Return for Chagossians could boost islands' biodiversity.
Allowing the displaced inhabitants of the Chagos Islands to return home some 50 years after being evicted to make way for a US military base could bring unexpected benefits to the British Indian Ocean Territory's fragile environment, according to a report published by the Let Them Return campaign. ...

Diego Garcia.
In May, the former inhabitants of the British overseas territory of the Chagos Islands won an important legal victory over the UK government. The Court of Appeal determined that the Chagos islanders, known as the Ilois or Chagossians, had been wrongfully denied the right to return to their homeland....

Paradise regained: Chagos islanders resist superpowers.
The long and hard-fought campaign by Olivier Bancoult and other members of the Chagos Refugee Group has eventually paid off. A boat journey for 100 Chagossian exiles--85 from Mauritius and 15 from the Seychelles--took them home to the stunningly beautiful islands of the Chagos archipelago lying midway between Africa...

QUIZZICAL.
DECK-A-DENCE Q: Is it true that the word `posh' is derived from cruise expeditions of the last century? A: POSH stands for Port Out Starboard Home. This was used on the P&O ships to India in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Due to the...

Bearing witness to a crime.
'You had better examine your consciences,' Jon Castte told officials at the hastily convened British magistrates' court. He and fellow crew member Pete Bouquet, part of the 'People's Navy', had been put on trial for entering the three-mile (five-kilometre) exclusion zone around Diego Garcia which forms part of the...

Diego Garcia: 'Time is very dear to us'.
The people of the Chagos islands who were forcibly removed from their homeland by Britain to pave the way for the huge American military base on the island of Diego Garcia, have won yet another victory in the British courts to return home. But will the Americans allow the...

The challenges of Chagos.
I was pleased to see that you found space in your August edition for a piece on the Chagos Islands (Hotspot). However, it's a pity that the article focused almost exclusively on the Chagos Islanders' legal battle to return. The challenges facing the Chagos archipelago go much wider and...

Right of reply.
I was heartened to learn from David MacLennan's letter in the September issue (Mailbag) that the Chagos Conservation Trust (CCT) is working towards a nationally and internationally supported framework for future conservation management in the Chagos islands that takes human habitation into account. This is long overdue. The Chagossians...

Africa's forgotten island. (Diego Garcia).
On 9 July, as the glasses clicked and the beautiful speeches flowed in Durban at the launch of the African Union (AU), a part of Africa was being consigned to the "forgotten file". It was not the 39-year-old OAU, but the Chagos Archipelago, the group of islands in the...

Stealing A Nation.
The sorry plight of the people of the Chagos Islands and their "crown" territory, Diego Garcia, is not new to New African readers. What is new are the intricate details of the conspiracy by the British and American governments to steal the islands from their African inhabitants, which have...