Southern Africa: Britain will not concede the Chagos plateau

African Bulletin

The British Deputy High Commissioner in Mauritius, Ewan Ormiston said after a meeting with Mauritian Foreign Minister, Henry Bellingham that Great Britain has no intention to cede the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius. Chargos is an overseas territory of Britain composed of 55 small islands located in the central Indian Ocean, East of the Seychelles and South of the Maldives. The archipelago was detached in 1965 from Mauritius, which has not ceased to claim sovereignty since. The British authorities are strongly disputing the lawsuit filed by the Chagos’s Refugees Group to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and Ewan Ormiston regretted that previous governments weren’t able to take the necessary decisions to give, at that time, the Chagossians the right of returning back to their lands. It is unfortunate that no adequate measures have been implemented in the 1970s, measures that would have easily changed the positively the situation, the British diplomat said. Now and because of security measures, we cannot allow the Chagossians to join permanently their native islands. However, we will continue to allow some of them to visit the archipelago, but in right time and right places, he argued.