Here’s a controversial thought that will make you choke on your morning coffee: What if we are doing elderly Chagossians a disservice by applauding their wish to go back to Chagos, just so that they can draw their final breath there? We know. The symbolism would be beautiful. After a lifelong fight against an outrageous human rights violation – the UK kicking families out of their homes for best buddy America’s military base (used for torture at one point) – the once-young victims whose weather-bitten faces now have wrinkles go back home. To die in the land of their forefathers. Their spirits at peace, at last. It would be a Hollywood ending. A fairy tale. As human beings, we are hopelessly in love with good endings. We’re so in love with them that we fail to see how little sense they actually make. We are so thrilled when Sleeping Beauty gets her prince that we forget hers was a wasted life, spent mostly in a deep coma. So, if we remove the beautiful symbolism from the equation, do we honestly think that uprooting and shipping a group of elderly people over to Chagos, just to die, would benefit them?

More than half of the approximately 2,000 people who were subjected to the worst human rights crime in Mauritian history – being kicked out of Chagos – have already passed away. Many of the remaining are entering the last stages of their lives, which is why the fight to go back is increasingly characterised by arguments by people who “just want to go there to die”. That is what film maker John Pilger was told – he kept repeating it in his deep cinematic voice as his eyes penetrated the camera lens in the otherwise so brilliant documentary Stealing A Nation. But, knowing that the elderly generally do not adapt well to major changes (it’s a well-researched topic), are we not headed towards the following scenario: Women and men in their 80s arrive on an island they no longer recognise, quickly start missing their everyday routines – and their family doctors – before spending their last days in a state of confusion? Is there not a risk that the powerful-sounding “I just want to die where I was born” argument is used as a lobbying tool, to affect public opinion? It might be effective, and is certainly more seductive to the masses than the images of men in black suits discussing sovereignty claims. But how responsible is it?

The fight for sovereignty and the right of Mauritians including Chagossians to live (not just die) in a part of the world that is ours – not Britain’s or America’s – must continue. But does it make sense to use great-grandfathers as a power tool? The two superpowers have already been called out on their Chagos hypocrisy. The world knows what they did. We must ask ourselves if the fight really needs the fairy-tale/Hollywood element that, however beautiful, might not be responsible.

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