Exiled Chagos Islanders bask in return ‘as pilgrims to abandoned place’
GuardianFEB 23 2022
UK Gives Sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius
Above: US military planes pictured on the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), or Chagos Islands, situated in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Africa and Indonesia. Image copyright: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group/Contributor via Getty Images
The Facts
The UK announced on Thursday that it will hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius following years of negotiations.
The UK had controlled the territory since 1814 and detached the islands from Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in 1965 — three years before Mauritius was granted independence from British colonial rule.
This followed a UK-US agreement to build a military base on the largest island of Diego Garcia — which the UK continues to lease to the US. Once the BIOT was created, UK officials spent the next eight years expelling the local population until none remained.
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
While implemented by the new, left-wing government of Sir Keir Starmer, this has been on the agenda for successive administrations and comes from a shared desire to bring the UK fully under international law while maintaining its strategic interests in the region.
Establishment-critical narrative
As is typical of woke progressives, the Labour government has handed over control of the strategically important islands to an ally of China with little regard for what this really means for Britain's long-term interests.