Acensbart
Excellent but underrated film
Justina
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Francene Odetta
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
tamaycoD
This might contain a spoiler, so beware.If it had been 200,000 thousand or two million people, does it make a difference? Sometimes I get so angry at the apparent apathy of a small number of (strangely very LOUD) Americans, but I have to remember that many people here in the US were not bred or raised to care about anything outside of their comfort zone. God Help us for what we have done. after the relative ease of what we did to the native Americans, and the indifference to the horrors of enslaving a race, you would think we'd have grown hearts and souls in the late 60's and early 70's. But now I see it is OK as long as our ends are justified to only us. How then, can we look at any other dictator and horrible government and think we are somehow doing good to impose our will? We are contradictory and hypocritical, and I am ashamed for this. I feel sorrow for the people affected. They deserve justice and their homes back. If this was done in my name as an American for my supposed safety, I don't want it. I denounce these actions, and hope our global community understands that many Americans believe the American government is a runaway train of deceit. No one is above the law. I want my country back, and so do the Chagos Islanders. Regardless of what people post from the anonymity of their computers, no one can in their heart deny that they would be unwilling to give up their birthplace for some bombs and heliports. We can't stand to be stuck in traffic, let alone forcibly and unjustly removed from our homes. 'Not one of us, Brit and American alike forget what goes around comes around. Don't buy into the fallacy that a simpler, more natural civilization is somehow less worthy of having their rights observed, and preserved - when we turn our backs on the basic human rights and dignities of 2000, we turn away from the basic human rights and dignities of all men.
Alain English
This documentary explores a story covered in Pilger's latest book "Freedom Next Time", which was published in 2006. It reveals the shocking expulsion of the natives of Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean.The islanders are technically British citizens, as Diego Garcia is a British colony, much like Mauritius, the nearby island to where the natives were exiled, used to be. But the British government has ignored their pleas to return to their homeland, as the island is now a military base for the United States army, who have used it as a basis for the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan.As usual, Pilger's coverage is shocking, especially as he documents the treatment and the current impoverished living conditions of the surviving islanders. His interviews all round are excellent, and his cornering of a Parliament representative where he uses the Government's own information to pin him down, ranks as one of his best.Pilger also uses dramatic reconstruction to dissect a series of recently released documents that fully illuminate the British conspiracy to evict the natives. The weaving of this footage with the interviews, and the islanders music, really heightens the film's impact.It is not easy viewing, but "Stealing a Nation" is John Pilger at his best. Recommended.
aliceboy
The endless bounds of our inhumanity to our own kind never fails to stun me. This truly astonishing story of a horrifically abused and largely unheard-of population is compelling, well-documented and enraging. As an American, I am constantly humiliated by my country's behaviour and this is just another in our long catalogue of international debasement. We suck. This is probably the first John Pilger documentary I've seen, but it immediately made me want to see what else he's done. My only complaint, and the reason I gave this film only 8 out of 10, is that Pilger shows us this travesty and the appalling collaboration of the US and UK governments, demands that we viewers/citizens are complicit in our own inaction...but makes no suggestion of how to help. I don't know about Britain, but America's made it nearly impossible for the citizenry to take part in their government's doings. A gesture in the right direction might help these islanders' cause.
Always_against_torture
This well conceived and carefully researched documentary outlines the appalling case of the Chagos Islanders, who, it shows, between 1969 and 1971, were forcibly deported en masse from their homeland through the collusion of the British and American governments. Anglo-American policy makers chose to so act due to their perception that the islands would be strategically vital bases for controlling the Indian Ocean through the projection of aerial and naval power. At a time during the Cold War when most newly independent post-colonial states were moving away from the Western orbit, it seems British and American officials rather felt that allowing the islanders to decide the fate of the islands was not a viable option. Instead they chose to effect the wholesale forcible removal of the native population. The film shows that no provision was made for the islanders at the point of their ejection, and that from the dockside in Mauritius where they were left, the displaced Chagossian community fell into three decades of privation, and in these new circumstances, beset by homesickness, they suffered substantially accelerated rates of death.Following the passage of more than three decades, however, in recent months (and years), following the release of many utterly damning papers from Britain's Public Record Office (one rather suspects that there was some mistake, and these papers were not supposed to have ever been made public), resultant legal appeals by the Chagossian community in exile have seen British courts consistently find in favour of the islanders and against the British State. As such, the astonishing and troubling conclusions drawn out in the film can only reasonably be seen as proved. Nevertheless, the governments of Great Britain and the United States have thus far made no commitment to return the islands to what the courts have definitively concluded are the rightful inhabitants. This is a very worthwhile film for anyone to see, but it is an important one for Britons and Americans to watch. To be silent in the face of these facts is to be complicit in a thoroughly ugly crime.
