UK Edition
International Court of Justice begins hearing on Britain's separation of Chagos islands from Mauritius
Britain has apologised for the "shameful" way it evicted islanders from the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, but insisted Mauritius was wrong to bring a dispute over sovereignty of the strategic atoll group to the United Nations' top court.
The apology came on the first day of a hearing on the future of the islands, the site of a key UK and US military base, at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Mauritius has asked the ICJ for a legal opinion on sovereignty over the archipelago on the grounds they were “unlawfully” separated and incorporated it into British Indian Ocean Territory ahead of independence.
The hearing is seen as a critical test of Britain’s diplomatic clout in the Brexit era, after it failed to rally enough to support to prevent the UN General Assembly adopting the resolution that led to this week's hearing.
Britain paid Mauritius £3 million for the Chagos Islands, which it then reassigned to British Indian Ocean Territory, in 1965. In the 1970s Britain forcefully evicted around 2,000 local residents to make way for a sprawling US military airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia.
They and their descendants have been campaigning for the right to return home ever since.
Anerood Jugnauth, a former Mauritian president leading the island-state's case, told the court that Harold Wilson had bullied Mauritian leaders into signing off on the "unlawful" sale just before independence, and said Mauritius' "decolonisation is incomplete".
“The choice we were faced with was no choice at all: it was independence with detachment (of the Chagos archipelago) or no independence with detachment anyway,” Mr Jugnauth told the 14-judge panel.
Mauritian advocates played a film featuring evicted Chagos islanders saying they wanted to return to the island of their birth to back up their case. Robert Buckland, the UK Solicitor General, said London "fully accepts the manner in which Chagossians were removed from the Chagos Archipelago."
"The way they were treated thereafter was shameful and wrong and (Britain) deeply regrets that fact," he told ICJ judges.
But he added that the question of sovereignty was "purely bilateral" and that the court should not issue an opinion on it. Britain has apologised for the eviction in the past, but has consistently refused to allow Chagossians to return to the islands.
In 2016 the Foreign Office said it would establish a £40 million resettlement fund for displaced islanders.
The ICJ will hand down a non-binding "advisory opinion" after the four-day hearing, although the final ruling could take weeks or months to be delivered.
A ruling in favour of Mauritius would strengthen the country’s hand in negotiations about the final status of the islands, which could lead to a formal claim for restoration.
The resolution asking the ICJ to offer a legal opinion was brought by Mauritius and backed by African countries.
It passed when when several European countries abstained, in what was a diplomatic blow to Britain.
Twenty-two countries and the African Union are to make statements during the four day hearing.
Australia and the United States are expected to back Britain’s position that the matter should be decided bilaterally, not by the courts.
Seventeen others, including South Africa and Nigeria, are expected to back Mauritius.