Why does the United Kingdom want to keep the Chagos Archipelago?
Only Mauritius becomes independent, the United Kingdom retains the Chagos under British control. On the same subject : NATO does not need to carry European defense. According to Mauritius, the proposal stemmed from a UK decision in the early 1960s “to comply with the US desire to use certain islands in the Indian Ocean for defense purposes”.
Who controls Chagos Island? The Chagos group is administered by London as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), one of 14 claimed overseas territories that make up the remnants of the British Empire. However, most of the international community considers the Chagos archipelago to belong to Mauritius.
Why does Britain own the Chagos Islands?
The islands of the Chagos archipelago were uninhabited until the late 18th century, when the French established beaver plantations in 1793 using slave labor. The islands have been a British territory since 1814, when they were ceded along with Mauritius to Great Britain (which then included the Seychelles).
Did the UK buy the Chagos Islands?
In 1965, the United Kingdom created the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), also known as the Chagos Archipelago. Between 1968 and 1973, it removed the local population, known as Chagossians or Ilois, from the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, BIOT’s largest island.
How many Chagos Islands are there?
What language do they speak on Chagos Island? Chagossians speak Chagossian Creole, a French Creole language with a vocabulary that also includes words from various African and Asian languages and belongs to the Bourbonnais Creole family. See the article : US Energy Information Administration. Some of their descendants in Mauritius and Seychelles still speak Chagossian Creole.
Does the Chagos Islands have a US military base?
Diego Garcia is an exclusively military installation located on a small atoll of the host country in the Chagos Archipelago. The area of the heavily vegetated island is 6,720 acres. Read also : Migrants flock to Mexico refugee offices amid fears of US policy change. The average elevation above sea level is four feet. Maximum height is 22 feet.
Where is the Chagos Islands located?
Chagos Archipelago, a group of islands in the central Indian Ocean, about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south of the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It is contemporaneous with the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Who lives in the Chagos Islands? The Chagoss (also Îlois or Chagos Islanders) are a Creole ethnic group in exile, originating in the late 18th century from the Chagos Islands, specifically Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and the Solomon Islands chain, as well as other parts of the Chagos Archipelago. until the middle of the 20th century.
Can you visit the Chagos Islands?
There is no commercial travel in the Chagos Archipelago. The rules for private visits are very strict and it is possible to visit only one or two sites with a private yacht – and then only with the permission of the BIOT administration.
What happened to the Chagossians after their expulsion?
Most Chagossians now live in Mauritius and the United Kingdom after being forcibly removed by the British government in the late 1960s and early 1970s so that Diego Garcia, the island where most Chagossians lived, could be the site of a United States military base.
Why were the Lloyds forced to leave the Chagos Archipelago? On 3 April 1967, the British Government purchased all plantations in the Chagos Archipelago from the Chagos Agalega Company for £660,000 in accordance with the provisions of the Ordinance. The plan was to deprive the Chagossians of their income and encourage them to leave the island voluntarily.
How many Chagossians were removed?
The announcement has caused mixed reactions among the Chagossian diaspora. Britain forcibly removed more than 1,500 people in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly descendants of slaves from East Africa who were sent to coconut plantations on the islands.
Where are the Chagossians?
The Chagoss are the former inhabitants of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), also known as the Chagos Islands, who were removed from the islands from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, mainly to Mauritius.
Why is Chagos Islands forbidden?
The Chagos Islands were home to the native Chagoss, a Bourbonnais Creole-speaking people, until the United Kingdom expelled them from the archipelago between 1967 and 1973 at the request of the United States to allow the United States to build a military base on Diego. Garcia.
