Any credible claim on the sovereignty of the Chagos can make no abstraction of the issue of its population. Was there ‘permanent inhabitants’ on the BIOT islands at the time of its creation in November 1965? Were the people still living on the islands ‘contract workers’ as publicly claimed by Britain? Do they satisfy the definition of  Chapter XI of the UN Charter? Was there deliberate misrepresentation of historical facts being spinned for public opinion consumption?

Recently disclosed FCO secret documents and official exchanges throw lights on these crucial questions and help us understand the legal status of the BIOT. The dilemma faced by the then foreign department officials as to how best sell the prospect of creating a new overseas territory at a time of acute decolonisation. The management of opinion between the FCO, the UK representatives at a sitting UN, the Governors of Mauritius and the Seychelles, the press and public opinion at home and abroad. The astutely engineered diplomatic gymnastics … all is revealed!

In his telegrams of the 13 and14 November 1965 to the Governors of Mauritius and the Seychelles, the SS of the FCO stated his concern that application of Chapter XI is being raised at the United Nations and there could be a decision regarding treatment of the civilian population of the islands as per Charter obligations. He also expressed their difficulty in presenting the status of the newly created territory. He writes: “We want to avoid the territory being classed as non-self governing … and also do not wish to give full argument to Argentina over the Falkland Islands and also to some extent to Spain over Gibraltar.”

The solution to their diplomatic headache was to be found in the rubbing off of a few words from a Parliamentary Census report which would have established that there were “a few of them born on Diego Garcia and perhaps some other islands, and so were their parents before them”. Thus the permanent inhabitants would thereafter be referred to as “labourers from Mauritius and Seychelles employed on copra estates, guano extraction and important turtle industry together with their dependants”.

The dilemma Britain had in those years in desperately trying to conciliate territory status and Charter human rights obligations towards the inhabitants explains the diplomatic, political and legal mess we are now in. The development of the last 46 years, in terms of defence facilities, court decisions on settlement, new immigration facilities, the creation of the Marine Protected Zone and the coming renewal of the UK/USA lease of Diego Garcia, makes it even more messy.

The bottom line is that the Chagos Arcghipelago was a dependency of Mauritius and there is evidence on record admitting permanent inhabitants on the islands.

Limuria is in our charge! That’s what the official motto of the BIOT says in Latin.

Is there still the occult belief that some mythical submerged continent will surface?