Pope affirms right of people to return home after unjust exile in meeting with Chagos refugees

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV strongly affirmed the right of people to return to their homes after an unjust exile, issuing the message during an audience Saturday with refugees from Chagos, the Indian Ocean archipelago that is home to the strategic U.S.-U.K. military base.

“No one can force them into exile,” history’s first American pope said.

Leo met with a delegation of about 15 refugees from Chagos, some 2,000 of whom who were evicted from their homes by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s so the United States could build a naval and bomber base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia.

Displaced islanders fought for years in U.K. courts for the right to go home. In May, Britain and Mauritius signed a treaty to hand sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius that allows resettlement, while still ensuring the future of the base.

‘A grave injustice’

Leo told the refugees he was “delighted” the treaty had been reached, saying it represented a “significant victory” in their long battle to “repair a grave injustice. He praised in particular the role of the Chagossian women in peacefully asserting their rights to go home.

“The renewed prospect of your return to your native archipelago is an encouraging sign and a powerful symbol on the international stage,” Leo said in French. “All peoples, even the smallest and weakest, must be respected by the powerful in their identity and rights, in particular the right to live on their land; and no one can force them into exile.”

Leo said he hoped that Mauritian authorities will commit to ensuring their return, and pledged the help of the local Catholic Church.

One of the last remnants of the British Empire, the Chagos Islands have been under U.K. control since 1814. Britain split the islands away from Mauritius, a former British colony, in 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence.

Under the May agreement, the U.K. will pay Mauritius an average of 101 million pounds ($136 million) a year to lease back the base for at least 99 years. It establishes a trust fund to benefit the Chagossians and says “Mauritius is free to implement a program of resettlement” on the islands other than Diego Garcia.

However, the deal does not require the residents to be resettled, and some displaced islanders fear it will be even harder to return to their place of birth after Mauritius takes control.

Plans to go home

Philippe Sands, the international lawyer who represented Mauritius in the dispute and long championed the Chagossians’ right to go home, said the pope’s words were enormously important. He noted the intimate private audience, originally expected to be part of a general audience, was apparently instigated by Leo himself.

“The words spoken by His Holiness offered clear support for the urgent return of Chagossians to the islands from which they were deported and sent the clearest possible signal to the governments of Britain, United States and Mauritius that the Vatican expects the Chagossians to be able to return and remake their lives,” he told The Associated Press after the audience.

Louis Olivier Bancoult, the head of the Chagossian delegation who has fought for more than four decades for the right to go home, said the meeting had come together very much at the last minute thanks to the bishop in Port Louis, Mauritius.

Speaking to the AP at a cafe near the Vatican, he marveled that ever since the treaty had been signed, he had met for the first time with officials from the U.S. Embassy in Port Louis. He also received representatives of the British high commission in the capital.

“For me its a miracle,” he said. “After the U.S., the U.K. and now the pope. Who will be next?”

Preparations, including the building of infrastructure on the islands, now must begin to allow the forcibly deported Chagossians, like himself, to go home.

Bancoult was four when his family was forcibly evicted from their home on the island of Peros Banhos, with the British designating him a “contract laborer” with no right of permanent residence, Sands said.

“Now we have the blessing of God,” Bancoult said, displaying a statute of the Madonna that he brought to Leo to be blessed and will be taken to Chagos.

Pope Francis visited Mauritius in 2019 and met briefly with a group of Chagossians during a general audience at the Vatican in 2023. Francis told reporters en route home from Mauritius in 2019 that Britain should obey the United Nations and return the islands to Mauritius.

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