In October, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his country would transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia, one of the islands, hosts a US military base and is at the center of the internationally lauded yet highly contentious agreement.

The UK has announced it is giving up sovereignty of a remote but strategically important cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean after more than half a century.

The BBC gained unprecedented access to Diego Garcia, the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago. It is strictly out of bounds to most civilians - the site of a highly secretive UK-US military base shrouded for decades in rumour and mystery.

In the Sixties the British government expelled them from their island. Exiled to the UK, they’ve never given up hope of returning to their island. ‘As more and more of our elders are dying, it is important to preserve our culture.’

The forced displacement of the entire Chagossian people by the United Kingdom and United States governments and the UK’s racial persecution, and continued blocking of their return home, are crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report and video released today.

The UK has agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future handover of the Chagos Islands, in a major reversal of policy following years of resistance and legal defeats in international courts. The intended agreement will allow for the return of former inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago who were forcibly displaced by the British government in the 1960s and 1970s.

Half a century ago, the British government forcibly removed 2,000 people from a remote string of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They’ve never stopped struggling to return.

New route offers children of those born on islands right to be British overseas territory citizens or British citizens.

Richard Norton-Taylor flags the U.K.’s dispute with Mauritius over sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where the largest island hosts a major U.S. bomber base.

Britain apologized Monday for the “shameful way” it evicted residents of the disputed Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean but insisted Mauritius was wrong to bring the increasingly bitter dispute to the UN’s top court.