‘Total betrayal!’ Labour ‘snubs’ Chagos Islanders at Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday
Labour has been blasted for “betraying” the Chagos Islanders after failing to invite a representative from the archipelago to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.
The islands are already at the centre of an international spat over Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to hand over their sovereignty to Mauritius.
But now, their apparent Remembrance snub has been lambasted as a “total betrayal” and a “denial of their right to self-determination”.
On Sunday, a dozen representatives from the UK Overseas Territories laid wreaths at the UK’s National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in recognition of the part that their citizens played in both World Wars.
Representatives from Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, the Pitcairn Islands, St Helena, Ascension Island, and Tristan da Cunha, and the Turks and Caicos Islands laid wreathes at the Cenotaph.
But no-one from the British Indian Ocean Territory – which includes the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia – was asked by the UK Government to participate in the wreath laying.
Jean-Francois Nellan, a spokesman for Chagossian Voices, which represents thousands of Chagossians and their descendents in the UK, told GB News of the snub.
He said: “Unfortunately, no representative or anyone from the community was asked to attend the laying of wreathes at the Cenotaph.”
Chagossians living on Diego Garcia assisted Allied troops during the Second World War, while the islands hosted an RAF station between 1942 and 1946.
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Nellan said: “My grandmother, who was born on Diego Garcia – and is still alive – helped the injured troops at the infirmary.”
He added: “The Chagossians were helping the allies on the islands in case the Germans attacked.”
British Overseas Territories have only been allowed to lay wreathes after a change of policy to allow UK Overseas Territories since 2019.
However, it is thought that no representative of the Chagos Islands has ever been asked to take part.
Between 1968 and 1973, the UK forcibly removed the Chagossians to Mauritius and the United Kingdom.
There are now several thousand Chagossians in the UK, many of whom want to return to their homeland.
The Royal British Legion says that decisions about wreath-layers were made by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
DCMS declined to comment, but a Government source confirmed that the Chagos Islands were not represented, telling GB News: “The British Indian Ocean Territory was not represented at Remembrance Day.
“There is no permanent population on the island and the Territory is administered from London.”
Tory MP Andrew Rosindell, the president of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Chagos Islands – and whose campaigning persuaded the Government to allow the Overseas Territories to be allowed to take part in the Cenotaph ceremony – accused ministers of a “total betrayal” of the Chagossians.
He told GB News he did not accept the Government’s reason for excluding the Chagos Islands from the ceremony.
Rosindell said: “That may be correct – but it doesn’t make it right that the Chagossian people based here in Britain are not invited to send a representative to lay their own wreath.
“It’s a total betrayal of the British Chagossian population in the UK.
“The Government are acting like a colonial power, riding roughshod over the Chagossian people and denying them their right of self-determination.”