The Republic of Mauritius has claimed sovereignty over these islands for over fifty years. The agreement signed by Keir Starmer’s government allows the British to maintain the military base they lease to the U.S. Army.
On Thursday, October 3rd, a significant chapter of British colonial history came to a close with the United Kingdom’s handover of the Chagos Islands, an isolated archipelago in the northern Indian Ocean, to the Republic of Mauritius. The island nation had been claiming sovereignty over this group of idyllic atolls for more than fifty years. In exchange for the return of the islands, Mauritius has agreed to ensure the continued presence of a military base on the main Chagos atoll, Diego Garcia, which the British have leased to the United States. The American military uses this base to station warships and bombers.
The British Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, responded on Thursday, stating that the agreement « ensures the continuity of this vital military base. It will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security, eliminate any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the UK, and guarantee our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner. » Diego Garcia also hosts asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, who will now fall under the jurisdiction of Mauritius.
In 1968, amid the dismantling of its colonial empire, the United Kingdom granted independence to Mauritius but refused to cede the Chagos Islands. The British even forcibly displaced 1,500 to 2,000 Chagossians from the atolls to make way for the military base on Diego Garcia. « We don’t have blue eyes, that’s why we’re being chased, » and « our treatment is inhumane, » testified some of the people expelled from their lands to the BBC in the early 1970s, in an audio recording rebroadcast on October 3rd on BBC Radio 4.
Source: lemonde
