| A Chagossian and his final coconut harvest, photographed at the time of the first United States encampment (1971). |
| Regions with significant populations |
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| 3,000 in Mauritius and the United Kingdom |
| Languages |
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Chagossian Creole · Mauritian Creole · Seychellois Creole · English |
| Religion |
The Chagossians (also Îlois or Chagos Islanders) are an ethnic group who were the indigenous inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, British Indian Ocean Territory. The Chagossians resided in the islands of Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos, and the Salomon island chain, and had settled in other parts of the Chagos Archipelago, like Egmont Islands and Eagle Islands. Most of the Chagossians now live in Mauritius and the United Kingdom after being deported from their homeland by the British government in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This mass deportation was carried out so that Diego Garcia, the island where most Chagossians lived, could serve as the location for a military base shared between the UK and the United States. Today, there are no Chagossians that live on the island of Diego Garcia, as it is now the site of the military base Camp Justice.
The Chagossian people's ancestry is mostly of African heritage, particularly coming from Madagascar, Mozambique and other African nations including Mauritius. There is also a significant proportion of Indian ancestry. The French brought some to the Chagos islands as slaves from Mauritius in 1786. Others arrived as fishermen, farmers, and coconut plantation workers during the 19th century.
The Chagossians speak Chagossian Creole, a mix of Indigenous language and French-based creole language and part of the Bourbonnais Creole family. Chagossian Creole is still spoken by some of their descendants in Mauritius and the Seychelles. Chagossian people living in the UK speak English.
The Archipelago later passed to the control of the United Kingdom and came to form part of the Colony of Mauritius.
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In 1965, as part of a deal to grant Mauritian independence, the Chagos Archipelago was split off from the Colony and came to form the British Indian Ocean Territory. The territory's new constitution was set out in a statutory instrument imposed unilaterally without any referendum or consultation with the Chagossians and it envisaged no democratic institutions. The constitution prohibited anyone from residing in the islands without a permit.
In the following years from 1967 and 1973, the Chagossians, then numbering some 2,000 people, were expelled by the British government, first to the island of Peros Banhos, 100 miles (160 km) away from their homeland, and then, in 1973, to Mauritius (For the relationship between the Chagos Archipelago and Mauritius, see Chagos Archipelago). Their forced (and, according to some authorities, illegal) expulsion and dispossession was for the purpose of establishing a United States air and naval base on Diego Garcia, where a small contingent of UK military personnel is stationed as well.
In early April 2006, in an excursion organised and financed by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a group of around a hundred Chagossians were permitted to visit the British Indian Ocean Territory for the first time in over thirty years.[1]
On 11 May 2006, the Chagossians won their case in the High Court of Justice, which found that they were entitled to return to the Chagos Archipelago. It remained to be seen how this judgment might be implemented in practice.[2] However, in June 2006 the British government filed an appeal in the Court of Appeal against the High Court's decision. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office put forward an argument based on the treatment of the Japanese Canadians following the attacks on Pearl Harbor.[3]
After the Court of Appeal had upheld the decision of the High Court, the British government appealed successfully to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords. On October 22, 2008, the Law Lords reached a decision on the appeal made by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Miliband. They found in favour of the Government in a 3-2 verdict, ending the legal process in the UK and dashing the islanders' hopes of return. The judgement was published on the UK parliament website. The judges who voted to allow the government's appeal were Lord Hoffmann, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, and Lord Carswell; those dissenting were Lord Bingham of Cornhill and Lord Mance.[4]
In April 2010, the British Government established a marine nature reserve around the Chagos Islands known as the Chagos Protected Area.[5] The designation proved controversial as the decision was announced during a period when the UK Parliament was in recess.[6]
On December 1, 2010, a leaked US Embassy London diplomatic cable dating back to 2009 [7] exposed British and US calculations in creating the marine nature reserve. The cable relays exchanges between US Political Counselor Richard Mills and British Director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Colin Roberts, in which Roberts "asserted that establishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago’s former residents." Richard Mills concludes:
Establishing a marine reserve might, indeed, as the FCO’s Roberts stated, be the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands’ former inhabitants or their descendants from resettling in the [British Indian Ocean Territory].
The cable (reference ID "09LONDON1156" [8]) was classified as confidential and "no foreigners", and leaked as part of the Cablegate cache.