One of Michel Mandarin's last memories of his hometown was the U.S. government throwing all the dogs into a gas chamber. In 1967, the British authorities declared that people of the Chagos Islands were not "permanent inhabitants," and expelled them to make way for a new U.S.-British military base on the island of Diego Garcia. American naval engineers infamously killed the islanders' pets as a threat against staying.
This week, a British court ruled that people like Mandarin were really permanent inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, and they have a right to go back.
