Elderly Chagossians fear that they may never return to their homeland as negotiations over a treaty between Britain and Mauritius threaten to make them permanent residents of the Indian Ocean.
Under the agreement, signed last year, Mauritius will regain sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago and Chagossians will be able to return to the islands other than Diego Garcia.
This military base would then remain under British administration for at least the next 99 years. Olivier Bancoult, of the Chagos Refugees group, said the deaths of several elderly Chagossians while waiting to return to the islands continued to haunt the community. “At one funeral we scattered Chagos sand on an elder’s coffin to fulfill his wish to die in his homeland,” he said.
Britain had detached the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, three years before the former’s independence. Between 1968 and 1973, some 1,400 to 1,700 Chagossians were deported from the islands. Many of them were relocated to Mauritius and Seychelles, while others followed later to the United Kingdom.
The treaty has yet to take effect and Britain’s government said laws required to implement the deal could not be passed before the end of the 2024-26 current parliamentary session, which concludes in April. US President Donald Trump has criticized the deal, arguing that it did not safeguard the interests of the Diego Garcia military base.
The dispute has since been revived in the diplomatic arena last month with British and Mauritian authorities discussing the future of the islands. Bancoult said their people remain resolute in their determination to return to the islands, citing the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in 2019 and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s ruling in 2021.
The issue of the Chagossian culture also affects the younger generation. Chrisyl Wong-Hang-Sun, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, said the culture was increasingly vanishing as a result of displacement and migration. Some in the Chagossian diaspora feared that Chagossian Creole words or recipes might be lost soon, she added
Mauritius has always held that its sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is unquestionable. The future of Diego Garcia remains one of the most sensitive issues of the deal, however. “There was nothing more important to me than this moment,” said Bancoult. “But the Chagossians born on the islands are now aged between 58 and 100. We are growing old.”
