Pressure grows on UK to return last African colony

Bloomberg

From a one-story house with mustard-colored walls off a bustling road in Mauritius, Olivier Bancoult is defying the UK by plotting a return to the tiny tropical island where he was born.
A 55-year-old native of the remote Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, Bancoult heads a group of mostly elderly women who, like him, were expelled shortly after Britain bought the archipelago from its then-colony Mauritius in 1965. His campaign has taken him to London and the United Nations and secured him a meeting with Pope Francis.
As a young boy, Bancoult and the other roughly 2,000 inhabitants of Chagos were deported to the UK, Mauritius and Seychelles. The new owners then gassed the residents’ pets, closed the coconut plantations and allowed the US to build a military base on the biggest island of Diego Garcia. With the exception of the air force base seen as crucial for US operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the UK has kept the islands free of inhabitants by declaring an area the size of France a protected marine reserve in 2010. Only a few people are allowed to visit briefly each year, and they can’t stay overnight.
“My mother died here, without ever having been back to her home,” Bancoult said. “I won’t let that happen to me.”
At a time when politicians in Britain are evoking its imperial past as the UK prepares to quit the European Union, the country is under international pressure to give up its last African colony, a sign of its diminished global importance when only 80 years ago it held sway over almost a quarter of the world’s population. “What Britain is facing today is having to confront its colonial past, whether it’s Chagos or Northern Ireland,” said Philippe Sands, a London-based lawyer who serves as Counsel for Mauritius. “It’s the story of its empire coming back to haunt it.”
In February, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled the 1965 excision of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius unlawful because it wasn’t based on the free will of the people concerned. In an advisory opinion, the court stated that the UK has an obligation to end its administration of the archipelago “as rapidly as possible.”
Then, in May, the UN General Assembly affirmed the ruling by an overwhelming majority, with 116 member states voting in favour of a resolution setting a six-month deadline for the UK to withdraw. Only six members rejected the proposal — the US, Hungary, Israel and Australia among them. The deadline expires on November 22.
“A UN General Assembly resolution doesn’t mean you have to comply, but obviously it’s very embarrassing for them,” said David Brewster, a senior research fellow at the National Security College in Canberra, Australia. “That’s what happens when you alienate your allies.” At the end of his September visit to Mauritius, Pope Francis chided the UK, saying it needs to respect the wishes of international institutions.
But things are unlikely to change overnight.
The UK argues it can’t give up the Chagos Islands for security reasons. It doesn’t recognise Mauritius’s claim over what it calls the British Indian Ocean Island Territory (BIOT), a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office said in an email.
“The joint UK–US defense facility on the British Indian Ocean Territory helps to keep people in Britain and around the world safe from terrorism, organised crime and piracy,” the spokesperson said.