Response to Foreign Secretary's statement on the British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Islands)

We are disappointed with the UK Foreign Secretary’s shameful statement to the House of Commons today, 7th October 2024.

The Foreign Secretary and the UK Government are keen to mask this agreement as a ‘triumph’; one that secures the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, and highlighted that inaction would have led to a real threat to the base. This is not the case. The UK Government are claiming to have ‘secured’ our presence in the region; one that did not require securing and has only been weakened significantly as a result of this agreement.

At every stage, the UK Government has sought to inject fear and uncertainty in an otherwise stable situation. The Foreign Secretary’s scaremongering that a ‘binding judgement against the UK seemed inevitable’ has no basis in reality, and his alternative of ‘abandoning the base altogether’ if the UK did not finalise an agreement is simply laughable.

The UK will hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius and rent 1/58 of the islands back for a sum the Foreign Secretary refused to disclose today. The deal struck, that included no consultation of the Chagossians, was done at pace to favour elections in both Mauritius and the United States, only weeks after our envoy on the issue was appointed.

The substantial public funds wasted on this flawed arrangement could be better used to rectify past injustices and enhance the well-being of the Chagossian people - an obligation Mauritius has failed to uphold for many years.

The UK government should place national security, fiscal responsibility, and the well-being of the Chagossian people above Mauritius' baseless territorial claim. Proceeding with the transfer of BIOT goes against our national interests and must be stopped at once. The government must take a strong stance, and safeguard British territory and protect British interests. Cancel this deal.