Cullen Murphy<\/b><\/p>\n
Africa-Press – Mauritius. <\/strong><\/span>A new book from Philippe Sands, The Last Colony, tells the story of the Chagossians, an island people who were expelled from their homes by the British and Americans.<\/p>\n You could be forgiven for thinking that a label on a map\u2014in this case the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT, pronounced somewhat like \u201cbuyout\u201d\u2014is something you could take at face value.<\/p>\n I own a coffee mug emblazoned with the territory\u2019s coat of arms: a Union Jack, a crown, a palm tree, and some wavy lines representing water, all displayed on a shield supported by two sea turtles.<\/p>\n I have seen coins and stamps from the territory, and have frequently come across the domain name . io (for Indian Ocean). This entity has a flag, a website, and a commissioner in London.<\/p>\n And there is some dry land associated with the name: the 60 or so low-lying tiny islands of the remote Chagos Archipelago, spread across 6,000 square miles of sea, near the Indian Ocean\u2019s geographic center.<\/p>\n I stepped foot on several of the islands last year, bringing back a vial of fine white sand that I hoped customs authorities wouldn\u2019t mistake for something else. Keeping it separate was important so that one of the archipelago\u2019s islands, Diego Garcia, could effectively be leased to the United States for use as a major military base. Britain was in the process of a military withdrawal \u201ceast of Suez\u201d; the U. S. was moving in, and Diego Garcia offered a strategic location.<\/p>\n To make the detachment from Mauritius look legitimate in international eyes, Britain claimed, falsely, that the islands were populated only by transient \u201ccontract labourers\u201d and that, as a result, no vexing issues of self-determination were involved.<\/p>\n Source: Theatlantic<\/b><\/p>\n For More News And Analysis About Mauritius<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cullen Murphy Africa-Press – Mauritius. A new book from Philippe Sands, The Last Colony, tells the story of the Chagossians, an island people who were expelled from their homes by the British and Americans. You could be forgiven for thinking that a label on a map\u2014in this case the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":36446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[233,245,1767,241],"class_list":["post-36447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mauritius","tag-chagos","tag-mauritius"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nBIOT was created in the 1960s as a useful fiction. The Chagos Archipelago originally formed part of the British island colony of Mauritius, some 1,300 miles to the west. As Mauritius sought independence, Britain set out to detach Chagos from the colony\u2019s administrative jurisdiction.<\/p>\n