From: Press TV

Truth unveiled about secret US base

More than 2,000 of Diego Garcia residents have been living in poverty since the US and Britain expelled them in the late 1960s to turn the Island into a secret US military base.

American university professor David Vine has unveiled the truth about the secret military installation the US built near the remote center of the Indian Ocean.

The indigenous inhabitants of the Island were forcibly exiled by American and British forces in the late 1960s and early 1970s to make way for the US military base.

In his latest book Island of Shame, Vine reveals the truth of how the Chagossians were deported to slums in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where most still live in dire poverty.

He chronicles the dramatic story of the Chagossians as they struggle to survive in exile and fight to return to their homeland.

The base was a little-known launchpad for the US-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and is also believed to house a top-secret CIA prison where terror suspects are interrogated and tortured.

After several court cases, the Islanders have still not been allowed to resettle their homeland.

Tracing US foreign policy from the Cold War to the war on terror, Vine shows how Washington has forged a new and pervasive kind of empire that is quietly dominating the planet with hundreds of overseas military bases.