Persistent Offenders

A lawyer for the Chagossians, who were swindled out of their homeland by the British government in return for a discount on some weapons of mass destruction, has called their treatment "a crime against humanity". Well, really. Launching a blueprint for the Chagossians' return, Richard Gifford speculated that "if Gordon Brown seems slow to criticise the Chinese leadership for their human rights abuses in Tibet, perhaps he is worried by the mote in his own eye". This seems a little optimistic given the standard degree of New New Labour sensitivity to such motes, which generally approximates the sensitivity of a sexually excited rhinocerous to the charms of a nocturne by Chopin. It is much more likely that Gordon Brown seems slow to criticise Chinese human rights abuses because Gordon Brown hopes one day to hold a fistful of lucrative directorships in companies whose continuing profitability will depend largely on the Chinese government.

In any case, the blueprint provides for the repatriation, at somewhat less than the cost of the National Identity Database, of a thousand people who would "sustain themselves through eco-tourism and fish exports". Efforts would be made "to train the Chagossians in conservation, to eradicate rodents and alien plants and crack down on poaching", while a "development trust" would "coordinate public and private investment", doubtless ensuring the profit of the latter at the expense of the former. Nevertheless, the Government now claims that resettling the islanders could lead to "substantial, open-ended" liabilities for the British taxpayer, and to environmenal damage; in other words, it would be quite unlike taking part in the opening of a free-for-all slaughterhouse for Muslims or subsidising nuclear power stations in the name of clean energy.