UK–U.S. Relations and Diego Garcia

Chagossian leaders have filed a complaint with the United Nations accusing the United Kingdom — and naming Prime Minister Keir Starmer in social media accounts of the complaint — of forced displacement and crimes against humanity over recent attempts to remove Chagossians who had returned to Diego Garcia. The filing comes amid a fresh dispute over the fate of four islanders whom UK authorities sought to remove; a UK court has for now quashed that expulsion, but the UN document and related public statements frame those removals as part of a long-running effort to complete the islands’ depopulation. The island of Diego Garcia is at the center of the controversy: it has housed a UK–US military base since a 1966 lease that originally ran 50 years and has been extended to 2036, a arrangement that precipitated the original expulsions of the Chagossian population and, despite their historical ties, has not resulted in Chagossian employment on the base since the depopulation.