The dis­pos­sessed Chagos­sians received minute com­pen­sa­tion. They were nev­er paid for their expro­pri­at­ed homes. They lost their veg­etable gar­dens and were not per­mit­ted to bring pets or belong­ings into exile. (Indeed, they watched their dogs be gassed to death and incin­er­at­ed before they were eject­ed from the islands.) They lost their jobs in the coconut indus­try. No occu­pa­tions await­ed them in Mau­ri­tius, and they were not trained for new employment.

The Chagos­sians were basi­cal­ly dumped in their new ​“homes.” Many lived on the streets, while oth­ers paid exor­bi­tant prices for tin shacks in slums. Money­len­ders and mer­chants vic­tim­ized them, tak­ing their mis­er­able hov­els as col­lat­er­al for loans and pur­chas­es and lat­er evict­ing them. They could not find jobs. As out­siders and peo­ple of African – , not the more-priv­i­leged Indi­an – descent, they faced dis­crim­i­na­tion. Alco­hol, drugs and sui­cide took a toll. Diet dete­ri­o­rat­ed. They died young, and ill­ness­es utter­ly new to them – mal­nu­tri­tion, dia­betes, heart dis­ease, hyper­ten­sion, tuber­cu­lo­sis – became ram­pant. Large num­bers became clin­i­cal­ly depressed. Many sim­ply died of bro­ken hearts. They were treat­ed, Vine writes, like ​“rub­bish people.”

This was no acci­den­tal side effect of the military’s base con­struc­tion. The mil­i­tary explic­it­ly banned employ­ment of any indige­nous peo­ple on its base, though it import­ed work­ers from else­where. And it for­bade return vis­its by the locals, even to tend the graves of their ances­tors. It wasn’t until March, 2006, that bad pub­lic­i­ty and court cas­es forced British author­i­ties to per­mit one vis­it. Pri­or to the expul­sion, all offi­cial reports por­trayed the inhab­i­tants as tran­sient labor­ers rather than a native pop­u­la­tion. This was done in order to deny their exis­tence and their right to the land, and thus to avoid all polit­i­cal, legal and finan­cial redress.

Though one can­not know the exact atti­tude of U.S. offi­cials, David Vine apt­ly quotes Hen­ry Kissinger on the removal of the res­i­dents of the Mar­shall Islands in 1969: ​“There are only 90,000 peo­ple out there. Who gives a damn?” With that atti­tude, there was no hope for the 2,000 Chagos­sians. Clear­ly no one in pow­er thought any­one would care about their fate.

The Chagos­sians’ dis­place­ment is not unique in the his­to­ry of U.S. mil­i­tary bases abroad. But, as Vine points out, the lies fab­ri­cat­ed to con­ceal the secret agree­ment in the Cha­gos Arch­pel­ga­go are par­tic­u­lar­ly aston­ish­ing. Sec­re­tary of State Dean Rusk described the islands to Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son as ​“vir­tu­al­ly unin­hab­it­ed.” And in June 1964, the John­son Admin­is­tra­tion pres­sured the Wash­ing­ton Post not to run sto­ries that might cause trou­ble. The Post sto­ries that were pub­lished referred to the pop­u­la­tion as ​“large­ly tran­sient laborers.”

Vine does an excel­lent job of doc­u­ment­ing the machi­na­tions of mil­i­tary plan­ners and politi­cians in the 1960s and 1970s, as they sought to evade unwel­come atten­tion from the press, the Unit­ed Nations or any court sys­tem. This was the end of decol­o­niza­tion, the era of impe­r­i­al plun­der and eth­nic cleans­ing was sup­pos­ed­ly over and noth­ing would have looked worse than what was actu­al­ly happening.

Vine details at length how no oth­er empire has had as many for­eign bases – rough­ly 1,000 – as the Unit­ed States. A few African islanders were not about to thwart the largest mil­i­tary machine in his­to­ry. So a cast of char­ac­ters, includ­ing for­eign pol­i­cy offi­cial Paul Nitze, Admi­ral Elmo Zumwalt, for­mer White House and CIA offi­cial Robert Komer (infa­mous for run­ning oper­a­tion Phoenix in Viet­nam) and Admi­ral Arleigh Burke con­cealed and mis­rep­re­sent­ed the removal of an incon­ve­nient pop­u­la­tion. The stakes, as these pooh-bahs saw them, were quite high. Vine quotes mil­i­tary ana­lyst John Pike telling him that the U.S. military’s goal is ​“to run the plan­et from Guam and Diego Gar­cia by 2015, even if the entire East­ern Hemi­sphere has drop-kicked us” from every oth­er base.

“Although the British Gov­ern­ment and its agents per­formed most of the phys­i­cal work involved in dis­plac­ing the Chagos­sians,” Vine writes, ​“the U.S. Gov­ern­ment ordered, orches­trat­ed and financed the expul­sion.” But recent­ly the Chagos­sians have chal­lenged the des­tiny so care­ful­ly pre­pared for them, and they have won court cas­es. They hope they may yet receive com­pen­sa­tion and the right to return to their arch­i­pel­ago. After all, if gleam­ing yachts are allowed to dock on these gor­geous islands, why shouldn’t the orig­i­nal inhab­i­tants be wel­come there as well?