Call on Cabinet Ministers due to meet to decide the future of Chagos

14.01.2025

Bearing in mind that the UK-USA alliance owes the State of Mauritius reparations for the illegal occupation and use and abuse of our territory of Chagos for 57 years, and for unpaid rent for 57 years*, and proud that Mauritius has proven its sovereignty over Chagos and re-establish its territorial integrity, 

Any and each Minister who agrees to anything that infringes on Mauritian sovereignty will, in future years, decades, centuries carry the blame for this.

Any and each Minister who agrees to exchanging for money the right for the Republic of Mauritius to be non-aligned in the future, at the very worst time, locking Mauritius into the dying West’s empire as it enters its process of slow and dangerous crumbling and begins to fall, will forever be remembered with opprobrium for it.

Any and each Minister who agrees to ceding control over part of our land, allowing it to be used for illegal wars (as in the case of the USA’s wars against Iraq without any “cause for war” and Afghanistan equally without any reasonable “casus belli”) or used for genocide as it might right now be being used to aid Israel slaughter Palestinians, and for no-one knows what terrible wars in the future, with the rise of extreme right wing parties in both the USA and Britain, or for torture of illegal prisoners as it has been used by the CIA, or for illegally imprisoning people lost at sea in small ships, will be held responsible by history for contributing to these acts.

Any and each Minister who agrees to flaunting the Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear Arms Free Africa by allowing nuclear materials, nuclear arms, and nuclear-powered submarines, to be housed in and around our island of Diego Garcia in flagrant defiance of a binding Treaty that Mauritius has signed up to, and that both the USA and UK have also signed the Protocols to, will forever go down in human memory as contributing to the breakdown in international law, and increasing the risk of provoking a nuclear war and holocaust.This would be all the more treacherous given that it was the unified African union that stood with the Republic of Mauritius to rally the well-nigh total international support needed to win the case for decolonizing the Chagos thus completing Mauritian decolonization.

Any and each Minister who agrees to ceding the exercise of Mauritian sovereignty over all its territory is, as Hon. S. Mohammed has warned, in breach of the Mauritian Constitution that includes, unless amended by referendum, Diego Garcia in Section 111 as part of Mauritius while Section 1 says Mauritius is a “sovereign democratic state”, will be forever responsible for signing away the sovereignty and democratic control of the country that is defined by its people and its boundaries, now clearly certified by international law as interpreted by the ICJ and the UNCLOS, and the UN General Assembly.

Any and each Minister who agrees to signing away control over Diego Garcia, part of Mauritius, is preventing the freedom of movement of all Mauritians, and in particular those of Chagos heritage, to the whole of Mauritius.

Each and every Minister is today responsible for whether the Chagos will be used to bring international peace, to nurture instead of destroy the environment, to ensure freedom of movement for all residents of the Republic of Mauritius and the right for residents there to have all civil and political rights over the whole of Chagos, including the right to have their own democratic Regional Assembly and a Constituency, as well as ensuring reparations for 57 years of continued colonization.

We therefore call on each and every Minister to refrain from ceding any territory and instead to call for a timeline for closure of the Diego Garcia military base and the outlawing of all military bases on our territory in the future.

Alain Ah-Vee, Lindsey Collen, Ragini Kistnasamy and Rajni Lallah
for LALIT

* These reparations, obviously, in addition to reparations to all the Chagossians families for their suffering as a result of the crime against humanity of forcibly removing them from Chagos to, mainly, Mauritius main island.