How a Labour Government used green politics to keep Chagossians off the islands - by Tessa Clarke, Editor, THE CHAGOS FILES

The EU may benefit from new fishing rights in Chagos Islands waters after the Government’s Chagos sovereignty treaty is finalised and the islands become Mauritian the Telegraph reports. Campaigners wanting the CHAGOS ISLANDS to remain British are outraged.

Priti Patel, Shadow Foreign Secretary said, "Having already sold out British fishermen to the EU, now Labour is selling out our sovereign territory and waters too.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, also opposed to the sovereignty deal, was reported to have said that EU's controversial fishing practices in West African waters would now spread to the Chagos region. It is “the final straw,” says Farage. “The world’s largest marine protected area is to be surrendered by a government that claims to be green.”

Yet this view of environmental protection and the Chagos Islands isn’t the whole story.

The Marine Protected Area (MPA) was originally created on 1 April 2010 by Britain’s then Labour Government. For the past 16 years, the Foreign office instructed the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) officials, the civil servants who run the islands, to maintain heavily restrict fishing in the name of protecting marine biodiversity. Since then all political parties support some kind of protection on the environment even if not all are for the policy of Net Zero.

Yet the MPA wasn’t just created to protect fish according to The Guardian. In 2013 the newspaper published WikiLeaks cables that are said to show that the MPA was set up to keep out Chagossian people.

 A senior UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) official was said to have stated in a WikiLeaks cable dated 2009 that establishing a marine reserve would make it "difficult, if not impossible" for former inhabitants to pursue resettlement claims. U.S. officials are said to have agreed that this approach would be the "most effective long-term way to prevent" any return by the islanders or their descendants.

Back in 2010 Chagossians campaigners I was speaking to were alarmed that the new MPA restricted their fishing rights and therefore chance of sustainable living – let alone commercial fishing to make a living - if they resettled. It effectively ruled out “going home.” They would not be able to survive without fishing.

Meanwhile former military who have lived on Diego Garcia, one of the islands and a UK-US military base, extolled the virtues of protecting one of the largest protected marine environments. At the time it appeared that the rights of humans wanting to resettle were given less value than the rights of fish.

The MPA covers about 640,000 km of ocean sea. It was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a 2015 UNCLOS tribunal after failing to consult the Chagossians.

Today alongside those in parliament opposed to the Government’s sovereignty deal, British Chagossian campaigners emphasise their support in protecting the Chagos Islands’ environment. It is part of their argument for resettlement and for the islands to remain British. The message is that those concerned about the environment can trust them with looking after the islands.

It is worth remembering, however, that the green cause can be used politically to keep people off land and out of the sea too.

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