Navin Ramgoolam, 77, is being called to secure further payment from the UK and to evict the US military from its naval base on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s largest island.
Writing in one of Mauritius’s leading newspapers, a coalition of politicians, trade unionists and writers said he must ensure “war and genocide” were no longer perpetrated from the base.
Under the terms of the deal, Britain will transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Mauritius will be paid £90 million a year, rising with inflation, for 99 years, to allow the US and UK continued use of Diego Garcia.
The Mauritian prime minister has declined to give interviews to foreign press about his plans for Diego Garcia after a diplomatic row last month. He was publicly rebuked by Sir Keir Starmer and forced to issue a retraction after he told Mauritian MPs he had secured further concessions during renegotiations.
In Mauritius, there is political pressure on Ramgoolam to renege on the agreement as soon as it is signed. In a letter signed by Narendranath Gopee, the president of the Mauritian National Trade Union Congress, Lindsey Collen, a prize-winning Mauritian novelist, and 18 others, Ramgoolam was told he must “seize the moment” and “insist upon the closure of the military base on Diego Garcia”.
The letter, published in L’Express Dimanche, said the prime minister should demand that “the British ex-colonizers and American occupiers” pay “rental arrears from the moment of independence in 1968 to the date of base closure”.
The authors said this would ensure “effective exercise of Mauritian sovereignty over the whole of Chagos” and mean that “war and genocide are not ever again perpetrated from the land we are responsible for”.
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