On Thursday, October 3, one of the final pages in British colonial history was turned, 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 state had been claiming sovereignty over this group of idyllic atolls for over 50 years. In exchange for the return of these islands, Mauritius made a commitment to London to guarantee the presence of a military base leased by the UK to the United States on the main Chagos atoll, Diego Garcia. The US army stations warships and bombers there.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Thursday that the agreement "secures this vital military base for the future. It will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security, shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the UK, as well as guaranteeing our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner." Diego Garcia hosts asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, who are expected to become the responsibility of Mauritius.
In 1968, the UK, in the midst of dismantling its empire, granted independence to Mauritius but refused to cede the Chagos Islands. The British even drove 1,500 to 2,000 inhabitants (Chagossians) from the atolls to set up the Diego Garcia military base. "We don't have blue eyes, that's why we're being chased away," "our treatment is inhuman," some of these people expelled from their lands testified to the BBC in the early 1970s, in an audio recording rebroadcast on BBC Radio 4 on October 3.
The Republic of Mauritius (population 1.2 million) took the dispute to international bodies, and between 2019 and 2021, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea all recognized the validity of its territorial claims. To put an end to a dispute that was tarnishing the UK's reputation, particularly with African countries, Rishi Sunak's Conservative government decided to enter into negotiations with Mauritius in November 2022.
When he arrived in Downing Street last July, Labour's Keir Starmer decided to speed up the process, entrusting the talks to Sir Jonathan Powell, an experienced diplomat who led the Northern Ireland peace negotiations for Tony Blair. Some on the British right protested on Thursday, accusing Labour of a supposed lack of patriotism.
The agreement reached with Mauritius is "weak, weak, weak," denounced James Cleverly, Sunak's former foreign secretary, who is now running to replace him as leader of the British Conservative Party. Cleverly's reaction is "absolutely ludicrous," especially as he was the one "leading these negotiations [before the Tories lost the general election]," reacted Jonathan Powell on the BBC.
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