Oliver Wright, Policy Editor, The Times
February 18, 2026
A group who returned to the islands this week have been served with eviction notices, with the government warning they face up to three years in prison
Featured Picture: Misley Mandarin, right, the islands’ elected first minister, said he was prepared to go to prison
Ministers have threatened a group of Chagos Islanders with jail unless they end their protest against Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to hand the territory over to Mauritius.
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A group of Chagossians who returned to the islands on Tuesday have been served with an eviction notice by the government warning that they face fines or up to three years in prison unless they comply with the order. A Foreign Office spokesman described their journey as an “illegal, unsafe stunt”.
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The threat has been condemned by the Conservatives and Reform UK, with the latter saying it was prepared to fund a legal action to defend the group.
“You can cross the English Channel in a dinghy, dispose of your passport and iPhone at the 12-mile line and we will put you up in a hotel, give you three meals a day, dental care and medical care. And your chances of ever being evicted are less than 2 per cent,” Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, said.
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“And yet this attempt by a group of people to reclaim their birthright, their rights of national self-determination, is being thwarted or threatened by the British government.”
“The Chagossian people deserve their right to self-determination,” he added.
Dame Priti Patel, the Conservative shadow foreign secretary, called the move to remove the islanders “shameful”.
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“We warned that his actions would put Chagossians at risk of repression by the Mauritian government. And now our own government is doing Mauritius’s bidding, threatening Chagossians with prison sentences or crippling fines for landing on the islands,” she said.
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Chagossians protesting against the handover last year
VUK VALCIC/ZUMA PRESS WIRE/ALAMY
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Britain evicted the indigenous population to Mauritius and the Seychelles to make way for a joint military base with the US between 1967 and 1973. The evicted population were eventually offered British citizenship in 2002. Now, nearly 10,000 reside in the UK, with a third of them settling in Crawley, near Gatwick.
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Ministers are planning to hand the islands, apart from the military base at Diego Garcia, over to Mauritius as part of a deal to settle the legal status of the islands. Under the deal, the UK will lease back Diego Garcia at an estimated cost of more than £30 billion for the next 99 years.
The agreement was met with widespread protest from islanders, who said they were not adequately consulted on the deal and wished to return to the territory.
A group of Chagossians opposed to the handover arrived on the islands on Tuesday with a declaration of return that read: “We the people of the Chagos Islands stand today on the soil of our homeland. We are the advance party. Hundreds more are following we have come home.”
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However, they were confronted by British Indian Ocean Territory police with a notice ordering them to leave.
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Mandarin at a protest in London last year. He called the eviction order a “disgrace” VUK VALCIC/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
Misley Mandarin, the islands’ elected first minister, said the notice was a “disgrace” and that he was prepared to go to prison.
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He said: “[Police] sent me an eviction notice, and they said if I don’t leave there, I will be jailed for three years, which I’m happy to do for my country — I’ve got the right to be here. This is my homeland. My dad is next to me. My dad was born on this island. My dad was exiled, and now this government is trying to exile us a second time.”
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Mandarin filmed the makeshift settlement that he established on the island, holding up an extract of the document entitled a “removal order” under the British Indian Ocean Territory (Immigration) Order 2004.
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The Foreign Office spokesman said: “The UK government recognises the importance of the islands to the Chagossian community and is working with Mauritius to resume a programme of heritage visits to the Chagos archipelago.
“This kind of illegal, unsafe stunt is not the way to achieve that. The vessel does not pose any security risk to Diego Garcia.”
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