> However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident.
I suspect it's factually untrue, but I'm more concerned with the moral implication that if we can find a wrong Y that is worse than wrong X, we shouldn't care about X.
There is a legitimate version of the argument, one where we triage resource usage. But our ability to recognize and acknowledge wrongs is not a limited resource. Indeed, this style of argument expends far more energy in denying the recognition of wrongs that it would take to say, "Why yes, that is wrong."
Definitely not "shouldn't care". But you should ask yourself "if there's a ton of materially similar things I'm ok with, why should I feel outraged about this one in particular?"
Sometimes the answer is that you shouldn't feel outraged at all, other times the answer will be that you should be outraged at all similar things. It's only rarely that the outrage should be focused on the one particular incident.
Luckily, the modern pragmatist is also socially aware.
Maybe so far out there that Richard Dawkins and Neil Degrasse Tyson are arguing in the other room... but its on the axis somewhere.
> But our ability to recognize and acknowledge wrongs is not a limited resource.
I just happen to be re-reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow at the moment, so this is very fresh on my mind. In fact, this does seem to be a limited resource, and the bias that overwhelming the resource creates is called the availability bias. Essentially, in cases where the media covers matters of lesser significance while ignoring matters of greater significance predictably leads people to weight the more heavily covered issue more highly despite its relative unimportance.
I don't know about the specific claim by the gp, but in general, I think it's socially useful to point out situations where a less covered related issue is not getting the appropriate amount of attention relative to a particular sensationalized issue in question.
Note: I'm interpreting 'recognize and acknowledge wrongs' as our ability to concert attention and restorative actions toward addressing issues, because this is where the rubber meets the road in addressing wrongs. So I'm responding more to a projection of wpietri's comment that I think is a bit more toward the consequential rather than a strict reading of her/his comment. This is clearly responding to a somewhat different argument than the one wpietri is making, so it shouldn't be construed as an argument against her/his statement so much as an argument inspired by her/his statement.
It doesn't matter if western countries mistreat their people sometimes, that doesn't justify mistreating the Chagossians or anyone else for that matter.
Even if you think 200 years isn't a strong claim to a nation, that doesn't change the fact those people lived there and were forceably removed from the islands.
I'm also curious, what is your cut-off point for a "strong" claim to a nation? 250 years? 500 years? 1 AD?
While there are plenty of arguments on what actually defines a nation from both historic cultural perspectives this one is a far stretch for any acceptable "litmus" test for a nation, even if it's simple because they never had the political legitimacy to being a nation state, not to mention ever had the capabilities of forming one.
Where they've mistreated? yes, do they deserve a compensation? yes, are they a nation? well not really if we are frank about it.
The question of "legally" invading someone's house is odd anyway, because legality implies some authority having deemed it appropriate. In the case of a neighbor's house, it is the government of the country containing the house. I can't think of an entity that establishes the "legal" way of creating/invading a country.
Of course this is all messed up. There's no reason a nation shouldn't be considered a nation just because it doesn't have a military.
Also, the argument about the late first population is silly. You wouldn't do this to any person. These are people, who's lifes have been ruined, and you can't do that to anybody. No matter if they are indigenous, 2nd generation immigrants, descendants of slave trade, or what ever. You don't do this to any people.
Such as? Most western legal systems require compensation in such cases… at least in theory.
/rant
To me, that means the "right price" is somewhere in that bounded range and makes eminent domain conflicts amenable to financial analysis.
Certainly internal forced replacement still happens and often has terrible consequences for people but internationally the Chagos situation is pretty unique, and what is especially unique is that something can be done about it.
(Link to a now slightly outdated page on our website on Return 2015 campaign)
If they had their land and own government called Chagos, it seems unlikely they'd have .io.
However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident.
And while i understand that some people might feel they've been stripped of their homeland, but considering that the Islands were populated for the 1st time in modern history less than 200 years ago and remained populated for a period of only about a 100 years it's not exactly the strongest backing for a claim to a nation.