Comment Writer Amarion Scarlett-Reid ponders who are the winners and losers in this battle for power?
Following 13 rounds of negotiation the UK has handed the Chagos islands to Mauritius to put an end to decades of dispute and international shame. Many Tory MPs however have scrambled to keep Britain’s last colony in Africa.
The deal that still allows the UK to hold onto the largest island in the Archipelago – Diego Garcia – for at least 99 years reassures the US comfortable access to their military base on the island; in turn comforting the UK, in regard to the fulfillment of its promise to the Americans, that this dispute won’t affect one of their many overseas bases. Despite the deal seeming a win for the UK, US and Mauritius, this hasn’t stopped political outcry amongst right-wing MPs in the Commons who have suddenly learnt where the Chagos islands are.
Amongst these MPs are notably Nigel Farage, speaking to the House he said: “the potential judgement of a spurious rather political foreign court matters more than the issue of national sovereignty” a curious description of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Farage couldn’t resist mentioning potential US-President Trump asking whether he would “approve of this deal”, another ambiguous argument for British sovereignty if one at all.
The international community has welcomed the decision.
Other MPs who also echoed these UN-sceptic views were Richard Tice, Reform; Robert Jenrick, Conservative; and Tory Tom Tugendhat, who, clinging to the spotlight after being knocked out of the Conservative leadership race, expressed disdain for this decision – forgetting he had been a part of the government in which negotiations began. A point the Foreign Secretary shed light on. Despite reservations from right-wing politicians at home, the international community has welcomed the decision. This comes after the UK dismissed the ICJ’s ruling calling for the return of the Chagos islands to Mauritius as ‘advisory opinion’ in 2019.
This change of heart reaffirms the ICJ’s authority, seeing the UK’s ‘unlawful occupation’ of the islands as undermining international law. David Lammy speaking to the Commons reflected on this isolationist position: ‘we found ourselves with no one supporting our claim in the family of the UN and the rules-based order, and for that reason the last government began these negotiations and it’s been absolutely right that we conclude them’; a reflection of this government’s commitment to international cooperation.
Perhaps the biggest losers walking away from this deal were the Chagossians excluded from taking part of it. The episode of colonial British history that many right-wing MPs would like to continue, saw upwards of 1500 Chagossians forcibly displaced between 1967 and 1973 to make space for a US-UK military base. Many of whom as British citizens made the UK their home.
‘Saw upwards of 1500 Chagossians forcibly displaced between 1967 and 1973.’
Chagossian Voices, an organisation based in the UK and abroad has represented this large community in deploring ‘the exclusion of the Chagossian community from the negotiations.’ They have been calling for their self-determination as Chagossians not extensions of Mauritius.
This issue is a complicated one with sovereignty at the centre of it, not British sovereignty as Tory MPs would have you believe however, but that of an indigenous people and their right to self-determination. For now, the UK government can close this chapter of its history as the sun sets on its last piece of Empire in Africa, but for the Chagossian people their fight for self-determination will continue.
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