The Chagos Archipelago is made up of 65 coral islands in the Indian Ocean; it lies midway between Africa and Asia, 500 km south of the Maldives. The entire land area is a mere 56.1 km, with the largest island, Diego Garcia, having an area of 32.5 km2.
We are people of African, Indian and Malay ancestry who inhabited the Chagos Islands, specifically Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos and the Salomon island chain, as well as other parts of the Chagos Archipelago from the late 18th to the late 20th century.
The islands were discovered in the early sixteenth century by the Portuguese. The first successful colony was founded on Diego Garcia in 1793 under French rule. Slaves were brought from Mozambique and Madagascar to work in the coconut plantations, which were later established on many of the atolls and isolated islands.
After the abolition of slavery in 1835, laborers were brought from India to work in the coconut plantations. They gradually integrated in the Chagossian society. Many of them intermarried with the inhabitants, thus becoming ancestors to some of today’s Chagossians.
In 1814, with the end of the Napoleonic wars, the Chagos along with Mauritius and the Seychelles were ceded to Great Britain through the Paris treaty. The Chagossian people evolved their own distinctive Creole language and their own culture.
We had thriving villages, schools, a hospital and above all, a benign, peaceful and undisturbed way of life that the Chagossian’s had enjoyed for generations on the islands.
The late 1960’s and early 1970’s saw an abrupt end to our peaceful way of life. The fate of an entire defenceless population would be sealed by the U.K. and the US with the complicity of Mauritius. Independence was granted to Mauritius, but only after the Chagos islands were illegally separated in November 1965.
In 1966, the US and UK signed a 50 years agreement to use the islands for military purpose, under the terms that each island should be without a resident civil population. Unknown to Parliament and in breach of the UN charter, the British Government plotted with Washington to expel us, dismissing us as "Men Fridays" and "Tarzans".
We were threatened with being shot, bombed and starved if we did not leave. Our dogs and pets were gassed in front of our own eyes. Meanwhile, food stores were allowed to deplete to pressure us to leave.
The Chagossian people were sent to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they were dumped on the quays without any plan of resettlement. They were often treated as second class citizens, resided in slums, and many succumbed to alcoholism and drug abuse due to the trauma of enforced exile. Our expulsion is considered as one of the most heinous crimes in British History.
We had our own variety of music and traditional dance moves named the Sega. Every Saturday night would bring with it, our organised traditional ‘Sega Ravanne’ in the yard. Using our handmade instruments like the ‘maravanne’ (rattle), ‘moutia’ (hand drum), ‘ravanne’ (goatskin drum), triangle, and empty bottles, we would turn it into a good rhythm.
The ladies would be singing with their amazing and powerful voices, whilst the men would be beating on the drums with tenacity. Saturday came to be symbolic for us. It was a way for all the Chagossians to gather and eat, drink and dance till the next morning as one big family.
We would enjoy a fresh, very rich cuisine, including our famous ‘seraz’. We grew fruits and vegetables and reared animals, also manufacturing our own liquor. Our traditional rum ‘baka’ is very popular to this day. We were joyous and care-free.
The Catholic faith is predominant. Our Christianity is a part of our community spirit, alongside the Church of England and Assemblies of God. Religion, respect of traditions and family are the pillars of the Chagossians lifestyle.
We share the same languages of the Mauritians and Seychellois known as Kreol, though one can easily differentiate us by our unique accent. Chagossians were bound to speak Kreol (a mixture of French and varied African dialects) due to lack of opportunity at the time to go to school.
We were taken as slave property and put to work in coconut plantations. Our history, our names, our identity, and finally our dignity, were stripped from us so that we could never know ourselves. In the Chagos, we were eventually recognised as human and declared incapable of being owned. We intermarried and toiled to create ourselves a new identity and history, which would be anchored in the land that we worked on. In 1971, the UK issued a policy making it a criminal offense for us to be present on the islands without a permit; we were criminalised for our inconvenient existence.
A deal was made between the British Government and Mauritius. The Chagossians were expelled and dumped into the slums. Mauritius pocketed money allocated for our so-called compensation—a sum never agreed upon by the Chagossians themselves. We became orphans with no government to look after us. The UK never looked back to check on our welfare. Three years after the deportations, we were forced to go on strike to fight against shameful treatment. Elders were given a measly ‘compensation’ grant of £700, which was not enough to even pay accumulated debts.
It was an expulsion of the weak in the interests of the powerful, with a callous disregard for the little people. We were threatened with being shot or bombed. Pets were gassed. Food stores were allowed to deplete to starve us into leaving. We were forced to sign documents upon arrival in Mauritius, written in legalistic English, whilst our elders had not even a basic grasp of the language. It was a coerced removal, to which we were powerless against due to the threat of guns and starvation.