The Importance of the Jagdish Koonjul Article on the Chagos Deal
05.06.2025
This week Lexpress.mu and L’Express (4 June) published an article by former Permanent Representative of Mauritius at the UN, Jagdish Koonjul. Readers will remember seeing Mr. Koonjul just last year on world media, as he led the oral submissions on behalf of the State of Mauritius before the ICJ in the case that later found Israel to be illegally occupying Palestine, including Gaza. For this, he was a hero. But, he was more renowned, however, for leading Mauritius’ own international cases at both the ICJ and the UNCLOS Court, both of which were outright victories for the Republic of Mauritius on the issues of both sovereignty and the right of Chagossians to return.
Readers must bear in mind, however, that Mr. Koonjul, as representative of successive Mauritian Governments, though he has fought for Mauritian sovereignty and for the right of return of Chagossians, as LALIT has, he has also, at the same time, and by definition, represented the various Mauritian Governments’ unwavering support for the continued existence and presence on Mauritian land, of the USA’s military base on Diego Garcia, part of Chagos. So, he differs diametrically and totally from LALIT on this issue. And this issue, in turn, comes back to bite into both sovereignty and right-of-return issues. (See our article on lalitmauritius.org up-loaded on 2 July, “Who is More Guilty of ‘Vann Diego Garcia’ – Pravind Jugnauth or Navin Ramgoolam”, also our article on 25 May, “LALIT on the UK-Mauritius Agreement on Chagos including Diego Garcia”.)
Mr. Koonjul’s article is titled, “A Sobering Reflection on the May 22 Agreement”. “Sobering”, we think he means, in the sense of being clear-headed, after hearing all the giddy victory language in the Mauritian press after the signature by Keir Starmer and Navin Ramgoolam the formal Draft Treaty concerning Chagos, including Diego Garcia.
The importance of his article cannot be underestimated.
In criticising the Ramgoolam-signed document, which now reaches the status of a “Draft Treaty”, Mr. Koonjul stresses four points:
First, Mr. Koonjul stresses that Mauritius will lose all its autonomy over the whole of the area, both land and sea, of Chagos that is “beyond Diego Garcia”, as well as on Diego Garcia, itself. This also means any future regional Chagossian autonomy, through a regional Assembly like the one in Rodrigues, will have been lost, too. In LALIT, we had assumed that some of the content of the “Annexes”, which we now know about, had already been negotiated by the Jugnauth-appointed team. But Mr. Koonjul clearly implies that this was not the case. Assuming that to be true, given the credibility of Mr. Koonjul*, the Ramgoolam-signed draft treaty definitely has dangerous consequences, that we had seen when we read the Draft Treaty, but that we had thought were already agreed to in negotiations, but not yet published.
Second, the massive “Infrastructure Fund” in the form of an all-in-one payment that had been negotiated by Jugnauth’s legal team, Mr. Koonjul says, would have allowed proper development on all the Outer Islands i.e. large-scale development. This has now been reduced to mini-projects, even micro-projects, under strict UK, and even USA, control, handed out piecemeal, annually, over 25 years. But, we do not have a copy of the document containing promised big fund for infrastructure. The Koonjul article is the first we have heard of this. Again, if this is true, it is a serious weakness relative to the former agreement that was kept secret.
Third, Mr. Koonjul refers to the dangers in cases of a threat to “supreme national interests”. We think he is referring to the well-nigh impossibility for Mauritius to terminate the Treaty unilaterally even if its supreme national interests are concerned. Article 15 of the Draft Treaty that Ramgoolam signed makes this inability clear as daylight. “Mauritius may terminate this Agreement only if one of the following grounds for termination of this Agreement exists: [non-payment] and “b. a serious threat to its supreme national interests. This means an armed attack or threat of an armed attack on the territory of Mauritius by the United Kingdom, or an armed attack on the territory of Mauritius directly emanating from the Base on Diego Garcia.” Even then, there are more obstacles that add up to the UK having to agree. Nothing else is grounds for dissolution of the Treaty.
Fouth, Mr. Koonjul says that Mauritius has exposed itself to jeopardy for illegal acts by the UK and USA on territory over which we, as Mauritians, are “sovereign”, and therefore responsible. This exposure is the result of a drafting change from ceding “sovereign rights” to ceding just “rights and authorities” to the UK. This is a “kuto musana”, however. What is sovereignty after Jugnauth ceded its exercise to the UK for 100 years? Or, after what Ramgoolam signed up to, when you read the Annexes that are part and parcel of the Treaty for 100 years? Neither version of these key phrases should have been signed, in LALIT’s view. However, we had not spotted the legal exposure of the Mauritian state, and therefore its people, to being responsible legally for terrible acts committed by the USA and/or Britain by the removal of the word “sovereign” in the drafting. In both cases, as Mauritians we are, in any case, morally responsible. We live in a “sovereign democratic” state, after all. We cannot but be morally responsible for reprehensible acts being perpetrated on our land. At the moment, under President Trump and a belligerent UK, morally reprehensible acts – like the genocide in Gaza – are predictable from states like the USA and UK that have armed this genocide until today, and are still providing the arms.
Whatever else is true, we must agree with Mr. Koonjul’s conclusion that Mauritius is back in 1965, having signed away its sovereignty, but this time, as he puts it, “willingly and jubilantly”.
He uses a phrase to distinguish the version he was part of (the Joint Statement) from this Ramgoolam-signed Draft Treaty, by claiming Jugnauth-signed one provided safeguards by “plausible deniability” on UK and US actions on Diego Garcia. We had thought that the whole of the Jugnauth-signed document relied on “plausible deniability”, including the bit about “ceding sovereign rights”. We criticize reliance on such tactics as being only feasible, if immoral behavior, that can only be got away with by hegemons or bullies. A relatively small state in terms of geo-political clout, like the Republic of Mauritius, is not likely to be able to deny anything plausibly.
All this to say that in LALIT, we would never give up our struggle to close down the military base on Diego Garcia, nor give up the struggle to close down all US and other foreign military bases, in exchange for a sum of money. In fact, we need our ports and airports closed to military vehicles.
Unfortunately, both Governments – Jugnauth and Ramgoolam – have traded proper sovereignty over our land, the land Chagossians were born on, in exchange for money. And with the money comes shame. Such money is rightly called blood money.
In addition, all the countries that bravely supported Mauritius at the ICJ acted on the principle of decolonization, and not for monetary compensation.
And what is pitiful in all this is that the UK and USA already owed Mauritius reparations for 57 years of illegal military occupation, and owe Chagossians proper reparations for the cruelty they suffered by the forced removal from the islands of their birth. Just calculate and add those two sums!
LALIT
* To give an idea of Mr. Koonjul’s enormous stature, we are citing United Nations’ sources. From 2001 to 2006, he was Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Mauritius to the United Nations in New York. During this time he was Mauritius’ chief representative to the Security Council from 2001 to 2002. he was President of the Security Council in January 2002. From 2003 to 2006, he was as Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States. He was also Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council from 2003 to 2004.
Mr. Koonjul also served as Ambassador to and Head of Bilateral Directorate for Asia and the Middle East from 2006 to 2011. He was Team Leader of the Mauritius Continental Shelf Project from 2008 for years. In 2009, he was Team Leader for Strategic Planning of the Mauritius Oceanography Institute.
From 2011 until 2015, he was the Mauritian Ambassador to Belgium and Permanent Representative to the European union.
He was more recently, from July 2015 until last year, Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Mauritius Prior and Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Mauritius to the UN.
