In the mid-1960s, Great Britain gave its remaining colonies independence in turn – in order to create a new one at the same time. In 1965, the colonial rulers spun off the 58 outlying Chagos islands from Mauritius administration to remain with Britain at the country’s impending independence in 1968. Since then it has functioned as the last British colony in Africa under the name “British Indian Ocean Territory”.
The Cold War was behind the calculation: Washington was looking for a suitable base in the Indian Ocean. The remote atoll Diego Garcia came in handy, a deal for the rights of use was negotiated with the British and finally a strategically important military base was built. It retained its importance long after the end of the Cold War: aircraft that bombed Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and were later used in the Gulf War took off from here. In 2008, the US admitted that the CIA had interrogated Diego Garcia. The atoll is also an important supply station for the US submarine fleet.
Deportation of thousands of people
Because of their descent from plantation workers, the residents of Diego Garcia were simply classified as “contract workers” who had no official right to reside on the island, wrote US author Daniel Smith in his book “The 100 Most Secret Places of the World”. World”: “They learned from the British that their stay on the island would be illegal if they could not produce papers proving their ancestral right of residence. Of course, there were no such papers. The British then began the forced resettlement of the islanders.”
The approximately 2,000 locals on the islands were “shipped in the bellies of old barges that otherwise transported bird droppings as fertilizer,” as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (“SZ”) recently wrote. They were taken to the Seychelles and Mauritius and left to their fate in poverty. The displaced had neither formal education nor money.
Long struggle for compensation
The Chagossians soon began protesting against the measures that had robbed them of their lands, and indeed some of those now residing in Mauritius were fobbed off small compensation years later. From the point of view of the changing British governments, it was a matter of “fair compensation”, from the point of view of the Chagos Refugee Group based in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, by no means.
Court rulings in Britain that were in favor of the evictees were overturned in a rarely used decree on behalf of the Queen, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (“FAZ”) reported. The British government thus argued that it did not consider a return to be compatible with the “peace, order and good administration” of the territory. According to studies, resettlement would be expensive and risky for residents, not least because of climate change and rising sea levels.
Not only the employees on the military base currently live on Diego Garcia, but also people from Mauritius, the Maldives, the Philippines and Sri Lanka who hire themselves out as cooks and cleaners. Chagossians, on the other hand, are still not allowed to live on the islands. As a sign of protest, the government in Port Louis organized several expeditions by former residents of Diego Garcia to their former home last year – but they never lasted long.
UN objects to “colonial administration”
However, Britain’s claim to the islands is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2019 that Britain’s claim to the archipelago was unlawful and that the continued use of the archipelago by the British and US military was a relic of colonialism. A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution, passed by a large majority, called for Britain to withdraw its “colonial administration” from the islands by the end of 2019.
In 2021, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ISGH) upheld Mauritius’ sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, criticizing the UK and US’ failure to comply with the 2019 UN resolution. The UN has changed its official world map, since 2020 the archipelago is listed as an undisputed part of Mauritius. In a symbolic move, the UN Postal Agency decreed that letters from the islands could no longer be franked with British postage.
Just this February, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report accusing Britain and the United States of crimes against humanity against the Chagossians. The “racist persecution and the continued blockade of their return home” represents a “continued colonial crime”. Both countries should pay compensation to the former inhabitants of the archipelago and enable them to return to their homes.
Small speck of great geopolitical importance
Even before that, there was movement in the debate: in November of the previous year, the government in London signaled its willingness to talk about the sovereignty of the islands for the first time, and in January London and Mauritius began talks. The deliberations are secret, the Economist wrote, but Britain could be expected to relinquish its claim to the archipelago. Mauritius has offered assurances of the “unhindered operation” of the US base and a new 99-year lease. Britain itself could maintain a military presence on Diego Garcia until its current lease with the Americans expires in 2036.
As small as the archipelago may be, its geopolitical importance seems great: for the USA, it is still the only relevant post in the Indian Ocean. In India, meanwhile, concerns have been raised that Mauritius could open the Chagos Islands to Beijing in the future, for example to get rid of part of the Chinese debt with such a deal. And the supposed island paradise is also indirectly involved in the Ukraine war: when British diplomats tried to solicit support for Ukraine, African heads of state and government are said to have asked where Britain got the right to want to drive out Russian armed forces while it illegally occupies the Chagos Islands.