Credit: NASA Johnson, CC BY-NC 2.0

The UK government announced last October that it had reached an agreement with the government of Mauritius to recognise the latter’s sovereignty over the islands in exchange for a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia, which is home to a UK-US military base.

The deal was meant to be formally signed in a virtual ceremony this morning.

However, it cannot now be finalised after High Court judge Sir Julian Goose granted an emergency injunction late last night following an application from two Chagossian women living in the UK.

Bernadette Dugasse and Bertrice Pompe, represented by Philip Rule KC, are opposed to the deal because it would not allow them to return to their home island of Diego Garcia.

The UK, which currently administers the islands as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), expelled the local Chagossian population in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for the base.

Historic documents show British officials disparaged the local population of at least 1,000 people as “some few Tarzans or Men Fridays” and massacred their pets during the mass deportation.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLS) have already ruled that the islands belong to Mauritius, having been illegally separated from the rest of the island country during the process of decolonisation.