Yearbook 2008
Mauritius. According to
Countryaah reports, the mountain Le Morne in southwestern
Mauritius was
listed on the UN agency UNESCO World Heritage List in July.
Le Morne's caves and cliffs were used as hiding places by
escaped slaves during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the
mountain is therefore an important symbol of the slaves'
freedom struggle. In the 18th century, the French used
slaves from the African mainland as laborers on their sugar
plantations in Mauritius. In the 19th century, British colonizers
continued the slave trade until it was banned in the 1830s.
The displaced people from the British-controlled Chagos
Islands in the Indian Ocean are not allowed to return home.
It decided the House of Lords' House of Lords, the House of
Lords, on October 22. The decision in the UK's highest legal
body is final after several trips in an extended legal
dispute between the Chagos and the British state. As
recently as 2007, a British Court of Appeal had granted the
Chagos residents the right to move back.
The conflict between Mauritius and Britain dates back to 1966,
when Britain leased the Chagos Islands' largest island,
Diego Garcia, to the United States, which built a military
base there. Britain forced the approximately 2,000 Chagos to
move to Mauritius, 20 miles southeast of the islands. Many of them
are living in poverty today, while others are refugees in
the UK.
According to one of the lords, the reason for the
decision was financial; if the forced displaced were allowed
to return, they would require the UK to make major
investments in the Chagos Islands.
Forced displacements now need permission from the British
immigration authorities to visit, for example, family graves
in the Chagos Islands, but the British government has
promised that the permits will only be a formality.
Chagosbora's hope now stands for Mauritius President Anerood
Jugnauth to take the matter to the International Court of
Justice in The Hague, which he has previously considered. In
2007, he also threatened to leave the Commonwealth in
protest of Britain's "barbaric treatment" of the people of
the Chagos Islands.
On September 19, Jugnauth was re-elected as the country's
president for another five years.
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