Chagossians return home to establish permanent settlement ahead of Labour's surrender

They were led by Misley Mandarin, First Minister of what was the Chagossian government in exile.

Standing on the beach and looking back out at the Indian Ocean, he said that hundreds more Chagossians would soon follow. "Time is critical for us,” he said.

He wanted to make it possible for the 322 people who were born on the island and who are still living today to come home before they die.

Accompanying the islanders is Adam Holloway, a former Member of Parliament, who helped the Chagossians raise funds for their new settlement, and who devised the plan for their return and the permanent settlement.

Mr Holloway, a former Army officer and ITN reporter, remains on the island to help build the settlement.

He said the deal to surrender the islands was “completely crazy” – it was “insanity” to give billions “to corrupt politicians in Mauritius rather than paying for our own defence”.

He hoped that the return of the Chagossians – which he had helped to bring about — would give the Labour government pause.

He said: “We’ve done this because Britain is about to make a catastrophically stupid mistake. We are now in a world of great power play. The base at Diego Garcia is absolutely critical to the security of the West".

First Minister Mandarin said he wanted to make it impossible for the British government to implement its plan to hand the territory to Mauritius.

If Sir Keir Starmer had the “audacity” to remove the islanders now, he did not deserve to call himself a human rights lawyer, or to be prime minister of a “great country” like Britain, he said.

“We are British Chagossians. We are from this island. And we are here to stay.”

Mandarin added that Mauritius was an ally of China and could help the Chinese government to undermine the operations of the US base on Diego Garcia.

As long as the Chagossians had a say, he went on, the US would keep the base. “We are in our homeland. We are not visitors. We belong here. God save the king. God save the United States of America.”

Mandarin arrived on the island with his father, Michel, one of those born on Chagos.

Now aged 72, Michel was 14 at the time of the déraciné, or uprooting, put on to boats by the British colonial authorities.

He remembered his family having to sleep on a neighbour’s floor after they were dumped on the quayside in Mauritius.

He called on “every Chagossian” to return home “and live the way we used to live before the exile”.

Another member of the landing party, Antoine LeMettre, now 67, said that to feed his family after they arrived in Mauritius, he had been forced to scavenge for rotten vegetables discarded by the local market.

“It was not only me,” he said, “everyone from the Chagos Islands was suffering the same pain".

The archipelago in the Indian Ocean is located about 5,800 miles south-east of the UK and 1,250 miles north-east of Mauritius.

They became British territory along with Mauritius in 1814 as part of the treaty of Paris after the defeat of Napoleon.

The group of islands were designated as British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965 and detached from Mauritius, which became independent in 1968.

The deal then was that the islands would return to Mauritius once they were no longer needed for Britain’s defence.

A joint UK-US military base was built on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, with displaced residents resettled in Mauritius and Seychelles, while some were relocated to the UK in 2002.

Sir Keir Starmer signed a treaty with Mauritian prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam, on May 22, 2025, transfering sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago from the UK to Mauritius.

Mr Starmer said the deal was vital as the UK would “not have a realistic prospect of success” if Mauritius pursued legal action.

He explained that the UK could have faced a provisional measures order “within a matter of weeks”.