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MINISTERS risk repeating history if they fail to guarantee British citizenship rights for relatives of exiled islanders, Tory MP Henry Smith warned yesterday.
The Crawley MP introduced a Commons Bill allowing anyone of Chagossian descent to register as a British citizen due to their connections with a British overseas territory.
The second generation of those born in exile lack the same rights as their parents and grandparents, meaning they face financial and legal costs to stay in Britain.
Campaigners argue all Chagossians would have the status of British overseas territories citizen if they had not been exiled.
Chagossians were forced to leave the central Indian Ocean territory by 1973 to make way for a major United States military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the islands. In return Britain got a discount on Polaris nuclear weapons.
Mr Smith, whose constituency covers one of the world’s largest Chagossian communities, said: “This Bill does not give special privileges to them but it aims to reinstate citizenship rights that subsequent generations were prevented from acquiring as a result of their ancestors’ exile from the British Indian Ocean Territory.
“We owe this to these people.”
