There has been much in the news this week about President Trump apparently relenting on the Prime Minister’s Chagos deal in response to pressure from the British Government.
The President has implied he may be prepared to live with the Mauritius Treaty and the transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritian sovereignty.
The President’s adjustment, however, has been made in terms that call the Mauritius Treaty into further doubt because he has expressed concerns about the vulnerability of its lease and stated that the bottom line is that the United States will assert its right to its military base on Diego Garcia by force if necessary.
This begs the question: if the lease is substandard, then why should the British taxpayer waste £35 billion on it?
These developments place in even sharper focus the challenges facing MPs and Peers who still have not finally signed off the text of the Diego Garcia Bill, which must become law before the Mauritius Treaty can be ratified.
If the Bill is not paused or pulled in response to the intervention of Julian Lewis MP, further to concerns regarding the possible role played by Peter Mandelson in relation to Chagos, or the Andrew Bridgen private prosecution of the Prime Minister in relation to his activities in relation to the islands, the next stage in the parliamentary process will be in the House of Lords at some point from 23 February onwards.
In reflecting both on the opportunity that the Government has to pull the Bill and Parliament has to impede its journey to Royal Assent, it is important for everyone to step back and ask the question: what will it be like being subject to the demands of this treaty in five years’ time, ten years’ time, twenty years’ time, etc.?
When we engage with this question, we are confronted with the fact that the Mauritius Treaty does not simply fail to put right the presenting injustice in relation to the Chagos Islands and their people. What is now making it toxic is the realisation that the treaty actually proposes making that injustice worse, and doing so not just at one specific moment in time but by means of chaining the British taxpayer to an obligation to play a role in making that injustice worse every year for the next 99 years.
In order to understand why the treaty fails in this way, we need to take a fresh look at it.
In 1965 the Chagos Islands, recognised by the International Court of Justice as a ‘dependency of Mauritius’, had that relationship of dependency terminated without affording the people of the Chagos Islands a self-determination referendum to decide their future.
Having been treated as if they did not exist in 1965, it was then possible to subject the Chagossians to what had been planned for them in 1965: their forced removal from their islands to Mauritius and the Seychelles, both over 1,000 miles away, from 1968 until 1973.
There are those who try to make the UK feel guilty for our colonial past, which generally involved assuming the right to govern, either completely or partly, another nation without the consent of its people, but the wrong done to the Chagossians was, and is, of an entirely different order of magnitude.
It did not simply involve governing them but, much more seriously, their forced removal from their homeland — to put it another way, the stealing of their homeland — and, far from being a distant memory, this is something that is both recent and indeed current.
It is recent in the sense that it pertains to the acts of forced removal between 1968 and 1973, events which happened within the lifetimes of many people living in the UK today.
It is current in the sense that it pertains to the act of their enforced exile, which is live at the moment and has been since 1973.
While many see beating ourselves up about the conduct of our ancestors as political correctness gone mad, our treatment of the Chagossians is a completely different matter because it pertains, not to the conduct of those who went before us, but to our own conduct right now.
The Mauritius Treaty suffers from five fatal flaws which mean that rather than correcting the presenting injustice, the agreement greatly compounds it, giving expression to what is effectively a shameful, neo-colonial strategy of dispossession for 2026.
First, the injustice that must be addressed is not that the Mauritians were forcibly removed from Mauritius between 1968 and 1973 and kept in enforced exile ever since. The Mauritians were never forcibly removed from Mauritius and continue to live in Mauritius today. The injustice is that the Chagossians were forcibly removed from their islands between those dates and have since been kept in enforced exile. Rather than returning the Chagos Islands to the Chagossians, however, the Mauritius Treaty gives those islands to Mauritius, which, far from being an injured party, played a key role in meting out the presenting injustice, providing the place to which the Chagossians were forcibly removed.
Second, the Mauritius Treaty then involves the UK paying more money to Mauritius to lease just one of the Chagos Islands, Diego Garcia, than KPMG says it would cost to resettle the Chagossians on their islands. This is hugely problematic because in 2016 the UK Government announced its decision not to resettle the Chagos Islands because doing so would be too expensive. That in itself was a deeply troubling response because if you have wronged someone, your obligation to put things right does not go away if you think putting things right will be costly. Being willing to pay is part of facing up to your past wrong and moral responsibility. However, if, having adopted this position, the UK Government then proceeds to give the islands to someone other than the Chagossians and pays them more money to lease just one of the islands than it would have cost to resettle the Chagossians, this greatly compounds the injustice against them. It demonstrates not only that the Government could have paid in 2016, but that rather than restoring the islands to the Chagossians, they would sooner give more money than required to correct that injustice to the other party in their forced removal from the Chagos Islands. Far from complying with the British sense of fair play, this articulates a deeply shameful moral madness.
Third, the Mauritius Treaty then further compounds the injustice by expressly refusing to provide the Chagossians with a right to resettle their islands under Mauritius. Article 6 merely states that Mauritius has the right to resettle the islands if they wish. To the extent that the transfer of sovereignty to Mauritius gives it the right to do anything in relation to the islands other than that expressly prohibited by the treaty, the provision of Article 6 is significant for drawing attention to the fact that Mauritius did not want to be held to resettling the Chagossians and the UK Government was content with this. The failure of the Treaty to provide a right of resettlement is underlined by the fact that the only provision of the treaty to make a commitment in relation to gaining access to the Chagos Islands is set out in Article 10 and pertains not to the Chagossians but to Mauritian contractors in relation to working on the military base on Diego Garcia. Moreover, in September the Prime Minister of Mauritius revealed that Mauritius does not even have the capacity to ‘visit’ the Chagos Islands to raise its flag without another country providing it with an appropriate vessel. Mauritius is a small country located over 1,000 miles away from the Chagos Islands without a navy. If it can’t even get there under its own steam to ‘visit’, there’s no way it could resettle thousands of people. There is one thing worse than being under the sovereignty of a country with the capacity to resettle you but which has not yet decided to do so, and that is being transferred to a country that does not have the capacity to resettle you.
Fourth, to make matters even worse, the Mauritius Treaty then seeks to avoid criticism for its lack of concern for the Chagossian people by including a Chagossian Trust Fund. The fund is £40 million, which sounds great until one realises that it is less than 40% of the £101 million Mauritius would receive just in the first year of the 99-year lease. To put this in its proper context, the Mauritius Treaty proposes exaggerating the current injustice gratuitously by proposing that, while it is appropriate to give the Mauritians, who were a party in the forced removal of the Chagossians, in the region of £35 billion to use one of the Chagossians’ islands, it is perfectly acceptable to only give the Chagossians £40 million. This is quite extraordinary.
Finally, the Mauritius Treaty does not afford the Chagossian people a referendum to approve or reject what it proposes for their islands. Far from being acceptable, the Treaty has been so objectionable to many Chagossians that they have been forced to form a Chagossian Government in Exile. Led by First Minister, Misley Mandarin, the Government in Exile states that it will exist until such time as the Chagossian people have been afforded a self-determination referendum and its results have been honoured.
In a context where, far from addressing the presenting injustices, the Mauritius Treaty gratuitously compounds them, it creates a huge problem for the UK Government and the British people. If the treaty is ratified, every time we make a further payment, the UK would not only be giving away taxpayers’ money but in a way that compounds rather than corrects the injustice against the Chagossians.
In the first instance, the treaty would add to the Chagossian sense of violation by making provision for the payment of fantastically large sums, not to the Chagossians, but to the Mauritians who co-operated with the UK to help facilitate the forced removal of the Chagossians, providing the place to which they were forcibly moved.
In the second instance, the sense of injustice attending this payment would be greatly exaggerated by the fact that this money would be part of a sum that would be more than enough to resettle the Chagossians and afford them self-determination with respect to their islands.
It is very difficult to see how the British people could be content with a British Prime Minister sanctioning these payments going forward, especially when the United States’ low view of the lease is such that it is already talking in terms of asserting its place on Diego Garcia by force.
There is, however, a much better way forward.
While there was a problem in international law with the detachment of the Chagos Islands in 1965 because this was not preceded by a self-determination referendum, the fact that that wrong was then compounded by the forcible removal of the Chagossian people does not give the Mauritians the right to claim the Chagos Islands without affording the Chagossians a prior self-determination referendum.
Polling demonstrates that the Chagossians would reject being joined to Mauritius in such a vote and instead elect to become a resettled British Overseas Territory.
Placing the Chagos Islands on a secure foundation in international law, this would benefit the Americans, the Chagossians and the UK.
The Americans would benefit because there would be no lease, no constraint through the Pelindaba Treaty and no need for the US Government to put the lives of American servicemen and women at risk in asserting its claim to Diego Garcia.
The Chagossians and the UK would benefit, meanwhile, because this arrangement would not simply prevent further wrongdoing; it would go back to correct the injustices from 1965 until the present.
If ratified, the Mauritius Treaty would, by contrast, far from correcting the historic injustice, institutionalise further shameful neo-colonial dispossession for another 99 years.
It is completely toxic.
It must be rejected.
Dr Dan Boucher
Dr Boucher has a PHD in sovereignty and international relations.
