Islanders who were forced to leave the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean to make way for a U.S. military base staged a protest outside the U.K. Parliament. The British government recently announced a deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while allowing the American naval and bomber base to remain on Diego Garcia, one of the islands.
Opponents of the deal argue that the British government is surrendering sovereignty over a British territory without consulting the displaced residents. The Chagos Islands have been under British control since 1814, and the forced eviction of as many as 2,000 people in the 1960s and 1970s to build the Diego Garcia base has been a longstanding issue.
