Indigenous Chagos islanders make historic visit after UK exile
3 Min Read
After London's 50-year exile of Chagossians to build a US military base, the islanders come back for a visit to their birthplace.
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Marcel Humbert, one of the Chagos islanders on the trip.
Chagossians, who were deported to Mauritius by the UK, were exiled from their home country 50 years ago. However, after many years of forced exile, the Chagossians returned to Peros Banhos on Saturday afternoon. They kissed the sand and stood, holding hands, in prayer.
Olivier Bancoult, Lisbey Elyse, Marie Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert had long anticipated that moment.
Fifty years ago, the United Kingdom kicked out the archipelago's inhabitants to make way for a US military base on the island, Diego Garcia.
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An aerial view of Diego Garcia, one of the Chagos Archipelago’s seven atolls. (Wikimedia/Cobatfor)
The five exiled wore t-shirts that had "Chagos My Home" and "Everyone has a right to live in his brithplace."
Bancoult said, "We are not coming as tourists... We are coming as pilgrims to pay tribute to this abandoned place."
“The importance of this trip is that we can send a message to the world – about the kind of injustice the UK government, with the help of the US government, inflicted on our people. If we were white people with blue eyes, maybe we would have had better treatment?”
The visit was organized by the Mauritian government, which has been trying to regain some control over Chagos. The majority of representatives in the UNGA have voted that London "unlawfully" detached Mauritius' islands before the country's independence, and that they must return them.
Trees have embraced and grown over homes, and warehouses were found to be decayed on the island.
"This is where I was christened," Bancoult said, as he eyes the chapel of Saint Sacrement. The chapel's roof was collapsed and the walls were yellow and moulded. He and his group cleaned the floors in a team cooperation.
“I was baptised here, too,” said Elyse. “This is my church.”
Bancoult continued, “My grandfather had his funeral here in 1969. My mother made her first communion here. Can’t I have the right to live in my birthplace? It’s racism. They should give everyone in overseas territories the same treatment.”
The Prime Minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, told The Guardian on a phone call that the trip to the Chagos islands was not in any way a "hostile act" aimed to "embarrass the UK," but rather than an "exercise of our sovereignty over part of our territory and that is in accordance with international law.”
He continued, “The UK has acted in violation of human rights and international law when it forcibly removed the Chagossians. Uprooting people from their place of birth and where they were living without any warning and putting them on a ship and just leaving them at the quay in Mauritius. And preventing them going back … That’s clearly a crime against humanity and it’s extraordinary serious.”
