Contribution
It puts the Chagossians’ expulsion into the vocabulary of international criminal law, which the earlier litigation, in English courts, the European Court of Human Rights and the ICJ, had not used. It assembles, from declassified documents already quoted in English judgments, the record that UK officials planned the removal with the US and deliberately described the islanders as having no permanent population so that no report to the United Nations would be owed. And it adds testimony from Chagossians across three countries about the removals and the decades after.
Key insight
The bar on return is treated as the same wrong as the expulsion, still being committed. Deportation is a continuing crime while the deported are kept out, and preventing return is separately an “other inhumane act” on the reasoning of the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber’s 2018 Rohingya decision. On that framing the wrong is present, not historical, so apologies that regret “the manner” of removal while opposing return are not remedies.
Assumptions
- Crimes against humanity need a widespread or systematic attack pursuant to a state policy (Rome Statute art. 7). The report takes the expulsion of an entire population, planned at ministerial level, to satisfy both prongs (pp. 90–91).
- Continuing crime. That deportation continues while return is prevented is argued from an amicus brief, a Colombian Supreme Court ruling and the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances; the report says “international courts have not appeared to address when and how forced displacement amounts to a continuous crime” (p. 81).
- The Chagossians are a people, and an Indigenous people, on the African Commission’s Endorois criteria and UNESCO’s definition (pp. 75–77, 88–90).
- The UK’s human-rights treaties apply in the BIOT, against the UK’s position that they do not apply to a territory without a permanent population (pp. 52, 74).
Key results
- The classification as non-permanent (pp. 21–28). The report quotes, through Bancoult (No 1) of 2000: a 1964 UK document, “The intention is, however, that none of them should be regarded as being permanent inhabitants of the islands … In the absence of permanent inhabitants, the obligations of Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter will not apply”; a June 1966 minute, “to recognise that there are permanent inhabitants will imply that there is a population whose democratic rights will have to be safeguarded”; a 1970 legal adviser’s note headed “Maintaining the fiction”; and the deletion, at the UK mission to the UN’s request in November 1965, of “virtually” from “virtually no permanent inhabitants”.
- Planning with the US (pp. 21, 54–56). US officials wanted Diego Garcia “without local inhabitants”; a 1971 State Department memorandum says the US would “share the responsibility”; the US gave the UK a $14 million discount on Polaris missiles.
- The removals (pp. 29–34): those who left on holiday or for medical care were refused passage home from 1967; teachers and medical staff stopped coming; Diego Garcia’s dogs were killed in 1971; the last 64 people (8 men, 9 women, 47 children) left Peros Banhos in May 1973.
- After (pp. 34–49): poverty and discrimination in Mauritius and the Seychelles; compensation in 1978 and 1982–86, the latter conditional on an English-language renunciation; nothing for those in the Seychelles; British citizenship from 2002 and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.
- Return (pp. 41–49): lawful 2000–04 for the outer islands, barred again by Orders in Council in 2004; KPMG’s 2015 study found resettlement feasible at £32–420 million; the UK refused in 2016. All interviewees wanted the right of return; most said they would go back; they did not ask for the base to close; they did not agree on sovereignty.
- Legal conclusion (pp. 87–92): three crimes against humanity — continuing deportation or forcible transfer, other inhumane acts, and persecution on racial grounds — by the UK, the first jointly with the US; the US also responsible for aiding the UK’s wrongful acts.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | UK officials knew there was a settled population and described the islands as having none, to avoid UN reporting | strong | official documents quoted in English judgments (pp. 21–28); not checked against the originals here |
| C2 | The US asked for Diego Garcia without inhabitants and shared in planning the removal | strong | US and UK documents (pp. 21, 54–56) |
| C3 | The entire population was removed between 1967 and 1973 by indirect and direct coercion | strong | interviews; UK judgments; the ICJ’s finding of fact |
| C4 | The continuing bar on return is a continuing crime against humanity | moderate | legal argument; the report concedes no international court has so held |
| C5 | Persecution on racial grounds | moderate | officials’ language in the 1960s; comparison with Cyprus and the Falklands |
| C6 | Chagossians want the right to return, across countries and generations | weak to moderate as a general claim | 43 interviews through representative groups; not a sample; KPMG’s consultations agree |
Method
Interviews between November 2021 and September 2022: 43 Chagossians, reached through four representative groups (Chagos Refugees Group, Chagos Asylum People, Chagossian Voices, Seychelles Chagossian Committee), and 14 officials, lawyers, academics and others, in Croydon, London, Port Louis, Victoria and Praslin, in English, Creole or French. Documentary review of government records, court records, videos, photographs and maps. A summary of findings was sent to the three governments on 7 December 2022 and their replies are annexed.
Concepts
- Derasine: Chagossian Creole, “uprooted”; also “to eradicate”.
- Sagren: “profound sadness of facing the impossibility of being unable to return”, taken from a WHO-funded study via David Vine.
- Continuing crime: a crime whose actus reus persists while its effect is maintained by the perpetrator, here the bar on return.
- Ilois: the older name for Chagossians, now taken as pejorative (p. 16 n. 5).
Connections
It relies on the ICJ’s advisory opinion (LIT-1589, NOTE-1361) for the history and the decolonization holding, on the English Bancoult judgments for most of its archival quotations, and on David Vine’s Island of Shame (2011) and Philippe Sands’s The Last Colony (2022). It does not cite Laura Jeffery’s ethnography (LIT-1598). Its legal frame for denied return comes from the ICC’s 2018 Bangladesh/Myanmar decision and Tomer Levinger’s article of 2021.
Bearing on the record
- CASE-169, the “no permanent population” particular. The case keeps as the exchange’s that British officials represented the islands as having no permanent population while knowing otherwise. This report documents it, with the documents’ own words, as quoted in UK judgments. It also shows that the classification still does work: the UK now argues that human-rights treaties do not apply to the BIOT because it has no permanent population, which is true only because of the removal (p. 74). That is the case’s “classification that changes its referent” in the documents’ own terms (“Maintaining the fiction”).
- CASE-169 and CLAIM-418, divergent judgments. The report confirms, from its own interviews, that Chagossians disagree about which State should hold the islands while agreeing that they should have the right to return; most do not oppose the base (p. 6). That is a shared claim with divergent political judgments, as the case says, though on a sample drawn through representative groups.
- CASE-169, restoration. The report asks for restitution “at a minimum standard equivalent to how they would live today had they not been expelled”, not for return to plantation life (p. 11), which fits the case’s line that what restitution owes is not settled by the structural description.
- CLAIM-361. The report’s demand that any UK–Mauritius agreement “center” Chagossians and guarantee return is the claim’s point that a settlement that drops the return claim has not satisfied it.
No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- Advocacy. It is an advocacy report, and says so in its recommendations. The legal conclusion, crimes against humanity, is argued, not adjudicated; the report concedes the continuing-crime theory has not been tested by an international court.
- Sources at one remove. Most archival quotations are taken from English judgments, not from the files.
- Sampling. Interviewees were reached through representative groups, so the report cannot say how widely its interviewees’ views are shared.
- The annexes, the governments’ own replies, are images and were not read; their substance is known only from the body’s quotations.
- Errors and inconsistencies found.
- The UK’s buy-out of the plantation company is £600,000 in April 1967 on p. 26 and £660,000 in March 1967 on p. 61.
- The maximum cost of return is “approximately GBP£500 million” in the summary (p. 6) and £32–420 million from KPMG in the body (p. 44).
- The UK’s announcement of negotiations with Mauritius is dated 3 November 2022 on p. 3 and 4 November 2022 on p. 59; the cited statement is dated 3 November.
- The 1982 payments are made “between 1982 and 1986” on p. 63; the ICJ, which the report cites, says 1983–84 (ICJ para. 120).
- Footnote 230 calls resolution 71/292 a request for an opinion of “the International Criminal Court”; it was of the International Court of Justice.
- The Lancaster House agreement is said to have been “signed” (p. 24); the ICJ describes an agreement in principle recorded in the minutes of a meeting (ICJ paras. 108, 171).
- That “the UN Human Rights Committee has also recognized Chagossians as a people” (p. 89) is inferred from a reference to “the Ilois’ right to return to their territory”, which does not say it.
Open questions
- Would an international court accept that a bar on return continues the crime of deportation? The report names the ICC prosecutor’s reframing as other inhumane acts as the likelier route.
- How do the governments’ replies, unread here, answer the findings?