On Tuesday last week the Supreme Court of the British Indian Ocean Territory blocked the attempt of the UK Government to remove Chagossian First Minister, Misley Mandarin, and five other Chagossians from the Chagos Island, Pero Banhos. The Chagossians were forcibly removed from Peros Banhos by the UK Government 53 years ago this month, but in February this year the 6 returned and almost immediately received an eviction notice from the current UK Government seeking to secure their forced removal a second time. The courts, however, have said no and yesterday Chagossians celebrated Easter Day on Peros Banhos for the first time since 1973!
In this article First Minister Mandarin argues that following their legal victory it is now time for the UK Government and all Labour MPs and Peers to seriously engage with the Decision of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) [link below], calling on both the Governments of the UK and Mauritius to suspend the ratification of the Mauritius Treaty (which seeks to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius) and go back to the drawing board, developing a new process determining the future of the Chagos Islands with the Chagossian people at its heart.
‘The UK Government has sought to justify the Mauritius Treaty by reference to its commitment to international law and yet in December the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, (CERD), a key organ of the rules based international order, formally issued a far reaching ‘Decision’.
The ‘Decision’ is not merely critical of the Mauritius Treaty but so concerned that it takes the unusual step of calling on both the UK and Mauritius to suspend treaty ratification and start again with the Chagossian people at the heart of a new process.
In particular it is very critical of the failure of the Treaty to provide the Chagossian people with a right of resettlement on our islands and a self-determination referendum about what we want for ourselves and our homeland going forward.
When challenged about the UN Committee intervention in January on the floor of the House of Commons, it was really disturbing to hear a Labour Government minister summarily dismiss this development, pointing out that this was not the result of a UN General Assembly vote, as if that meant it did not count!
No one had suggested that that this was the result of a UN General Assembly vote. They had said that it was the determination of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the key body that the UN has seen fit to appoint to focus on eliminating racial discrimination and, as such, a key organ of the rules based international order which Labour tells us is so important.
In the context of Tuesday’s judgement, the UK Government must now take its responsibilities in relation to the rules based international order seriously and tell the Government of Mauritius that given the Decision of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, it will not be proceeding with ratification of the Mauritius treaty and announce instead its intention to recommence the process determining the future of our islands, with us, the Chagossian people, at the very heart of the process.
Labour Ministers, MPs and Peers, and indeed all parliamentarians who believe that eliminating racial discrimination is important, should be deeply concerned about what the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has to say rather than trying to brush it aside as a pretended irrelevance.
In reflecting on the CERD decision in the light of Tuesday’s judgement, it is important to keep three things in mind.
First, it was not the Mauritians who were forcibly removed from Mauritius between 1968 and 1973. They remained on Mauritius then and have done so ever since. It was us, the Chagossian people, who were forcibly removed from our islands, the Chagos Islands, and in fact Mauritius was complicit in our forced removal, providing the place to which we were forcibly removed. As I noted on Parliament News on 12 January: ‘In so doing they (the Mauritians) eloquently demonstrated that the Chagos Islands were never a part of Mauritius but were treated as (in the words of the International Court of Justice) ‘a dependency of Mauritius’. Had the Mauritians been our brothers and sisters they would have no more tolerated the events of 1968-73 than would the true mother of the baby boy presented to King Solomon have permitted his being cut in two.’
Second, while the treaty gives Mauritius the right to resettle the Chagos Islands if it wants to, it gives the Chagossian people no right of resettlement whatsoever and thereby perpetuates the injustice of the last fifty-eight years. In this it was very interesting to note that rather than celebrating the return of the people he tells the international community should be regarded as his own, after our forced exile for 53 years, the Mauritian Attorney General responded angrily to our arrival, accusing us of illegality. That again tells you all you need to know.
Third, rather than completing decolonisation, the treaty renews our dispossession for another 99 years, requiring the British taxpayer to pay billions of pounds for the use of one of our islands to the Mauritians. Moreover, what makes the arrangement particularly troubling is the fact that the money the UK Government proposes paying Mauritius to lease just one of our islands is significantly more than KPMG estimates it would cost to actually put right the wrongs of the past and resettle us on our islands.
What is proposed is a bit like someone having disinherited you and your family of your house, so you are shut out of it and not allowed in for 58 years, but then having a change of heart and saying: ‘We are sorry. That was wrong. We should not have treated you in that way.’ But instead of returning the house to you, they give it to someone else and then pay them, rather than you, a huge sum to rent a room.
As such the Mauritius Treaty gives expression to the kind of moral madness that the British public will never put up with.
Please contact your MP and members of the House of Lords, send them a copy of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Decision and urge them to call on Kier Starmer to contact the Mauritian Government and explain that, further to Tuesday’s Judgement, and in light of the CERD intervention, the UK: i) is now formally suspending treaty ratification and ii) instead proposing the provision of the self-determination referendum the Chagossian people were wrongly denied in 1965.
The Referendum can include the option of being joined to Mauritius but must also include the option of being a resettled, British Overseas territory, which is what most Chagossians want and what most Chagossians will vote for.’
Misley Mandarin, First Minister of the Chagossian Government – no longer in Exile, Peros Banhos, the Chagos Island
