Chagos Islanders Picket House of Lords

In 1966 the British government split the Chagos Islands away from Mauritius, with the intention of setting up a US air base on the main island of Diego Garcia.

From 1967 on the British used a variety of methods and tricks to remove the entire population of the Chagos archipelago. These included buying up and closing down the copra plantations which were the main work on the islands, and eventually stopping supplies to the island and forcing those remaining onto a ship that dumped them in Mauritius.

Some of the islanders were descendents of slaves who had come there over 150 years earlier when the island was under French rule, others had come later from Mauritius, India, Madagascar and Mozambique after the island became British when Napoleon was defeated. Around 8000 are still living in Mauritius, which became independent in 1968, but many of those born on the Chagos islands still have British passports, and some now live in this country.

The Chagossians (Ilois) have gone to the British courts and won the right to return to return to 65 islands (not including Diego Garcia itself.) The British government have refused to carry out these rulings and appealed. They lost the appeal in the High Court in May 2007, and appealed again to the House of Lords, which was expected to begin considering the case today.