EXCLUSIVE: Government cancels leading British Chagossian campaigner

PHOTO: Bernadette Dugasse at the United Nations, Geneva/tessa clarke, 2024

A leading Chagossian campaigner has been excluded from Foreign Office meetings about issues that affect the Chagossian international community.

Bernadette Dugasse, a campaigner against the government’s Chagos Islands sovereignty deal, has been attending in-person and Zoom meetings with Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) officials for over a decade. She represents Chagossian people deported from the Chagos islands to the Seychelles and their families who live in the UK.

Yet this month Dugasse did not receive an invitation to attend the first meeting of the Foreign Office’s new Chagossian Contact Group held online on 2 September 2025. She was not included despite being one of the key campaigners who was also born on the Chagos Islands. 

THE CHAGOS FILES understands that Chagossian leaders who did attend the meeting last week include those from the Mauritius and UK-based Chagossian Refugee Group (CRG), Chagossian Voices (UK),  Chagos Islanders Movement (UK, Mauritius), Association Chagossiens De France (France) and the Seychelles Chagossian Committee (Seychelles).

“The government talks about division among Chagossians yet they are the main people causing division among the Chagossian people,” says Dugasse, speaking from her home in south London. “The division started when we were uprooted and deported from the islands. And now the division is still going on. Government officials chose who we are represented by in the meetings we have with them. This is not right.”

The cancellation of Dugasse and those she represents is particularly striking given all the groups attending are arguing the same thing: that Chagossians should have a say over the sovereignty deal and future of the islands they and their families were deported from over 60 years ago.

Now, it seems, there is an undemocratic corden sanitaire around those Chagossians whom the Foreign Office deems not fit for consultation.

Why is no representation of the Chagossians in the UK who leader Bernadette Dugasse represents allowed in the new government Chagossian Contact Group? 

In the interest of democratic accountability perhaps Yvette Cooper, the new Foreign Secretary, can answer this question. 

UPDATE: “The FCDO continues to ensure that a diverse range of voices are present when we are discussing issues involving the Chagos Islands,” a Foreign Office spokesman told THE CHAGOS FILES. “A range of Chagossian Groups from the UK, Seychelles and elsewhere have been invited to participate in meetings.”

by Tessa Clarke, Editor, the chagos files/7 september 2025/ updated 10 september 2025