Human rights NGO HRW published a report of more than 100 pages, based on dozens of testimonies and official documents, to underline that the “racial persecution” that London, with the support of Washington, carried out on the islands located northeast of Mauritius was a “colonial crime”.

When contacted by the AFP news agency, a spokeswoman for the UK Foreign Office said she “respects the work that Human Rights Watch is doing around the world” but “categorically rejects any characterization of the facts.”

“The UK has made it clear that it deeply regrets the way the Chagosan people were driven out of the BIOT (ndlr: British Indian Ocean Territory, which is made up of dozens of islands) in the late 1960s and early 1960s. the 1970s,” he said.

And he assured that the Government is “committed to supporting them, through a significant support package and a new pathway to British citizenship launching in November” for them.

“Illegal occupation” in England

The Chagos Islands are at the center of a dispute that has lasted more than five decades. Since 1965, the island has been under British control, which decided to establish a joint military base with the United States on the main island of Diego Garcia.

Britain expelled around 2,000 residents to the republic of Mauritius and neighboring Seychelles to use as military bases. Residents of Mauritius in Chagos accuse the British of carrying out an “illegal occupation”.

According to HRW, Britain and the United States must offer local residents full reparations and allow them to return to their islands. “Britain is now committing a horrendous colonial crime by treating the people of Chagos as a people without rights,” said Clive Baldwin, author of the report.

The organization identifies three crimes against humanity: the continuing colonial crimes of forced displacement, prevention of return in Britain, and racial and ethnic persecution in Britain. Meanwhile, Mauritius, which gained independence in 1968, claims the Chagos region and its sovereignty.

A UN General Assembly resolution in May 2019 called for, among other things, to “recognize the Chagos Archipelago as an integral part of the territory of Mauritius, support the decolonization of Mauritius as soon as possible and refrain from hindering this process.” This resolution follows a similar sentence issued by the International Court of Justice several months earlier.

Last month, the UK and Mauritius started talks over the sovereignty of the archipelago, but according to the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, the two countries agreed that the military base would continue to operate.

rml (afp, @hrw)