28/01/2026
A𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑘'𝑠 𝑆𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑀𝑎𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑢𝑠 𝑏𝑦 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑠-𝘢𝑛𝘥 𝘵ℎ𝘦 𝘧𝑎𝘪𝑙𝘶𝑟𝘦 𝘰𝑓 𝑠𝘶𝑐𝘤𝑒𝘴𝑠𝘪𝑣𝘦 𝐺𝘰𝑣𝘦𝑟𝘯𝑚𝘦𝑛𝘵𝑠 𝑡𝘰 𝘴𝑢𝘱𝑝𝘰𝑟𝘵 𝘵ℎ𝘦𝑚.
𝗜𝗻 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘂𝘀, 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗴𝗼𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄
by Charlotte Ivers
In the Roche Bois neighbourhood of the Mauritian capital Port Louis, drug dealers loiter on the dirt-track streets, leering at passers-by. There are flies everywhere, stray dogs, rubbish in every direction. The buildings are mostly corrugated metal shacks. The smell of refuse from a large nearby dump lingers in the hot breeze.
Nobody who had the option of living anywhere else would live in Roche Bois. But this is where many of the people that Britain forcibly ejected from the Chagos Islands in the 1960s and 1970s ended up. In theory, they and their families all have a right to come to Britain. Some did. But many are still here.
Corina Baptist, 28, is the granddaughter of a man driven out from Diego Garcia to make way for the US-UK military base there. She lives in one room in Roche Bois with her seven children. Many families in this neighbourhood share a mattress on the floor, but the Baptists only have a mat and blankets. Corina barely looks older than a child herself.
Every day she knocks on doors offering her services as a cleaner, with any money she earns spent on milk and food before she goes to bed. She learnt a little English in school, but had to leave because she couldn’t afford it. She would like to get a British passport, which she is entitled to, and to move to the UK. “But I can’t afford that,” she says.
First discovered by Portuguese explorers in the 16th century, the Chagos Islands became a French colony before being handed over to Britain in 1814 near the end of the Napoleonic Wars. They were governed from Mauritius, about 1,300 miles away, which was also a British colony at the time. During this period, slaves were brought to the islands to work on coconut plantations, and it is from these people that today’s Chagossians are descended.
The expulsion of the Chagossians was the result of a decision taken by Harold Wilson’s government in 1968. Wilson, who had stayed out of the Vietnam war, was keen for Britain to pull its weight as America took on communism. Diego Garcia was his offering to help cement the special relationship that Donald Trump is putting under strain today. The Americans required the island to be empty, and so Britain took it upon themselves to make it so. The Sunday Times exposed the deal between Wilson and President Johnson in a front page Insight investigation on September 21, 1975, under the headline “The islanders that Britain sold”.
In Britain, we have spent the past 15 months abstractly talking about these people’s fate. In Mauritius, the financial future of the nation is at stake and the agonised deliberations of Westminster are followed closely. “Chagos Ping-Pong: La B***e est dans le camp des Lords”, read the front page of L’express newspaper on Thursday, referring to our upper chamber’s debate over a deal that proposes handing the islands over to Mauritius, and then leasing back Diego Garcia for £101 million a year to maintain the Anglo-American security presence in the Indian Ocean. The debate planned on the bill in the Lords on Monday has now been postponed.
The world is once again talking about the Chagossians after the intervention of Trump, who last week, amid his chaotic attempt to acquire Greenland, called Britain’s decision to hand over the islands to Mauritius an “act of great stupidity”, despite having initially voiced support for the deal. But here in Roche Bois, nobody seems to care very much.
The Chagossians in Mauritius are used to the idea that a lot of noise in Britain doesn’t necessarily mean change back home. In 2016 the British government pledged to spend £40 million to help people like Baptist and her grandfather. The cash was earmarked to address “the most pressing needs of the community by improving access to health and social care and to improve education and employment opportunities”.
The problem is, nobody here in Port Louis seems to know where all that money went. There were a few trips for Chagossians to go and see their old homes, a few scholarships at a local university, some English lessons from the British Council. But other than that, “nobody saw the money,” Yannick Salarbacus, the son of a displaced Chagossian, tells me. “The £40 million vanished.” Many Chagossians will tell you they believe the Mauritian government stole the money. But the truth seems to be more prosaic: the British government failed to get much of the cash out of the door.
A government spokesperson said: “Funding provided to Middlesex University and the British Council continues to contribute towards the education of Chagossians.
“Under the terms of the treaty with Mauritius, this government has committed to a £40 million trust fund and will continue to support Chagossians living in the UK, Mauritius and elsewhere through both new and existing initiatives. We have already increased our project support to Chagossians and remain committed to working with them through the Chagossian Contact Group.”
As part of the new deal, the British government has pledged another £40 million to help the Chagossians, who generally live in either Mauritius, the Seychelles or the UK. But given their recent experiences, few of them expect to see a penny of that money. Even fewer expect to be able to return home. There is no infrastructure there now, not much to return to.
“What does this deal mean to your father and to his friends?” I asked Ezekiel, the son of another displaced Chagossian last week. He looked at me like I was insane. “It means nothing, nothing. It doesn’t change their lives — our lives — at all.”
Olivier Bancoult, a lawyer and one of the key campaigners for the return of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, is more optimistic. He points out that this new influx of money will be distributed by a board that includes Chagossians. He wants to return to the island from which he was removed as a child, to build a real, functioning society there. But he is furious at the politicisation of the deal by right-wing British politicians who have called the decision to hand the islands to Mauritius an act of cowardly betrayal by a government more focused on human rights law than the national interest. “Nigel Farage, Priti Patel, all the Conservatives … what did they ever do to end the suffering of the Chagossians, all the injustice?” he says. “They never did anything. Now, they talk about us.”
The Chagossians are still living with the consequences of that decision. Their arrival in Mauritius was not auspicious. The British shot their pet dogs and only allowed them to take one trunk of possessions each. “The British promised us that our lives would look the same in Mauritius,” recalls Haydee Sababady, 72. “But when we came here the Mauritians treated us like animals. They promised us when we came here we would have houses and money, but we did not.”
Eventually, many of the new arrivals ended up in dilapidated houses in bad neighbourhoods like Roche Bois. Having arrived from what was essentially an agrarian commune dominated by fishing and coconut plantations, few had the skills required for the modern job market. They still face discrimination. “They are systematically discriminated against,” Moirt says. “It’s well documented. It is not a historical event. It is today.”
Drugs loom large over the community: crack, and another drug that several people describe as “making you like a zombie”. In Roche Bois, we meet a young couple living in two rooms, each populated by a single mattress, strung out, with barefoot young children.
Most Chagossians do not live like this, Ezekiel explains. But the community remains plagued by poverty. “We don’t live well,” he says. “There are not any jobs. We have no good houses to live in. They treat Chagossians like animals.” Plus “many of us are getting old”, Sababady says. “We need medicine and it is expensive. We wish we had a pension from the UK.”
Most of the Chagossians I speak to would like to move to Britain, where a community of several thousand lives, mostly clustered around Crawley, near Gatwick Airport. Those displaced from the islands have been able to get British citizenship since 2002, their descendants since 2022. But the hurdles feel insuperable. “We do not have the money. We do not have the language,” says Haydee. “If all the Chagossians had the money, we would all go there.”
Back in Roche Bois, I met a Chagossian great-grandmother, Daniella, who grew up on one of the islands, “paradise islands”, as the former inhabitants tend to call them. Tony, another second generationer, showed me the tin shack that serves as Daniella’s bedroom. It was barely inches larger than the single mattress on the floor, and sweltering in the heat. “When it rains, water comes through,” says Tony. “Do Chagossians in England live like this?”
There was no edge to his question, it was a sincere inquiry. “No,” I tell him.
