In the middle of the Indian Ocean, between Africa and Asia, Britain wrote one of the most shameful pages of its history.

A hardly known population, Ilos, the inhabitants of Chagos islands, was deported and transferred to Mauritius and Seychelles islands between 60s and 70s to allow the construction of Camp Justice, a strategic military base at Diego Garcia which played a crucial role during the two Gulf wars and the intervention in Afghanistan.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Ilos reached Chagos islands, which would have been enclosed in Mauritius territory after the colonial wars between France and England.
A population of two thousands individuals, they lived on fishing and on the work in coconut plantations till the Sixties, when USA decided to establish a military base to control the Indian Ocean, and the British government accepted to let out the island for the following seventy years in exchange for a supply of Polaris missiles. Chagos archipelago was taken away from Mauritius territory and became a part of the British Indian Ocean Territories.
The situation of Ilos still had to be dealt with, and British government did not lose time. Pressures followed one another, and meanwhile the Foreign Office tried with all means to pass the local population off as “seasonal workers” in order to justify their leave.
Britain acquired the plantations and then closed them to make the population unemployed, and the same thing happened to schools and hospitals.
Those who went to Mauritius islands to receive health care were not allowed to go back, and, for those who remained, their fields were burnt and their cattle killed, as a documentary shot by journalist John Pilger in 2004 shows.
Pressures eventually obtained the desired effect: the majority of Ilos leaved, and those who offered resistance were deported.
They ended up in the outskirts of Port Louis and Victoria, where they never managed to fit in.
Statistics show that the unemployment rate is double than the country average, as well as the use of alcohol and drugs.
Ilos have hopes of returning home.
A 2004 High Court sentence recognised the illegality of the expulsion, but the British government, to invalidate the sentence, released a study inferring that Ilos repatriation would be too expensive, dangerous because of the frequent floods, and it would contribute to the global warming. The island will be let out to the USA till 2016, and from that moment the Mauritius government should exercise sovereignty
Will USA and Britain accept to cede Diego Garcia?
Ilos set their last hopes in the umpteenth appeal to the London High Court and to the European Court of Justice, but the British government has already demonstrated that sentences can be ignored, if they are in contrast with the reason of state.