The treatment of the Chagosians by the United States and United Kingdom was a crime against humanity.

@asmith I don't entirely disagree with that sentiment. My personal opinion however is that this deal does nothing for the original Chagossians removed in 1968, Mauritius' claim is that they were part of the same colonial administrative area as the Chagos, and that it is therefore part of Mauritius. From what information I've seen though, Chagossians themselves do not identify as Mauritian and don't trust the Mauritian government.

The question isn't about whether the islands should change hands or a deal should be struck generally, it's about this deal in particular and them being given to Mauritius.

@LukeShadwell Yup.

If you're British or familiar with the situation, please vote! May do one for British people only as well.

@LukeShadwell brit here, unfortunately despite significant amateur knowledge of world history and geopolitics (largely through YouTube documentaries and Wikipedia articles, certainly not through school, they taught us about approximately zero important historical events lol), I have somehow never even heard of the chagos islands, though I know enough about various ways the UK has fucked over other indigenous peoples around the world that my baseline assumption is not to trust any deal the UK is trying to make lol

@TheAllMemeingEye Haha, yeah I think that's sort of one of the root causes of the deal being so bad here to be honest, the assumption is always that any kind of deal where the UK gives away overseas territory is a positive overall. I personally think this one is particularly odd because while on the surface it's sort of "decolonisation = good", when you look into it, the people that were wronged in the first place aren't getting anything.

I wouldn't push you to look into it because you have no obligation to give yourself the added stress of being constantly aware of the constant shitshow any british government is constantly causing, but it's quite interesting!

@LukeShadwell is there a webpage you'd recommend that summarises the situation concisely? This BBC article seems to be acting as if Mauritius' trade agreement with China is the biggest issue here lol

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp3750y3po

@TheAllMemeingEye I would read:

“16th to 19th century” “20th century” and “sovereignty dispute” on this Wikipedia page for background, you should be able to skim through for the main information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago?wprov=sfti1

This does lay out a lot of it for a relatively good understanding, I would also look at the chagossian voices twitter, as far as I know this is the largest (and potentially only) association of chagossians https://x.com/chagossianvoic2/status/1859904954808328569?s=46

@LukeShadwell thanks 👍

@TheAllMemeingEye and yeah people go on about the whole china trade thing but afaik mauritius has closer ties to india