Mauritius set to demand 'British colonisers' hand over more cash in Chagos deal

The Mauritian government has been urged to renege on a deal for the Chagos Islands and demand more in reparations from the "British ex-colonisers".

The UK Government has agreed to return sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, with a clause inserted into the deal allowing it to keep using the military base it shares with the US on Diego Garcia.

Mauritius will reportedly be paid £90 million a year, rising with inflation, for 99 years, according to The Times.

British officials believe the agreement is legally watertight, guaranteeing the use of the base for the next century.

However, the Mauritian prime minister is coming under increasing political pressure to break the terms of the agreement once it is signed.

Activists are calling on 77-year-old Navin Ramgoolam to secure more money from the UK and to shut down the naval base.

In a letter published in the newspaper L'Express Dimanche, a coalition of politicians, trade unionists and writers said the prime minister should insist on the "closure of the military base on Diego Garcia".

Furthermore, they demanded that “the British ex-colonisers and American occupiers” pay “rental arrears from the moment of independence in 1968 to the date of base closure”.

They claimed 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”.

The signatories to the letter included Narendranath Gopee, the president of the Mauritian National Trade Union Congress, Lindsey Collen, a prize-winning Mauritian novelist, and 18 others.

They claimed that the CIA had used the military base as a black site for interrogations and that closing the base would ensure that Mauritian territory could never be used for "illegal imprisonment or torture”.

Last month, Ramgoolam sparked a diplomatic row after he told MPs in the country that he had gained more concessions from the UK during renegotiations.

The newly elected prime minister told MPs in February that the UK had agreed to front-load some of the payments following objections from his government over the original terms of the deal.

He also said the transfers, due to be made in dollars, would now be subject to a variable rather than fixed exchange rate, arguing payments under the previous deal were not "inflation-proof".

"What's the point of getting money and then having half of it at the end?" he added.

The Times newspaper suggested that the UK's payments to Mauritius could effectively double from £9 billion to £18 billion.

However, the Foreign Office denied the claim, dismissing the figures as being "wholly inaccurate".