Quotes

“The freedom to return to one’s homeland, however poor and barren the conditions of life, is one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings.”

“The British Government is playing with us until one by one we die and there is nobody left and they can silently close the case.”

“For the FCO to proceed with a further appeal would waste more public funds, delay justice for the Chagossians and expose the Prime Minister’s words as hollow. Can we please have a return to good sense, justice and British liberties?”

"The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an Order in Council, exile a whole population from a British Overseas Territory and claim that he is doing so for the 'peace, order and good government' of the territory is, to us, repugnant."

"It's clearly been found that there was an indigenous population, that the government of the day was wrong, and that successive governments from the middle 1960s have colluded in that."

“To continue with a stubborn and perverse insistence on defying the rule of law and the dictates of morality is strikingly at odds with the Prime Minister’s recent paean of praise to freedom and constitutional propriety”.

"This 42 year old saga of deceit, perfidy and human rights violations is drawing to a close... Perhaps next year we may hope that, once the legal process has been exhausted, HMG will purge this shocking stain on the UK’s reputation."

"Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius."

“The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls.”

“I’ve lost count of the old folk I’ve met who have subsequently died broken-hearted at the fact they couldn’t see their beloved homeland.”

“The Americans' first choice was the island of Aldabra... Unfortunately, Aldabra was the breeding ground for rare giant tortoises, whose mating habits would probably be upset by the military activity and whose cause would be championed noisily by publicity-aware ecologists. The alternative was the Chagos Islands... The islands were home to some 1,800 people - mainly descendants of slaves - but no tortoises.”

“There are times when one tragedy, one crime, tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade, and helps us understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful.”