Pope meets with Chagos refugees and delivers message about rights of the weak against the powerful

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV powerfully affirmed the rights of the weakest against the ambitions of the almighty during an assemblage Saturday with exiled refugees from Chagos, the contested Indian Ocean archipelago that is location to the strategical U.S.-U.K. subject base, Diego Garcia.

History's archetypal American pope insisted connected the close of the Chagossian radical to instrumentality to their homes and hailed a caller U.K.-Mauritius pact implicit the archipelago's aboriginal arsenic symbolically important connected the planetary stage.

Leo met with a delegation of refugees from Chagos, immoderate 2,000 of whom who were evicted from their homes by Britain successful the 1960s and 1970s truthful the U.S. could physique a naval and bomber basal connected the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia.

Displaced islanders fought for years successful U.K. courts for the close to spell home. In May, Britain and Mauritius signed a pact to manus sovereignty implicit the islands to Mauritius portion inactive ensuring the aboriginal of the base.

Leo told the refugees helium was “delighted” that the pact had been reached, saying it represented a “significant victory” successful their agelong conflict to “repair a sedate injustice. He praised successful peculiar the relation of the Chagossian women successful peacefully asserting their rights to spell home.

“The renewed imaginable of your instrumentality to your autochthonal archipelago is an encouraging motion and a almighty awesome connected the planetary stage: each peoples, adjacent the smallest and weakest, indispensable beryllium respected by the almighty successful their individuality and rights, successful peculiar the close to unrecorded connected their land; and nary 1 tin unit them into exile,” Leo said successful French.

He said helium hoped that Mauritian authorities volition perpetrate to ensuring their return, and pledged the assistance of the section Catholic Church.

Under the agreement, the U.K. volition wage Mauritius an mean of 101 cardinal pounds ($136 million) a twelvemonth to lease backmost the basal for astatine slightest 99 years. It establishes a spot money to payment the Chagossians and says “Mauritius is escaped to instrumentality a programme of resettlement” connected the islands different than Diego Garcia.

But it does not necessitate the residents to beryllium resettled, and immoderate displaced islanders fearfulness it volition beryllium adjacent harder to instrumentality to their spot of commencement aft Mauritius takes control.

Philippe Sands, the planetary lawyer who has represented the Chagos radical and agelong championed their close to spell home, said the pope's words were enormously important. He noted the intimate backstage audience, primitively expected to beryllium portion of a wide audience, was instigated by Leo himself.

“The words spoken by His Holiness offered wide enactment for the urgent instrumentality of Chagossians to the islands from which they were deported and sent the clearest imaginable awesome to the governments of Britain, United States and Mauritius that the Vatican expects the Chagossians to beryllium capable to instrumentality and remake their lives,” helium told The Associated Press.

Mauritius had agelong contested Britain’s assertion to the archipelago, and the United Nations and its apical tribunal had urged Britain to instrumentality the Chagos to Mauritius, astir 2,100 kilometers (1,250 miles) southwest of the islands.

In a non-binding 2019 opinion, the International Court of Justice ruled that the U.K. had unlawfully carved up Mauritius erstwhile it agreed to extremity assemblage regularisation successful the precocious 1960s.

Pope Francis visited Mauritius successful 2019 and met with a radical of Chagossians successful the Vatican successful 2023. Francis told reporters en way location from Mauritius successful 2019 that Britain should obey the U.N. and instrumentality the islands to Mauritius.

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