‘The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours…. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls,” wrote Sir Paul Gore-Booth, a senior official at the British Foreign Office, as the plan to expel the 2,000 Chagos Islanders from their homes was taking shape in 1966. “We must surely be very tough about this.” They were indeed very tough about it. Six years later the Chagossians (“Ilois” as they call themselves) were scooped up, loaded on ships and dumped on the waterfront of Port Louis in Mauritius, where most of them have lived in abject poverty ever since. But t…

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