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Regardless of the moral questions surrounding the resettlement of the people who lived on the islands, I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the money to begin with. Surely if you sell an Island, you can't later claim that it still belongs to you? In 1968 the "UK paid the self-governing colony of Mauritius £3m for the islands" which equates to approximately £52m today[1]. At the very least, you would expect that Mauritius would have to pay this back. But, there is also the question of value. The islands, especially given the state of the world today, are probably worth much more than £52m from a strategic point of view. > Mauritius prime minister Pravind Jugnauth has attempted to smooth things over by saying the country is prepared to reach an agreement with the US and UK to allow the Diego Garcia military base to continue to exist – presumably in return for a fat check each year - arguing that such an approach would "provide a higher degree of legal certainty" than the current situation. Yes, that /is/ a presumption, but seems quite likely. I still think my above point about ownership stands. If a country sells an island, they surely also sell any claims to sovereignty too. Looking into it further though, it doesn't appear that the islands were sold, but that they were split off from the territory (along with some others too) to form another, the British Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius was compensated the £3m. So, I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge, after all, the US, Canada, Australia, aren't all these countries also former colonies? [1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/ using 1965 as start year and 3,000,000 pounds as start value. |
Foreign relations go by their own rules; the legal framework they operate under is paper-thin and is constantly being rewritten, often under "might makes right" principles only vaguely masked; but the last century was supposed to mark a shift towards a system of "justice" between nations that works under more humane principles.
For colonization in particular, the validity of this sort of transaction is typically discounted by the self-evident disparity of knowledge and wealth between actors: if I buy gold with seashells while pointing a gun at you, am I really doing something "legal"? If I promise not to do X as part of the buy, then I do it anyway - simply because my guns are bigger than yours - doesn't that void the transaction? If I buy land where people live, then I break their human rights, am I not infringing moral laws that transcend any specific legal framework?
In this particular case, the problems are well-documented.
> I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial ownership, but the implications of this are huge
Only to the untrained eye. Please read up on colonization and decolonization efforts, there is plenty of material. The short story is: if UK and US really believe the principles they have been using as basis of international law since WWI, they should just accept they are wrong in this case, and make amends. Otherwise, we revert to the pre-WWI situation where the world is a jungle and the only thing that matters is the size of any given tiger.