In refusing to permit a group of islanders to return to the Chagos archipelago, fifty years after British troops forcibly removed them from the island, the UK has been charged with crimes against humanity.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) argued that generations of people who were impacted by the decision to depopulate the remote islands in the Indian Ocean should receive reparations.
The UK’s Foreign Office reiterated its “deep regret” regarding the manner in which people were expelled from the islands in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
However, it emphasized that “we categorically reject the characterisation of events” as crimes against humanity.
The HRW report is released at a time when the UK is coming under increasing international condemnation for maintaining its claim to the so-called “British Indian Ocean Territory,” with the UN’s International Court of Justice ruling that the country’s continued occupation of the archipelago is illegal.
Additionally, the UN General Assembly voted resoundingly in favor of giving the islands back to Mauritius.
“The UK is today committing an appalling colonial crime, treating all Chagossians as a people without rights. The UK and the US, who together expelled the Chagossians from their homes, should provide full reparations for the harm they have caused,” said HRW’s senior legal adviser, Clive Baldwin.
In 1968, when Mauritius was negotiating its independence from the UK, the UK insisted on keeping control of the Chagos islands. Since then, Mauritian officials have claimed that the UK “blackmailed” them into giving up the territory.
The UK had already entered into secret talks with the US to lease one of the islands, Diego Garcia, to Washington for use as a military base.
Today the Foreign Office insisted that base “helps to keep people in Britain, the region and around the world safe, combatting some of the most challenging threats to international peace and security, including those from terrorism and piracy, and responding to humanitarian crises”.
But with all but a handful of nations now backing Mauritius’s claim, the UK has opened negotiations over control of the Chagos archipelago.
The ambassador to the UN for Mauritius, Jagdish Koonjul, characterized those talks as “constructive,” and his government welcomed the HRW report, saying: “Justice must be served. “.
In addition to promising to relocate “any individuals of Chagossian origin” to their native islands, Mauritius insists that the US can keep its base on Diego Garcia.
Author-Roberta Appiah
