Starmer has sold out the Chagossians

In a small terraced house in south-west London, decorated with photos of her family, lives Bernadette Dugasse. At 67 years old, she is a formidable campaigner. She is head of Chagossian Voices, the UK campaign group representing Chagossians who were deported from the Chagos Islands in the 1960s by Britain’s then Labour government.

These tiny islands in the Indian Ocean have been under British control since the 18th century, and were retained as a British Overseas Territory even as other colonies were granted independence in the 20th century.

Diego Garcia (the largest island in the archipelago and where Dugasse was born) was turned over for use as a US-UK military base in the early 1970s. Ever since, the Chagossians have been prevented from returning home. Dugasse has lived in England for 19 years and has been fighting with the British government for her right to return to the Chagos Islands all her adult life.

The little-known plight of the Chagossians suddenly became front-page news last week, when Keir Starmer’s Labour government announced that it had agreed a deal to end Britain’s rule over the islands. But rather than handing the islands over to the Chagossians, Starmer ceded sovereignty to Mauritius, another foreign power, which maintains a shaky claim over the islands and which many Chagossians are deeply suspicious of.

This handover of the Chagos Islands is not independence, or ‘decolonisation’, in any meaningful sense. Chagossians living outside Mauritius fear they will now have no right to return to their homeland and that a chance to right the wrongs of the past has been missed. For one thing, the agreement between Mauritius and the UK makes no reference to any right of return.

The new treaty between the UK and the Mauritian government still requires a vote in the British parliament, but Dugasse isn’t optimistic about the outcome. ‘I don’t trust the Labour government’, she tells me. ‘It was a Labour government that [first] put us in this situation. I don’t know why Labour is always punishing us.’

She does not believe that foreign secretary David Lammy’s half-baked plan for a ‘Trust Fund’ for Chagossians’ welfare can truly make amends for decades of forced displacement. Nor does she believe the British, American and Mauritian assurances that Chagossians’ rights will be protected. She demands full sovereignty and resettlement rights on the islands for all Chagossians. At the very least, she wants them to have a seat at the negotiating table – something Labour failed to give them before signing away their sovereignty to a foreign power.

Thankfully, there are still some MPs who object to this betrayal of the Chagossians, from Labour backbenchers, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Reform. On X, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith writes: ‘The Mauritian government is guilty of vast human-rights abuses… We have handed [the Mauritian] government rights that the Chagossians have never agreed to.’

Dugasse had expected her many private talks with civil servants at the Foreign Office to lead to some progress. But in the end, Chagossians were shut out of the process entirely. I ask about new foreign secretary David Lammy. ‘I’ve never met him’, she says.

Indeed, Labour seems to be more interested in appeasing foreign powers than doing right by the Chagossians. Reports have emerged that US president Joe Biden put pressure on Starmer to make the decision. The US apparently feared that the International Court of Justice would soon give a binding ruling for Mauritius to take control of the islands in the future – thus cutting off the US’s access to the strategically important military base on Diego Garcia.

‘If the Mauritian government and now President Biden have put pressure on Starmer, then he’s a puppet’, Dugasse tells me. ‘I would expect a British prime minister to consult his own citizens, like us, first… But I’m ignored again.’

What now for the campaign for Chagossians’ rights? ‘We would like MPs to debate the issue rightly’, says a defiant Dugasse. ‘They should stop the government’s attempt to give sovereignty to Mauritius and from going any further, without all Chagossians being included in discussions. They should leave no stone unturned.’

Here’s hoping that the Chagossians get the justice that has long been denied to them.

Tessa Clarke is a journalist and author.