T.O. 86: France General Strike Now! – “Not One Penny” Part 2 – Ukraine War Escalation – U.S. Bases Out of Diego García! (LALIT)
Cover photo: In struggle till the Pension Reform is withdrawn!
March 16 Statement by the Independent Democratic Workers Party / POID of France
To Block Macron’s Assault on Democracy: GENERAL STRIKE!
On March 16, by a coup de force, [French President] Macron pushed through his destructive pension reform bill.
On March 16, the Fifth Republic displayed all the facets of its anti-democratic character. Thus, a law that has been adopted by no one could impose itself and destroy the right to retirement of millions of workers.[1]
Thus, the institutions of the Fifth Republic would make it possible, in defiance of the absolute majority position of the people, to impose this destruction of workers’ rights.
Some in the “left” parties reproach this vote for not being in conformity with the Constitution. On the contrary, it is in line with France’s anti-working class and anti-democratic Constitution, which allows all kinds of blows against workers and young people.
Tonight [March 16], thousands of workers and young people gathered at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The members of the Independent Democratic Workers’ Party were among them, just as they were present in the rallies and demonstrations in the regions across France. They shouted: “Down with Macron and the 49.3! General Strike!” They made the POID’s position known.
Tomorrow, Friday, in the workplaces, in the assemblies, in the trade union meetings at all levels, the workers will discuss the situation. Through the discussion they will establish how the immense force of millions and millions can come together to counter the government’s power grab.
Nothing is over. Nothing is finished.
Everything is concentrated in the call for a general strike.
Everything is concentrated in the responsibility of the leaders of the trade union confederations to call without delay for a general strike to force Macron and his minority government to back down.
Endnote
Translator’s Note: Article 49.3 of the French Constitution, adopted under De Gaulle in 1958, enshrines an “imperial” presidency; that is, it allows the president to rule by decree, bypassing both the National Assembly and the Senate.
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Report on the February 25 Antiwar Meeting in Davis, Calif. “Not One Penny, Not One Weapon for Unjust Wars!”
Part 2 of 2-Part Report
Forty-four labor and community activists from across the United States, along with delegates from Mexico and Canada, met on Saturday, February 25 in Davis, California (in-person or via zoom) to discuss what strategy is needed to build a united mass, anti-war movement in the United States.
The event was sponsored by the Sacramento chapter of the Labor Committee for Latin American Advancement/AFL-CIO, Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP), and Socialist Organizer.
Part 1 of this report-back was published in Issue No. 85 of The Organizer. We are publishing below the second and final part of the report:
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Presentation by Millie Phillips, Member of the Continuations Committee of Labor and Community for an Independent Party (LCIP)
Hello, I’m Millie Phillips, and I am here representing LCIP. Before I get into the role of LCIP in relation to war I want to talk briefly about who we are and what we stand for.
LCIP was founded for the most part by people who originally were part of the Labor Party of the 1990s, an effort that failed. And some of us learned some lessons from that experience, one of which was that you can’t build a party that’s so dominated by the union bureaucracy and leadership of the labor movement without having rank-and-file workers be part of the leadership of that party.
You also cannot build a party without connecting to the community and all the organizations of marginalized communities, many of which have been historically excluded from parts of organized labor. That’s why we focus on labor and community, not one or the other, but both.
And the reason why we think labor is an important component of the struggle is because the labor movement is the only institution, at least in the United States, that represents the working class as a class; it crosses racial and gender and ethnic and national and religious lines.
There is no other institution that has that kind of power. Labor has that power if we choose to use it. We think that labor is an absolutely important component of this struggle. And, of course, all the different marginalized communities and people who are oppressed in different ways have be part of the struggle from the beginning. Not brought into the leadership later, but there from the beginning and all the way through.
I think our meeting here represents that conception. We walk our talk. We have two main approaches to organizing. One is to organize labor and community coalitions that can run candidates for political office, and Sacramento has the basis for one here. The other is to organize in the labor movement to get committees to work on supporting the political concept of the Labor Party. That part we have yet to develop.
In relation to war, not only in Ukraine but across the globe, we are opposed to the Democrats and Republicans because we see that they support the wars. They support this $900 billion war budget that is not only killing people around the world but preventing people here at home from having universal healthcare, free college, housing, social services.
That money could be spent on dealing with the issues of climate change, which is the other existential threat to our existence in addition to nuclear war. Think of how much that money could be used to benefit people around the world. A fraction of that budget could go toward eliminating world hunger. We have to make sure that the resources are returned to us, the people who produced these resources.
Our government is using the money to kill people and to prevent people from fighting back. We have to make sure that we break with that system. That’s why we say that war is a working-class issue. It’s a labor issue. It’s an issue for communities of color, who are the first to register in the “economic draft.”
[Millie Phillips concluded her remarks by inviting all the participants in the February 25 antiwar strategy conference to actively support the LCLIP National Conference on May 13 in Compton College (Los Angeles area) and online. See the “Save-the-Date” notification in our last posting of The Organizer. This proposal was adopted overwhelmingly.]
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Photo: No to War in 47 countries on December 9-10 at initiative of IWC.
NILOU KHONSARI, from Iranians for Abolition, a group of leftist women in the U.S. diaspora, called for an end to the massive State repression against peaceful protestors and the abolition of Iranian prisons. Nilou grew up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.
Last year, there was a huge uprising after Mahsa Amini (also known as Jina Amini), a member of historically oppressed Kurdish people, was killed for refusing the hijab. This killing was in the spotlight because the images were so cruel. She was beaten to death.
The uprising went far beyond that – it became a global uprising of women and gender non-conforming, against Iranian oppression of women and the legal structure that deprives women of all rights to children if they are separated from the father.
A number of executions followed the uprising. It’s not possible to donate to the international solidarity effort because of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. We can uplift and amplify these voices. WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM!
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PAUL NKUNZIMANA, a political activist and supporter of the IWC in Canada, was the next to speak. Following is his presentation:
Hello comrades and friends,
I am Paul Nk., correspondent in Canada of the International Workers Committee for a Workers’ International and delegate to the World Conference Against War and Exploitation in Paris on October 29-30, 2022. I thank the organizers for inviting me to this meeting to respond to the call by the International Workers Committee to carry out initiatives throughout the world on February 24 and 25, 2023, to say No to war! No to any “sacred union” / national unity with warmongering governments!
Comrades and friends,
This initiative marks the first anniversary of the intervention of Putin’s Russian troops in Ukraine – a war whose responsibility falls upon the imperialist powers through the military escalation in Eastern Europe by NATO, at the behest of U.S. imperialism and Biden. This war is growing and spreading, and these same powers are raising the specter of a third world war. All the imperialist powers of the planet are in league behind the United States, the biggest contributor in this war which is wreaking havoc in Ukraine and whose strategic objective is China, as certain leaders constantly proclaim.
At the injunction of NATO and Biden, Canada – which has sent troops and war equipment to Eastern Europe since 1991 – increased its military budget. Since 2014, the budget of the Canadian armed forces has increased by 70%.
The Canadian government has just announced yet another 70% increase in military spending over the next five years. Last month, it concluded an agreement with the U.S. government for the purchase of 88 F-35 fighter planes, and it is planning the purchase of warships and armed drones. In recent months, the Trudeau government sent to Ukraine hundreds of armored vehicles for the transport of troops and anti-aircraft defense systems. It also announced the delivery to Ukraine of the first four Leopard combat tanks.
This warmongering policy has had disastrous consequences for the working masses and the youth: rising prices for food products, everyday consumer services, housing, transport, health care … while provincial governments like in Ontario are privatizing health systems.
Comrades and friends,
The facts are there: The war in Ukraine only increases the profits of the capitalists, in particular those in the armaments industry, the energy sector, and the banks.
In all sectors of the population, workers and young people resist, fight and oppose the war. They are particularly angered by the huge sums diverted for the war, away from satisfying their basic demands. Workers and young people are confronted with the policy of “sacred union” / national unity of the leaders – such as the NDP- and the trade union officials) who claim to speak in their name. Working people must demand that the latter break with the Trudeau government, for the withdrawal of Canada from NATO, the dismantling of NATO and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and for the sovereignty of the peoples.
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KARINA ACREE-PAEZ, the Western Region coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace, presented BAP’s antiwar demands for discussion and broad distribution.
See the demands below:
• Immediate Ceasefire
• Humanitarian aid and resettlement of all refugees and displaced persons in Ukraine and Donbas Region
• Cease all shipments of NATO weapons to Ukraine and negotiate Ukrainian NATO neutrality
• Expulsion of all foreign white supremacist and neo-Nazi forces from Ukraine
• That NATO, a structure for advancing the interests of white supremacy and the U.S. empire, be dismantled.
[• The U.S. government renounce its commitment to the doctrine of global “Full Spectrum Dominance.”
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DECISIONS
[1] The meeting voted to reaffirm and promote widely the following demands – demands formulated by the International Workers Committee Against War and Exploitation, for a Workers’ International. These were the demands around which the Davis meeting was convened:
• Russian Troops Out of Ukraine!
• U.S.-NATO Troops Out of Europe!
• Disband NATO!
• No Sanctions! Ceasefire Now!
• Close U.S. Military Bases Worldwide!
• Neither Putin, Nor Biden – No Support
for Warmongering Governments!
• Not One Penny, Not One Weapon for Unjust Wars!
• Billions for Jobs, Schools, Healthcare, Immigration Reform/DREAMers
& Social Services — Not War!
[2] The meeting voted to support and build the May 13 National LCIP Conference titled, “Build an Independent Working-Class Party, Break the Grip of the Two-Party System.” For more information, go to http://www.lcipcommittee.org.
[3] The meeting voted to support the appeal in defense of the Palestinian people, currently under heavy attack from the Israeli government and the hordes of settlers in the Nablus region of Palestine. The meeting also voted to endorse and promote the March 10 protest in front of the Israeli consulate in San Francisco. Meeting participants stressed the importance of designating the State of Israel as an Apartheid State and demanding that U.S. aid to Israel by stopped and that the AFL-CIO break its ties to the Histadrut “trade union” federation.
[4] The meeting voted to support the 55 ICE detainees on a hunger strike in Bakersfield and MacFarland, Calif. They are waging the strike to demand the shutting down of all ICE detention centers and the release of all detainees. The meeting also voted to support the March 5 mobilization to the Mesa Verde Detention Center in Bakersfield.
[5] The meeting voted to support the March 8 International Women’s Day events organized by labor and community groups in our areas. The meeting urged solidarity with the Afghan women suffering under the boot of the Taliban, as well as solidarity with the embattled Iranian women. Background information on the international IWC campaign in support of the Afghan women — including a petition — can be accessed in Issue No. 85 of The Organizer and at the following website: DefendAfghanWomen.org. The meeting voted to continue gathering signatures for the petition.
Photo: Fired Namibian miners executive committee members
[6] The meeting voted to support the Global Day of Action for the Namibian Rossing miners on March 28. Labor rights activists will be demanding an end to the union-busting at the Namibia Rossing Uranium Mine by the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). They are also demanding the rehiring of the nine fired union branch executive committee members and an end to the persecution of Namibian labor lawyer Hewat Beukes.
In 2019, the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation bought the Rossing uranium mine. Despite promises that they would abide by the contract and Namibian labor laws, CNNC demanded concessions on health care and brought in Chinese national replacement workers.
CNNC then fired the entire union leadership in August 2020 in a union-busting move. The company has also stalled arbitration for years.
The Bay Area solidarity rally with the Namibian workers will take place Tuesday, March 28 at 4 pm at the San Francisco Chinese Consulate (1450 Laguna St./Geary St.)
[7] The meeting called for a campaign within the trade union movement to break with Democratic Party and the National Endowment for Democracy, which funnels U.S. State Department funding to the labor movement to promote the aims and goals of U.S. imperialism – including support to murderous regimes and interventionist wars, from the Dominican Republic to Chile.
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U.S.-NATO WAR IN UKRAINE:
At Any Moment the Conflict Could Escalate and Extend to Neighboring Countries
By Jean Allain
Massive Russian bombardments hit Ukraine on March 9. This was in response to the incursion into Russian territory on March 2 by fighters from a “Russian volunteer unit” of the Ukrainian army.
Meanwhile, deadly fighting continues in Bakhmut in a devastated city where civilians are holed up trying to survive. At the same time, the separatist leaders of Transnistria (in eastern Moldova and thus on the border with Ukraine) are accusing the Ukrainian government of having instigated an attack. Transnistria is home to Russian military bases: At any moment, the conflict could escalate and spread to neighboring countries.
While acting in his own interests as head of State and head of the Catholic Church, the Pope was nonetheless speaking the truth when he said on March 12 that this is indeed “a world war” in which “the great powers are all involved. And the battlefield is Ukraine.” Who would dare to say otherwise?
While everyone is preparing “their” spring offensive, the participation of NATO members, starting with the United States, is no longer limited to the massive dispatch of weapons. Thus, Le Monde (March 9) writes:
“Is this a sign that a new phase of the war is being prepared? According to several Anglo-Saxon media, the U.S. army organized, all last week, on the base of Wiesbaden (Germany), simulations “on the table” to prepare the new offensives of the Kiev forces. Several dozen members of the Ukrainian staff participated in these exercises, called “wargames” in military jargon. Translation: it is the U.S. army that is organizing the Ukrainian offensive.
These events would almost make other revelations in the mainstream press go unnoticed. This is the case, for example, of the sabotage operations carried out at the end of September 2022 against the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines (owned by German capitalists to import Russian oil) – operations that were carried out by a mysterious “pro-Ukrainian group.”
At the time, the Biden administration claimed that the United States had nothing to do with it, accusing the Putin regime of being responsible. And now such respectable newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post and Die Zeit are saying the opposite.
Whoever was responsible, the sabotage of the pipelines, symbols of the cooperation between German capitalists and Russian oligarchs, has in any case made some people happy: “The jump in European demand, which can no longer rely on Russian gas, is encouraging the growth of the U.S. natural gas sector, which could double its exports within five years. (Le Temps, Jan. 31).
“One thinks one is dying for the fatherland, one actually dies for the industrialists” is how Anatole France put it. While the U.S. gas magnates are counting their profits, in Bakhmut, it is the young Ukrainians and Russians who are sacrificed.
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U.S. Military Base Out of Diego García (Indian Ocean)!: A Report for The Organizer by LALIT (Mauritius)
If anyone in the U.S. working class wants to understand the link between British colonialism and the USA’s imperialism today, there is no better introduction than to look at a single case: the U.S. military base on an atoll called Diego Garcia. It is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and the base is named, irony of ironies, “Camp Justice”.
Diego Garcia, when Britain stole it and leased it to the USA in the late 1960s, was the moment the British withdrew their empire “East of Aden” in the Suez crisis, and handed it over to the USA. Later, from here, the B-52s would take off to bombard the people of Baghdad. From here, planes would bomb a wedding procession in Afghanistan. Here, the USA tortured and rendered prisoners. All of this was outside of any democratic control. Diego Garcia is even shadier than all the 800 U.S. bases abroad.
How come the USA state occupies this land half-a-world away? Without the American people being aware of it?
Here are the facts. You can check on the latest UN map of the world (1): Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Archipelago, which is part of the Republic of Mauritius, which is, politically speaking, a member of the African Union. So, how come the USA occupies Diego Garcia?
Understanding this issue will also give a hint as to why half the world’s population, despite not being “half-wits”, lives in countries that do not support the USA’s resolutions at the UN against Russia over the war in Ukraine. Both Ukraine and Diego Garcia, like Palestine, concern the international law on illegal occupation. Most of the world’s people are represented at the UN by states that, as a sign of minimum enlightenment, believe that the same legal and moral standards apply to all states.
And, why is the Diego Garcia occupation in the news now?
Well, it took 50 years of struggle of mainly the Mauritian working class, including Chagossians, to force our government to put the issue on the agenda of the UN: forcing the UK to complete its decolonization of the late 1960s of Mauritius; exposing the cruel “depopulating” of this part of Mauritius called Chagos; and making known the UK’s continued colonization of this part of Mauritius, and its sub-letting part of Chagos, Diego Garcia, to the USA for its military base there.
The continued colonization by Britain and military occupation by the USA of part of the Republic of Mauritius has always been against international law. Curiously, it was declared illegal from before the deed was even done: the UN General Assembly passed resolutions specifically calling on Britain not to do this.(2)
Then for the next 50 years, the Mauritian working class, including the Chagossians displaced to Mauritius main island, did everything imaginable to put the issue on the national agenda in Mauritius, and on the world agenda. Dock workers in Rotterdam supported us in the 1970s – they gave proof of nuclear material going there. Port workers in San Francisco supported us in the 1990s. In the No Bases movement, Diego Garcia was, like the now-closed bases in Puerto Rico and Ecuador, top of the agenda for closing down.
Photo: LALIT ran 28 candidates in all 20 electoral districts in 2014.
We, in the Mauritian political party LALIT, together with dozens of organizations, including Chagossian organizations, managed to pull together and pull separately to change the balance of forces enough – in the country and internationally – to make the Mauritian government act. First, Mauritius went to the Tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and won a victory when the UK tried to declare a Marine Protected Area around Chagos. It was declared illegal because Chagos was not theirs. Then the Mauritian state(5) went to the African Union, as we had called for it to do, to prepare for a challenge at the UN. The African Union proposed a UN General Assembly Resolution to ask, quite simply, that the International Court of Justice give the General Assembly an Advisory Opinion as to whether Britain had, in the 1960s decolonized Mauritius properly, or only partially, and thus still colonized part of Africa.(6)
The ICJ in 2019 duly gave the General Assembly its opinion: Britain had acted illegally and must get out of “Chagos, including Diego Garcia”, because it is part of, and always has been of, what is now the Republic of Mauritius.
The UN General Assembly then voted another resolution, giving Britain six months to decolonize the whole of Mauritius, by leaving Chagos, including Diego Garcia.
So, this was an historic victory. The international law was made clear. Britain must get out. But, as everyone knows, “international law” depends also upon the balance of forces.
But, here too, there was political victory. After the occupation of Chagos was declared illegal, after the displacement of the Chagossians to the main island of Mauritius was exposed as a crime against humanity, the UK-USA alliance was isolated. With it are three countries only: Victor Orban’s Hungary, Bibi Netanyahu’s Israel, and then Scott Morrison’s Australia. The Maldives had voted with the UK-USA, but in January 2023 publicly withdrew its support.(7) The UK-USA was left totally isolated.
So, will the UK decolonize Chagos, and the USA close down its base and leave?
Not so easily. All along, the UK and USA have insisted that the issue is merely a question of “sovereignty”. As such, they argue, it can be resolved by “bilateral negotiations” between the UK and Mauritius. The UK and USA’s UN representatives’ speeches can be summarized by these three words: “sovereignty” and “bilateral negotiations”.
The UK-USA, before they lost at the UN, had a “Plan B”. Their Plan B was to make the best of a bad situation: hold a referendum amongst only part of the people in the former colony, the Chagossians. Here is how this came about. In order to steal Chagos, the UK-USA had had to commit two crimes simultaneously in the late 1960s: cut Mauritius in two and forcibly remove the people living on one part of Mauritius to the main island.
But it was impossible to do the two things simultaneously: one took only a few seconds, a Royal Decree, while the other took years, as the UK-USA lured, tricked, then starved and finally forcibly removed the people living there. This meant that the Mauritians living there at the time of the Royal Decree that set up a new colony “British Indian Ocean Territory” (BIOT) when the rest of Mauritius became independent, became “British”. So, the UK-US’s “Plan B” from about the year 2000, if not before, was to dish out as many British passports to as many Chagossians as possible, then declare them a separate “people”, then have “consultations” or a “referendum” as to whether they wanted to continue under the “British Indian Ocean Territory” flag or not.
The only problem was that the UN has decided that the issue is not an ordinary one of “sovereignty”, but one of “decolonization”, the decolonization of Africa. And this was made clear by the African Union being the entity that acted at the UN General Assembly.
But, since the UK-USA have no other Plan B, they will try to change the balance of forces in their favor, little-by-little for their old Plan B.
They began by tricking the American NGO Human Rights Watch into declaring the issue is one of “sovereignty” (i.e. not decolonization), and HRW added that “sovereignty” is “secondary”.(8) Once HRW says this, and acts upon it in its February 2023 Report,(9) it has fallen into the UK-USA trap.
They remove decolonization and base closure from the agenda. HRW does this at the very moment when victory is won under “international law of decolonization” and when the UK and USA have support only from Orban, Netanyahu and the previous Australian Prime Minister. HRW says the UK and USA have to make apologies and pay reparations. Of course, they have to. But, they must get out of Chagos, and off of Diego Garcia.
It is important for HRW to remember that the UK and USA, while not liking HRW accusing them of committing crimes against humanity, are used to hearing this. What is on the agenda is to proceed with the total decolonization of Africa and the closing down of the U.S. military base. That is what the UK-USA want hidden. To make matters worse, the military base is in violation of a binding treaty, the Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear Arms Free Africa, a legacy from the South African working classes’ struggle. Nelson Mandela’s government agreed to shut down the South African nuclear arms facility at Pelindaba (set up with Israeli and French aid in the Apartheid era) in exchange for this Treaty.
What the UK-USA want now is what it has wanted since the 1960s: to continue colonization to allow military occupation of Chagos, in particular of Diego Garcia. They want no democratic control from Mauritians, including Chagossians. HRW falls further into the trap. It calls for British consultations with “Chagossians” separately from the rest of Mauritians i.e., the British Plan B. This kind of selective referendum is not just against the decolonization law but is also against basic logic. Britain and France might well have organized a little referendum in each colony around, say, a gold mine, keep that district, and give the rest of a country its “independence”.
This is not the first time a Western NGO has fallen into a UK-USA plot. Greenpeace did the same thing(10) when it publicly supported the UK declaring a Marine Protected Area around Chagos, since exposed by the Wikileaks Cables as a “plot” to maintain colonization, and declared illegal by the UNCLOS tribunal.
The fatal errors committed by two respectable NGOs like Greenpeace and HRW show how single-issue organizations suffer ethical blind spots, and/or their bank-rollers put pressure on them, and/or they lack a proper political perspective on colonization and occupation by the West. NGOs end up being part of the state apparatus, in the Marxist sense of the word “state”.
We conclude by calling on working class organizations in the USA to continue their quest for an overall political perspective. Otherwise places like Diego Garcia become “dark holes” outside all democratic control. Otherwise it will be difficult to see how the Ukraine war may be the USA’s equivalent to Britain’s withdrawal “East of Aden” and to factor this into nationwide struggles.
We express our appreciation of The Organizer’s constant work of providing such a political perspective for the working class struggle world-wide.
The whole of human society is at stake today. Both environmental collapse and war, which are related, threaten our existence. Only working class political organization – however difficult – can provide the kind of democracy needed to end the capitalist pillage and destruction of the planet. Long live internationalism!
Endnotes
(1) United Nations Geospatial, location data for a better world, United Nations, 1 February 2020.
(2) Resolution 2066 Question of Mauritius, the United Nations General Assembly,
“Noting with deep concern that any step taken by the administering Power to detach certain islands from the Territory of Mauritius for the purpose of establishing a military base would be in contravention of the Declaration…” [Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples contained in Resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960]
And
“3. Invites the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to take effective measures with a view to the immediate and full implementation of resolution 1514 (XV);
“4. Invites the administering Power to take no action which would dismember the Territory of Mauritius and violate its territorial integrity;”
Link: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/203559/files/A_RES_2066%28XX%29-EN.pdf?ln=en
(3)The Labour Government was in power in Mauritius (Despite its name, it no longer represents labour.)
(4) Arbitral Tribunal Award, 18 March 2015, in the matter of the Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration under The United Nations Convention on The Law of the Sea between the Republic of Mauritius and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Tribunal in its Award “concludes that the United Kingdom has breached Articles 2(3) and 56(2) and therefore finds that the proclamation of the MPA was incompatible with the Convention”. MU-UK 20150318 Award, p. 210, para. 536
Link: https://www.pcacases.com/pcadocs/MU-UK%2020150318%20Award.pdf
(5) The Mouvement Socialiste Militant was in power in Mauritius, and still is. (Despite its name, the MSM was never really “socialist” or “militant”.)
(6) Resolution 71/292 “Request for an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965” adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 22 June 2017.
Link: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1290265/files/A_RES_71_292-EN.pdf?ln=en
(7) Mr Ibrahim Riffath, Attorney General of the Maldives at the International Tribunal for the Law Of the Sea, 20 October 2022. ITLOS/PV.22C28/3, p. 4, lines 7-24
(8) HRW website 8 November 2022, News section “Chagos Islands: Include Long-Expelled Residents in Negotiations” Mausi Segun, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division said. “The question of who is sovereign over the islands should be secondary to the rights and welfare of the people who call Chagos home.”
Link: https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/11/08/chagos-islands-include-long-expelled-residents-negotiations
(9) HRW Report on Chagos February 15, 2023 “That’s When the Nightmare Started”
(10) LALIT Mauritius website News section, 8 February, 2010. LALIT “Open Letter to Greenpeace not to Fall into UK Trap”
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