BIG POLITICAL WEEK: confrontations, investigations, legal solutions & U-Turns
This is a big week in the politics of the Chagos Islands, its sovereignty and the rights of Chagossian people.
It started on Tuesday with President Trump doing a U-turn to support the UK-Mauritius Chagos Islands sovereignty agreement afterall following a trans-Atlantic phone-call with the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump says he’ll send troops in if necessary to keep the base secure. Adding, “ I will never allow our presence on a base as important as this to ever be undermined or threatened by fake claims or environmental nonsense.” It wasn’t clear whether a Chagossian right to resettle or seek employment on the military base would be considered one of the “fake claims” he was referring to.
The next day, Wednesday, in a parliamentary committee room, a proposal by Dr. Elodie Tranchez, a lecturer at the UN Institute for Training and Research, for a Joint Declaration by the UK and Mauritius governments confirming there is nothing in the sovereignty treaty stopping the resettlement of the Chagossian people, was supported by Professor Philippe Sands.
This is significant. Sands was Mauritius’ legal representative at its successful 2019 case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ judges advised against continuing British colonial rule over the Chagos Islands. One assumes Sands’ opinion is still influential in Mauritius. See him speak in a “personal capacity” about this and other issues at the Parliamentary Human Rights Joint Committee hearing yesterday [timecode for the Declaration: 16:58:34].
Meanwhile at the same event I witnessed Vanessa Callou, leading campaigner of the Chagos Islands Government-in-Exile Chagossian group and BIOT Citizen, tell Professor Sands Chagossian people were suffering in Mauritius and as a British Chagossian she is opposed to the deal, as a fellow campaigner broke parliamentary rules and filmed the interaction which was then broadcast on Facebook and the political gossip Guido Fawkes website.
Then on Thursday, Andrew Bridgen, former Conservative MP, launched a private prosecution against the government. In a letter to No. 10, Bridgen writes that he has been provided “with information from a former New Scotland Yard detective tending to show that the Chagos ‘deal’ involves a sophisticated fraud.”
On the same day the Great British PAC organisation, a privately-funded patriotic political action committee launched in 2024 by former Reform UK deputy co-leader Ben Habib, has also written a letter to the Prime Minister. Writing “on behalf of concerned citizens” and citing “50,000 of all parties who have rallied around petitions calling for immediate scrutiny of the Chagos agreement and transparency at every stage of its negotiation” and in the interests of democracy, the authors demand: “immediate publication of all relevant communications relating to the Chagos negotiations. Preservation of documents and digital records, without exception. Independent examination of the roles played by principle actors involved in shaping the agreement. Parliamentary and judicial oversight robust enough to reassure a sceptical and increasingly alarmed public. And that “we want accountability.”
Meanwhile all week Kareesha Turner and Paul Turner, Head of British-based Imperium Chambers, have been in Mauritius working pro bono. They represent about 50 Chagossian families in the country who have been denied registration as British citizens, despite being eligible under British nationality law.
“The parallels with the Windrush scandal are stark,” Turner commented. He is seeking Home Office accountability on the matter. And has already sought help from the Attorney General of Mauritius Gavin Glover, SC.
Tessa Clarke/5 Feb 2026