The sun-kissed isles with a dark history
THE Chagos Islands were colonised by France in the 18th century and African slaves were shipped in to cultivate coconuts.
In 1814, France ceded the islands to Britain, which in 1903 merged them with Mauritius, its colony about 1,200 miles to the south-west.
In 1965, Britain separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, paying £3 million for them. When Mauritius became independent in 1968, the islands remained under British control, and were renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory.
In 1966, Britain leased the islands to the US for 50 years. Between 1968 and 1973, about 2,000 Chagos islanders were evicted. Most were shipped to Mauritius and the Seychelles.
Evicted islanders enlisted the help of human rights lawyer Amal Clooney when they took their fight to the Supreme Court in 2015, but the court ruled against them.
The secretive military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island, has been dubbed ‘the Guantanamo of the East’ amid suspicions it was a key staging post in the US rendition and torture programme. In 2016, the US lease was extended to 2036.