Chagos Islanders remind us that Britain is a shameful coloniser, not a colony | Afua Hirsch

A court victory by dispossessed people strikes at the heart of British delusions of grandeur

At a time when Britain needs goodwill and great branding, the world was reminded this week of our nation’s shame, courtesy of the families of 2,000 people dispossessed from their Indian Ocean home in the 1960s and 70s. It’s a shame that looms large in the history of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago whose tiny size is in perfect contrast to the scale of the wrongs its people have witnessed. They are wrongs stretching back centuries, since the British formally acquired the islands from France – as part of the bigger colony of Mauritius – and forced slaves from Mozambique and Madagascar to work on British-owned coconut plantations.

Britain the colonial power is not quite the image its leaders are trying to project just now

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2XqBR8U