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Muizzu’s Maldives cooks up a sovereignty dispute over the Chagos Islands

Under Mohamed Muizzu, the Maldives is contesting Mauritius’ claim to the Chagos archipelago, inserting itself into a geopolitical dispute also involving the United Kingdom and United States

By Daniel Bosley
Image of an old map of Chagos islands superimposed with Chagossians returning home, Maldivian president Mohamed Muizzu, the S
On 31 March, in a landmark verdict, a judge from the British Indian Ocean Territory ruled that Chagossians, who had been expelled in their entirety from the archipelago by the United Kingdom in the 1960s, had a legal right to live on the Chagos islands. This put a wrench in the works of a planned handover of the Chagos archipelago from the United Kingdom to Mauritius, which claims sovereignty over the islands. Taking advantage of these shifts, the president of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, is now staking a Maldivian claim to the archipelago.
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The deserted island of Île du Coin, in the Peros Banhos atoll of the Chagos Islands, is not often in the news. Yet in mid-February, it made headlines after six Chagossians landed there, intending to set up a permanent home. Misley Mandarin, the Mauritius-born leader of the small group, said that his father, who had accompanied him, had been displaced from Île du Coin when he was 14 years old. “I am not in exile any more. This is my homeland,” he said as they set up tents, expressing their desire for more to join them. The Chagossians were aiming to throw a wrench in the works of a planned handover of the Chagos archipelago from the United Kingdom, which presently controls what is officially British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), to Mauritius, which claims sovereignty over the islands.

On 31 March, in a landmark verdict, a judge from the BIOT ruled that Chagossians, who had been expelled in their entirety from the archipelago by the United Kingdom in the 1960s, had a legal right to live on the islands. Justice James Lewis said the United Kingdom’s previous claims that the islanders could not move back due to security concerns related to a joint US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia no longer held as the UK government planned to hand the islands over to Mauritius. He also calculated that the cost of the Mauritius handover deal to the UK taxpayer, coming to GBP 51 billion, meant arguments claiming that it was too expensive to allow the return of Chagossians were now invalidated.

In looking to stall the handover, the Chagossians had an unlikely ally. Days after the Chagossians set up camp on Île du Coin, the British politician Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, secretly travelled to Addu, the southernmost atoll in the Maldives, which lies some 500 kilometres from the Peros Banhos. He claimed he was there to transport aid to the Chagossians on Peros Banhos, who are also British citizens, and that he was prevented from doing so by British authorities. Standing on the pristine Addu shoreline, Farage expressed dismay that the United Kingdom was handing the Chagos archipelago over to Mauritius after years of international pressure had resulted in a bilateral treaty to this effect. Reports later surfaced that Reform UK donors had funded the Chagossians’ journey, helping fly the group to Sri Lanka, from where they had set sail.

Reform UK had long sought a way to block the deal, when the US-Israeli war on Iran in West Asia offered an unexpected opportunity to thwart the treaty’s looming ratification. When the United Kingdom initially refused to allow the United States to launch a pre-emptive attack on Tehran from the Diego Garcia base, the US president, Donald Trump, also turned on the deal. In a social media post just days before the war began, Trump hectored UK prime minister, Keir Starmer: “DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA”. On 11 April, it was reported that the UK-Mauritius deal had been shelved.