UK says Chagos islanders evicted for US base may not go home
LONDON- Indian Ocean islanders who were forced from their homes decades ago to make way for a U.S. military base have been told by the British government that they can never return.
Britain evicted about 2,000 people from the tropical Chagos archipelago, a British colony, in the 1960s and 1970s so the U.S. military could build an air base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands.
The islanders were sent to the Seychelles and Mauritius, two island nations off Africa's east coast, and many eventually resettled in the U.K.
The Chagossians have fought in British courts for years to return to the islands. In June, the Supreme Court rejected their most recent appe
