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How Mauritius regained Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia

Editor’s Choice : How Mauritius regained Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia

By Nitin Mehta

October 13, 2024

On the insistence of the Americans who had secretly paid the UK $14 million for a military base in the Chagos islands, Britain decided that they should be cleansed of all of its inhabitants.

In 1965, Britain bought the Chagos archipelago from the self-governing Mauritius Council for £3 million. There are some 60 islands, most of them uninhabited. The largest one is Diego Garcia, which is an area of 27.19 square kilometres. The Chagossians mainly are of mixed African and Indian ancestry—descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. They were brought by the French to work on plantations. They have been there for over 200 years. At the time when Mauritius got independence in 1968 the islands were not handed over and held on by the British. This was the beginning of one of the worst episodes of the British empire. Shockingly, this was in the 1970s when Britain had relinquished its hold from most of its colonies.

On the insistence of the Americans who had secretly paid the UK $14 million for a military base in the Chagos islands, Britain decided that they should be cleansed of all of its inhabitants. A 1971 immigration ordinance made it legal to deport Chagossians from the islands. This decision was taken at the highest level in the British government and approved by the then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

However, this was an era of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. The UK/US military base in Diego Garcia was considered strategically important. This was of great concern to India. At the time India was seen to be in the Soviet Camp. The then American President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were well known for their antipathy towards India.

Britain named the islands, “British Indian Ocean Territory”. To put fear in the minds of the inhabitants, around 1,000 pet animals were killed. Some were thrown in burning furnaces. The British wanted the island “sanitised” where there should be no human beings, just seagulls. In 1971, the Island of Diego Garcia was totally cleared of houses, shops, churches and even graves and the coconut plantations were destroyed. The owners of the plantation companies were subjected to compulsory purchase and were paid £750,000. Around 1,500 people were deported. By 1973, people were removed from the rest of the islands. The ships that took them away were like slave ships. They were deported either to Mauritius or Seychelles, 1,200 miles away. Without any job in Mauritius the Chagossians ended up doing drugs, alcohol and prostitution.

The chairman of Chagos Refugees Group, Olivier Bancoult led the fight for the rights of the Chagos people and took the British government to court many times. In his own family, Olivier Bancoult lost three brothers to drugs, alcohol and illness. His sister committed suicide and his mother was put in a psychiatric hospital. His father died of despair. A sum of £650,000 was given by the British government to the displaced Chagossians but it did not do much for the abandoned islanders. In 2022, Olivier along with Mauritius ambassador to the UN, Jagdish Koonjul went to Diego Garcia and raised the flag of Mauritius. One can imagine the plight of a people forcibly removed from their land. The Chagossians were a happy people with jobs from the coconut plantations living in a beautiful island, but they were mercilessly uprooted.

In 1997, Richard Gifford, a London-based lawyer took up the cause of the Chagossians, ably supported by his wife Zerbanoo Gifford, an award-winning human rights campaigner, author and founder of Asha Peace Centre. In a paper he presented at the “Public Interest Litigation Forum” at the University of Warwick on 27 May 2004, he spelled out in detail how every legal challenge to the deportation of the Chagossians was foiled by the British government. Even though they were technically British citizens as they were under British occupation, Chagossians were not granted that right for a long time. Interestingly, there are around 3,500 Chagossians in Crawley, West Sussex, UK.

In 1997, Richard Gifford was appointed Chairman of the Anglo-Mauritius Association. In 2000, he went to Diego Garcia. Magna Carta was invoked in the fight for the rights of Chagossians to return to their homeland. It states, “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way and proceeded against except by lawful judgement of peers and the law of the land.” However, the Magna Carta was deemed impotent for Chagossians as the British government had passed a law approving the deportation of the islanders. In 1981-82, £4 million was distributed to 1,344 Chagossians on the condition that they would give away any claims to the islands. Chagossians did not understand the conditions placed and felt betrayed. Thirteen rounds of negotiations have taken place since 2020 with the British government to end the impasse. In 2019, the UN General Assembly vote called for Britain to return the islands to Mauritius.
On 3 October 2024, Britain agreed to acknowledge the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago, while retaining control over Diego Garcia, where the military base is, for 99 years.

The Mauritian Prime Minister Pravin Jugnath said, “We were guided by our conviction to complete the decolonisation of our republic.” Mauritius will implement a program of resettlement on the islands other than Diego Garcia. Olivier Bancoult welcomed the handover of the islands.

The treaty will “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare of Chagossians”. The UK will capitalise a new trust fund, as well as separately provide other support, for the benefit of Chagossians, and make provision of a package of financial support to Mauritius, including annual payments and infrastructure investment.

Significantly, the UK and Mauritius gave a joint statement saying, “In reaching today’s political agreement we have enjoyed the full support and assistance from US and India.” Another example of India’s growing influence in the world under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

• Nitin Mehta MBE, is a UK-based political analyst.