Duncan Campbell, The Guardian
Theoseph Lamb can recall clearly what life was like in Diego Garcia when he was a boy. It is a portrait of a paradise lost.
"My dad would tell my mother to prepare the spices for a fish curry and he would come back with a fish before all the spices had been prepared," he says. "It was that easy to catch fish and we would have it with coconut water. I have not been able to integrate into society here, I am still considered as a stranger. I would like to spend my last days there."
Theoseph is just one of around 400 Chagossian islanders gathered this week in Pointe aux Sables, a fishing village on the outskirts of Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. With the sound of the Tombour Chagos band playing and the magnificent Pieter Both mountain peak as a backdrop, they have assembled to hear the latest news of an epic fight to return to their islands. It was the British government that banished Theoseph and a few thousand other Chagossians from their homes 40 years ago and dispatched them to the newly independent Mauritius, giving the main island, Diego Garcia, to the US as a base as part of a cold war deal.
A different branch of the imperial power, the House of Lords, will decide next month whether they will be allowed to return, a move resisted by the British government in spite of a succession of legal judgments in the islanders' favour.
It is the latest twist in a bewildering period for the islanders, who were overjoyed when the then foreign secretary Robin Cook agreed to allow their return in 2000, only for the September 11 attacks on the US to give the islands a new strategic importance as a staging point for operations against Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since then, the US has been accused of using the base for the rendition of prisoners - a point repeatedly denied by the UK, until earlier this year when the current foreign secretary, David Miliband, conceded that two flights had landed there.
If the law lords do reject the government's final appeal, can the exiled Chagossians go back and survive. And do they even wish to try?
"We are very optimistic about being able to return," said Olivier Bancoult at his home in Cassis, where murals of palm-fringed beaches echo the theme of a half-remembered idyll.
With a photo on the wall of him and Nelson Mandela, he cuts an imposing figure. His Chagos Refugees Group (CRG) now has the backing of the majority of Chagossians on Mauritius and he is the driving force behind the bid to return which lay dormant until successful legal challenges in the UK courts over the last decade.
Bancoult claims that hundreds would return, making themselves self-sufficient through ecotourism and fishing.
"We understand that there is a US base on Diego Garcia and we have never asked for its closure but there is no reason why people should not be able to return to live there," said Bancoult, an electrician.
He arrived as a boy in Mauritius in 1968 with his mother because his sister needed medical treatment: she died and the family were not allowed to return.
"Conditions for us in Mauritius were very bad when we arrived and a lot of people turned to drugs, alcohol and prostitution. Many Mauritians have been very supportive but even today most do not know that their independence was obtained by sacrificing the Chagossians.
"We consider that the US government share the blame but the main responsibility is Britain's. The only problem is that we do not have the means to go," he said. "We need a big boat and it is four days at sea. Unfortu
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