Stealing a Nation

Stealing a Nation recounts the expulsion of the indigenous population of the Chagos Islands in the 1960s and 1970s by the British government. Whitehall cleared the way for the US military to build an airbase on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands. American officials recognised that the island, located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, was an ideal site for a major military base, and later used it to launch attacks against targets in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Filmmaker John Pilger interviews Chagossians who were exiled to Mauritius between 1967 and 1973. He also questions how the British and American governments were able to evade accountability for actions later described by the United Nations as ‘a crime against humanity’. Stealing a Nation questions the morality of modern imperialism and the effectiveness of international governing bodies in preventing similar injustices.