After international pressure and thirteen rounds of negotiations, the United Kingdom announced on Thursday that it would transfer the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. The British would retain a “strategically important” military base, which is also used by the Americans.
Mauritius gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1968. Shortly before that – in 1965 – the British decided that the Chagos Islands did not belong to Mauritius. Therefore, these islands could remain in British possession.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain expelled between 1,500 and 2,000 islanders. The action was last year labelled by Human Rights Watch as “a terrible colonial crime” and a crime against humanity. The expelled people now live in Mauritius, the Seychelles and Crawley in Sussex, among other places, writes the BBC .
Mauritius starts a program to help people who want to return to the islands. Only residents of the island of Diego Garcia are not allowed to return to that island. It remains in use as a military base and is important according to the British because of growing geopolitical tensions in the region between Western countries, India and China.
The deal is not yet fully finalised, but the UK and Mauritius have pledged to complete it as soon as possible.
Chagossians themselves are not involved in the talks. “Chagossians have had to read this outcome in the media,” writes the advocacy group Chagossian Voices. They feel “powerless and voiceless,” reports the British newspaper The Guardian .
Some Chagossians want the archipelago to be allowed to govern itself rather than become part of another country again. They fear that their identity will be lost if they are incorporated into Mauritius. An attempt was made to stop the negotiations because the Chagossians had not been consulted or involved, but it failed .
