Category Archives: Mauritius

Chagos Islanders fear loss of identity as birth certificates altered to remove disputed homeland

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Birthplace and parents’ names are being removed from passports and birth certificates as Mauritius stakes claim to the island

Exiled islanders from the disputed British-owned Chagos Islands are finding their heritage has been removed from new identity documents in an apparent move by Mauritius to stake its claim to the territory.

British ownership of the Chagos Islands has long been challenged by Mauritius, where most islanders were shipped in the 1960s after being evicted from their Indian Ocean homeland to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.

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Fashion firms agree to compensate garment workers in Mauritius

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Calvin Klein, Hilfiger and Barbour among brands to pay £400,000 after report alleges illegal hiring fees, deception and intimidation

Leading fashion brands including Barbour and PVH, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, have said they will pay £400,000 to garment workers in Mauritius after an investigation found that migrant workers were forced to pay thousands of pounds for their jobs.

Transparentem, a US-based organisation that investigates workers’ rights, looked into conditions at five factories in Mauritius and interviewed 83 workers in 2022 and 2023.

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Chagos islanders must get full reparations for forced exile, says NGO

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Human Rights Watch also demands trial for ‘appalling colonial crime’ of expulsion – and continuing ill treatment – of Chagossians

The UK should pay full and unconditional reparations to generations affected by its forcible displacement of Chagos Islands inhabitants in the 1960s and 70s, an action that constituted a crime against humanity, Human Rights Watch has said.

The NGO said that individuals should be put on trial for the expulsion of Chagossians when the UK retained possession of what it refers to as British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT, after Mauritius gained independence in 1968.

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Negotiations on Chagos Islands’ sovereignty face legal challenge

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Pre-action letter says talks between UK and Mauritius ‘being held without consulting Chagossian people’

A legal attempt has been launched to halt negotiations between the UK and Mauritius over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, Britain’s last African colony, claiming Chagossian people’s views are being ignored.

Bernadette Dugasse, who was born on Diego Garcia, an island within what is known today as the British Indian Ocean Territory, is seeking judicial review of the government’s approach to the talks.

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Chagos Islanders demand say as UK-Mauritius sovereignty talks begin

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Lobby group says future being decided ‘without the involvement of the actual community itself’

Descendants of the people of the Chagos Islands have claimed their views are being ignored as the prime minister of Mauritius announced the start of talks with Britain over the territory’s sovereignty.

Pravind Jugnauth, who has led the Mauritian government since 2017, used a new year’s address to reveal that talks with London were under way over the disputed Indian Ocean archipelago.

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The Chagos Islanders taking back their birthplace from the British: ‘They uprooted us’ – video

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More than 50 years after they were forcibly removed from their homes, former residents of Britain’s last colony in Africa are challenging the UK’s claim to the archipelago. After a five-day journey across the ocean, from which they returned this week, a small delegation of Chagos Islanders made an emotional return to their homeland. They were there to symbolically lay claim to the islands for Mauritius, in the hope of eventually resettling there. Olivier Bancoult was four years old when his family was deported to Mauritius from the Chagos Islands. We follow his journey 

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Mauritius asks Google to label Chagos Islands as part of its territory

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Row breaks out over Google Maps definition as UK insists it still maintains sovereignty

When you are searching online for some of the remotest islands on the planet, it helps to get the name right. But a row has broken out over the labelling of the Chagos Islands on Google maps.

The UK maintains that it still holds sovereignty over what it terms British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) – one of the smallest of red dots on the traditional cartographic globe.

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Chagossian exiles celebrate emotional return as UK tries to justify control

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World sympathy and legal balance shifting to Mauritian claim to islands

Standing in the hospital room where she gave birth to her first child, Rosemonde Bertin looked around in despair. The roof had collapsed, trees grew through the floor and a rusting, enamelled bedpan lay half concealed by ferns.

“I had my baby here,” Bertin said. “He was born in 1972.” That was shortly before everyone on Salomon atoll was forcibly deported by the British to Mauritius and Seychelles.

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Mauritius formally challenges Britain’s ownership of Chagos Islands

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Mauritian ambassador to UN raises country’s flag above atoll of Peros Banhos

Britain’s ownership of the Chagos archipelago has been formally challenged after the Mauritian ambassador to the UN, Jagdish Koonjul, raised his country’s flag above the atoll of Peros Banhos.

In a ceremony on Monday at 10.30am local time, Mauritian officials sang their country’s national anthem and the red, blue, yellow and green standard was raised up the flagpole.

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Mauritius measures reef hoping to lay claim on Chagos Islands

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Dispute over archipelago in Indian Ocean involves neighbouring Maldives and UK historical claim


Under a glaring sky, Mauritian survey teams set off in two tender boats to measure Blenheim Reef on Sunday morning.

A line of breakers marked the outer line of the atoll. An inflatable, carrying two Swedish marine experts retained by the Mauritian government, found an entrance through submerged rocks and surf into calmer water inside.

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Exiled Chagos Islanders return without UK officials for first time

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Fifty years since they were deported to Mauritius by the UK, Chagossians are still fighting for their homeland

Returning to their birthplace after decades of enforced exile, five Chagossians leapt from a motor launch on to the palm-shaded beach of Peros Banhos atoll on Saturday afternoon, kissed the pale sand and stood – hands joined together – in thanksgiving prayers.

For Olivier Bancoult, Lisbey Elyse, Marie Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert, it was the moment they had long anticipated – the first time they could step ashore without close monitoring by British officials.

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Exiled Chagos Islanders bask in return ‘as pilgrims to abandoned place’

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Fifty years after the UK forcibly deported them, five Chagossians have visited the disputed archipelago with Mauritius’s help

Returning to their birthplace after decades of enforced exile, five Chagossians leapt from a motor launch on to the palm-shaded beach of Peros Banhos atoll on Saturday afternoon, kissed the sand and stood – hands joined together – in prayer.

For Olivier Bancoult, Lisbey Elyse, Marie Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert, it was the moment they had long anticipated – the first time they could step ashore without close close monitoring by British officials. It is 50 years since they were forcibly deported to Mauritius by the UK, which cleared the archipelago of its entire population to make way for a US military base on the island of Diego Garcia.

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‘I will be free’: excitement grows as cruise ship nears Chagos Islands

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Exiles intend to plant Mauritian flag on land UK claims as part of British Indian Ocean Territory

For Olivier Bancoult, of the Chagos Refugee Group, it was the sight of two skuas gliding over the waves that heralded long-promised landfall on his native islands.

During the first three days of the voyage from Seychelles there had been remarkably few seabirds, until the Mauritian-chartered Bleu De Nîmes, a cruise ship converted from its former use as a British minesweeper, neared the Chagos Islands.

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Mauritius warns UK firm over coins amid Chagos Islands dispute

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Surrey-based Pobjoy Mint accused of violating international law by producing fish-decorated currency

The directors of a British firm producing tropical fish-themed coins for the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) are being threatened with prosecution by Mauritius as the net tightens around the UK’s claim to sovereignty over the Chagos Islands.

The family-owned Pobjoy Mint, based in Kingswood, Surrey, has received a formal letter from Mauritius’s attorney general, Maneesh Gobin, telling its owners they are violating international law by manufacturing the currency without the correct legal permission.

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‘Life was lovely’: Chagossian women head home 50 years after forced exile

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Women on Mauritian-chartered vessel bound for Chagos Islands recall how life there was ‘paradise’

Rosemonde Bertin was only 17 when British officials arrived on Salomon Atoll in 1972. Everyone was ordered to gather at the manager’s office on the coconut plantation. She does not remember any advance warning.

The commissioner of the British Indian Ocean territory (BIOT) told them they had to leave their homes because Americans were coming to the Chagos archipelago to set up a military base.

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Mauritius government suspends funding over MFA’s handling of voyeurism claims

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  • Clubs also banned from using government-owned stadiums
    Claims that recording device was placed in women’s toilets

The Mauritius government has suspended financial support to local clubs and given the country’s Football Assocation until November to resolve its “governance issues” over the handling of voyeurism allegations at its headquarters.

Administrative secretary, Mila Sinnasamy, has claimed that a mobile phone in recording mode was discovered on 30 July was concealed in a blue basket placed in the water tank of the women’s toilet at the MFA’s headquarters in Trianon, 15 km from the capital, Port Louis. Police have confirmed that a file on the allegations of voyeurism will be submitted to the office of the director of public prosecutions, with Bindou Kistnairain, who works as a cleaner at the MFA, claiming that she also saw a phone in the toilets during her shift in May and did not report it due to fears of “being fired and any retaliation”.

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Mauritius FA looks into claim recording device seen in women’s toilets in May

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  • Cleaner Bindou Kistnairain wrote letter to human resources
  • Police to submit file on voyeurism to public prosecutors

A cleaner who works at the Mauritius Football Association has claimed she found a mobile phone in recording mode in the women’s toilets at its headquarters three months before a complaint was lodged with police by another employee.

Two board members have stepped down over the MFA’s handling of accusations made this month by the administrative secretary, Mila Sinnasamy, that the mobile phone discovered on 30 July was concealed in a blue basket placed in the water tank of the women’s toilet at the MFA’s headquarters in Trianon, 15 km from the capital, Port Louis.

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UN champions Mauritian control of Chagos Islands by rejecting UK stamps

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Refusal to recognise British Indian Ocean Territory stamps is latest move to assert Mauritian sovereignty

Stamps issued by the British Indian Ocean Territory could soon be rendered invalid after the United Nations’ Universal Postal Union (UPU) council recommended they no longer be recognised, in the latest step rejecting the UK’s claim to the Chagos Islands.

The move by the UPU, the second oldest international organisation, is in recognition of Mauritian sovereignty over the strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean and is the first of what is likely to be many by UN specialised agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization and International Monetary Fund.

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Just £12,000 of £40m fund for displaced Chagos islanders has been spent

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MP representing most of UK’s Chagossians says failure to use compensation money to help those facing hardship is outrageous

Less than £12,000 of a £40m fund set up to compensate Chagos islanders who were forcibly evicted from their homeland by the British government has reached those living in the UK.

Four years after it was announced, the Foreign Office fund has distributed less than 1% of its budget in direct support to islanders forced from their homes in the Indian Ocean.

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‘What about justice?’: Chagos Islanders pin their hopes on Biden

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Decades after the US took over the territory for a military base, families separated and forced to leave their homes are still waiting for compensation

When Laurenza Piron was forced from her home in the Chagos Islands in 1970, she was sent on a boat to the Seychelles. Her parents and siblings were sent to Mauritius. It was two decades before they located one another again, and even then none of them could afford a reunion. So Piron, now 76, never saw her family again.

“I wanted to go, but I didn’t have the money,” says Piron. “Compensation should have been paid. If it had, there wouldn’t be such hardship.”

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