Marg

Diego Garcia, the shame of democracy…

Placed in the middle of the Indian Ocean are the tiny country of Chagos… a small gathering of 60 tropical islands, which as many other remote places, belongs to the UK, and which has never gained independence, as many other similar areas, like the nearby Maldives and Mauritius that both gained their independence in 1965, and also the nearby Seychelles that gained independence in 1976.

However nobody is left in the country of Chagos to claim independence for it, as the British Authorities, secretly during the 1960-ies forcefully deported the entire population to mainly the Maldives, where they and their ancestors today live in total misery and poverty.

The UK and the USA then got together and build a huge military base on one of the Chagos island, the Diego Garcia, where the USA still today run one of their largest overseas military bases, strategically placed near Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

Also Diego Garcia is home to their third “Camp Justice” that together with the more infamous one at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and the Kadhimiya in Iraq, that is mostly known to be the place where Saddam Hussein was executed, all form secret prisons with little insight as to what is being done or who is being kept there.

All this does not sound like the democracies we are used to think of. This does sound much more like something happening in a remote dictatorship or something in the old communistic Soviet Union. But this is happening in our democracies.

In 2000 a British court ruled that the replacement of the population of Chagos was invalid. This was totally ignored by the British Government. Many other court cases have arisen, and the latest recent ruling from the High Court states that the population of Chagos will never be allowed to return home.

How can we let this happen… of course during the sixties and seventies in the midst of the cold war, things could easily be hidden, as we simply were not allowed to know things that was going on – also shameful in a democracy – but today we do know much of it, but then we apparently still choose to be silent about is and thus simply let the people of Chagos suffer still. On the other hand many of them has died and they are just poor rural people and they are far away, why should we care about them?

But this is our democracy. If we start to ignore atrocities are we then not letting go of our moral values?  How can we let our governments forcefully deport whole populations to make way for military installations? This is similar to the deportations done by Stalin in the early Soviet era. Are we no better?

Let us not forget to clean our own back yards as we go after everybody else’s wrongdoings.

Let us try to set things right. Chagos is merely one of our own dark deeds that need to be corrected. We cannot allow our democracies to make people suffer. We should be better.

Let us bring all the Diego Garcias out in the open, and try to correct the wrongdoings of our leaders.

Let us begin by simply closing down the military base of Diego Garcia and letting the population of Chagos go home, and also pay for them so that they can start a living there.

We are already paying through our nose for other prestigious projects, like the independence of Kosovo. Chagos will be much much cheaper, and we will have undone a serious wrongdoing of our democracies.

The Chagos People’s Homeland Campaign

On Google Earth you can see Diego Garcia, by pasting the following in the search field:

7° 18′ 48″ S, 72° 24′ 40″ E

 

Nutritious mud cakes…

On CNN I have seen the pictures of the storm-wrecked country of Haiti after the hurricanes Gustav and Hanna. Pictures of poor people in flooded homes. Before the recent hurricanes Haiti was already one of the poorest countries in the world. Food has become expensive and scarce leaving the poorest of the population to eat “mud cakes”… simple recipe: salt, vinegar and dirt mixed and baked. The mud cakes can fill the belly and give a few needed minerals.

Haiti is, as known, situated in the Caribbean, occupying one third of the island of Hispaniola, where the other two thirds consist of the Dominican Republic.

CNN also showed storm pictures from the Dominican Republic, mostly I remember the Hummers and other big SUVs driving through the raising waters, and I am quite sure that nobody on the Dominican part of the island are eating mud cakes…

On the same CNN news I saw how US navy was distributing aid to the refugees of Georgia.

I truly do think that the needed in Georgia deserves help, and I feel thankful that they receive aid. But I was missing to see the US navy distributing aid to the needed people of Haiti. It really frustrates me that anybody has to eat mud to survive. And it frustrates me that this is just south of Florida; and on the neighbour island to Puerto Rico, that is a part of the USA.  

It is indeed gladly that USA can help needed people in far away countries, but why have they not felt the need to help the extremely troubled population of Haiti..?

I hate to think that the aid that USA gives to needed people is merely decided upon political or economical terms, rather than the suffering. Still Haiti has nothing whatsoever to offer USA; no raw materials, no oil, no strategic importance, and besides in all this misery a tragic comic dispute is happening between the powerful USA and Haiti, over a small uninhabited island called Navassa, which USA claims to belong to USA and Haiti claims it to belong to them.

Nobody in the world seems to care about Haiti, other than CNN reporters to get some catastrophic pictures, and in the meantime 8 million people there are suffering extremely hard.

Do they not need same attention as the suffering people of Georgia..?

But at least they have their mud on Haiti, perhaps they lack that in Georgia…

 

DN  DN  DN

just had a haircut...

I just passed a railroad crossing on the road. About a year ago it was restored. They dug up the road before and after and put some concrete between the rails and covered them with some special rubbery looking sheets and adding new asphalt to the road. After that is was very easy to drive over the crossing, I hardly felt anything in the car while passing it with 50 km per hour, which is the city speed limit in Tallinn.

But now, one year later, you feel like your car is falling apart after you try to cross it driving only 30 km per hour. Although it is still much much better than a few years ago, where it seemed like the rails had just been put on road, when you had to put your car to a full stop and then slowly climb over each rail…

But how come it is that when they in the Baltic countries repair something then it surely breaks down shortly after. When driving in Sweden and Denmark, and passing a railroad crossing there is very little disruption in the car even when passing in much higher speed than 50 km… and I have not seen anybody doing repair work on the crossing for many years.

This is the same with everything on the east side of the Baltic Sea. House repairs, newly build houses, road repairs etc. etc., one year later everything looks like it is falling apart.

It is like everything over here is about making fast money only. Quality and thoroughness is totally unknown concepts here.

Still many Baltic workers go to work in Scandinavia, and sadly they bring along their utterly lack of craftsmanship only concentrating of doing things fast and get their pay.

Those I have talked with who have used Baltic workers all agree that it is merely for the cheap pay and definitely not the quality.

This is one of the basic differences between east and west. When Soviet Union feel, no one seemed to care about anything but to make fast money. All infrastructure and buildings were left on their own accord for ten years, making everything deteriorate. Then EU came along, and the Baltic countries became part of that. Then a big chest of money was given to build up the infrastructure and restore buildings.

However the work is being done by the same workers, who restored the railroad crossing near my office here in Tallinn, so I cannot help wonder if those vast EU amounts spent, is worth it. I have already seen several recent EU financed roads start to crumble again.

If we do not want to see our tax money spent needlessly, EU better do something to raise the craftsmanship and quality of work in the new EU member states, than to just simply keep the flow of money available. Of course a better craftsmanship will also raise the salaries, but as food and gasoline are almost on western level anyway, the salaries will also come, hopefully with the much-needed quality and thoroughness in works too…

I just come from a visit to the hair-salon where I paid EUR 4,75 for a haircut… a year ago it was only EUR 2,25… but of course I am looking better than ever…