This month, six Chagossians who have made their home once more on the Chagos Islands must watch the Government head back to court, determined to strike down the landmark ruling that allowed them to stay.
Even as ministers push to evict islanders whose families have battled across generations to return, fresh scrutiny is falling on the way British officials handled an earlier, high-profile trip to the territory — one made by campaigners who want the islands handed to Mauritius.
Questions over a February 2022 expedition
Solicitors representing the Chagossian claimant Misley Mandarin have now put formal questions to the Government's own lawyers, pressing them over a February 2022 visit to the Chagos Islands made by the Mauritian campaigner Olivier Bancoult alongside the international lawyer Philippe Sands KC.
That challenge lands just before a pivotal Court of Appeal hearing on July 15–17, at which ministers will try to reverse the earlier judgment permitting the Chagossians to remain on the islands.
To many who stand behind the Chagossians, the double standard could hardly be starker.
Chagossians who simply want to live on the land of their ancestors remain locked in courtroom fights over their right to be there. Campaigners pressing for the territory to be handed to Mauritius, by contrast, appear to have travelled there freely, staged political activities and broadcast the trip to a global audience.
Writing on behalf of the claimants, Keystone Law has set out a series of pointed questions: were permits granted for the 2022 trip; did British authorities know it was happening; how did officials treat it at the time; and why has none of it surfaced in the ongoing litigation over the islands?
The lawyers also want to establish whether the officials responsible for decisions affecting the Mandarin family knew about the visit at the moment those decisions were being taken.
What The Guardian filmed
The concerns trace back to footage released by The Guardian, which captured a group making its way to Peros Banhos, one of the islands within the Chagos archipelago.
In the recording, members of the party put up a flagpole, sang the Mauritian national anthem and spoke openly of their wish to see sovereignty pass from Britain to Mauritius.
On camera, Olivier Bancoult declares:
“We are not going as visitors, we are going in order to prepare the future.”
Philippe Sands KC, a leading advocate for Mauritian sovereignty over the archipelago, has called the removal of the Chagossian people “a crime against humanity” and maintains that barring their return runs contrary to international law.
The claimants' legal team contends that the Court of Appeal deserves a complete picture of how earlier visitors to the islands were treated — all the more so if the authorities knew of the trip and chose to take no enforcement action.
A duty of candour
Their worry, though, reaches beyond the visit itself. Before the court, the Government carries what lawyers term a duty of candour — a binding obligation to lay out the relevant facts in full and with honesty. The claimants argue that if ministers were aware of the 2022 expedition and how it was handled, that knowledge could bear on the live proceedings concerning Chagossian rights on the islands.
As this article went out, the Government had offered no public response to the questions.
A taxpayer-funded double standard
The row cuts to the core of a mounting controversy over Labour's handling of the Chagos Islands. At present, ministers are pouring taxpayers' money into efforts to remove Chagossians from islands their families once called home, even as they pursue a deal to sign sovereignty of the territory over to Mauritius.
Critics point out that one government after another has claimed to act in the interests of the Chagossians, all while shutting many of them out of decisions about their homeland's future — an irony that is hard to overlook.
Those who wish only to live peacefully on ancestral land still find themselves facing legal challenges backed by the Labour Government, while the treatment of a filmed political expedition, mounted by people campaigning to hand those very islands to Mauritius, remains unexplained.
Were permits needed, and if so, were they secured? If they were not, what did the authorities do? And if they did nothing, why? If ministers knew of the visit all along, why has it stayed buried through years of litigation touching Chagossian rights? Short of clear answers from the Government, those questions are not going to fade.
Standing with the Chagossians
This latest move follows a run of significant courtroom wins for the claimants and their advisers. James Tumbridge, a solicitor at Keystone Law, and the senior public law barrister Philip Rule KC have overturned Government decisions affecting Chagossians on the islands, arguing throughout that the Chagossians themselves have been frozen out of choices about their homeland's future.
At the Great British PAC we have thrown our weight behind both the court case and the wider campaign to defend the rights of the Chagossian people. For us it comes down to one plain principle: that Chagossians should be free to determine their own future, and must not be shut out of decisions about the islands from which their community was removed.
Claire Bullivant, CEO of the Great British PAC, said:
“The fundamental question remains the same. Why is the Labour Government so determined to remove Chagossians from islands their families once called home while refusing to answer legitimate questions about how others were treated when they visited the territory? For decades, Chagossians have fought to return to their homeland. Now, after finally securing a hard-won victory in court, the Government is once again seeking to remove them. If ministers are asking the courts to enforce rules against Chagossians, the public has a right to know whether those same rules were applied consistently in other cases. Transparency and equal treatment under the law are not optional; they are fundamental principles of justice. James Tumbridge and Philip Rule KC have done extraordinary work in defending the rights of the Chagossian people. The Great British PAC will continue to support Misley Mandarin and the other claimants as they fight to ensure that Chagossians are not once again ignored in decisions about their own future. This case is about more than legal arguments. It is about whether the descendants of the islands’ original inhabitants will finally be heard, or whether their future will continue to be decided without them.”
The Court of Appeal hearing is widely regarded as among the most consequential stages yet in the long struggle over the future of the Chagos Islands and the rights of the Chagossian people. It is scheduled to sit on July 15–17.