Tamil migrants reach UK after 'darkest' time in Chagos camp

For three years, Kala and her family were stranded on a remote British-US military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, trapped in horrific conditions after fleeing persecution at home.

They are among more than 60 people, including 12 children, mostly Tamils from Sri Lanka and India, who were brought to Britain last week after years stuck in a legal limbo.

The migrants, who had been rescued after getting into trouble in the waters off the Chagos Archipelago, became the first people to ever file asylum claims with London from Diego Garcia, the largest island in the chain.

Kala, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was initially told when she arrived on the base in October 2021 that she would stay there for just two days. That turned into more than three years.

She and her two children were housed with other migrants in a camp the size of a football pitch.

The accommodation was controversial from the start, with the migrants staging multiple hunger strikes to denounce poor conditions, amid reports of sexual assault and harassment.

"We suffered a lot in this camp. Our living places lacked basic facilities," Kala told AFP through an interpreter.

"We had to risk our lives to come here in boats. When we were told that we were going to stay in the tents, it was even worse than that."

Their claims were caught up in a complex legal dispute as the islands, renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), are "constitutionally distinct and separate from the UK", according to the government in London.

Successive British foreign ministers remained reluctant to bring them to the UK, fearing it would open a new immigration route.

"It was an unprecedented and exceptional situation," said Maria Petrova-Collins, a lawyer at Duncan Lewis Solicitors and part of a UK-based team representing some of the migrants.

Conditions in the camp were "inhumane", she told AFP.

The lawyers faced several challenges, including a legal hearing being cancelled "at the last minute" when the lawyers and a British judge were denied access to the US-run military base, she said.

Another of the new arrivals, Nishanth, whose name has also been changed, said the camp was "rat-infested".

He showed AFP videos of cramped tarpaulin tents with water seeping through holes, bedsheets hung for privacy between rows of makeshift beds, as well as rats, rodent droppings and insects.

Kala said her children's feet became infected as they did not have proper shoes and they found it hard to sleep at night.

"During their sleep, rats used to go over there, here and there. And when they felt them, they woke up and cried."

The camp's inhabitants accused the security guards of not listening to their complaints. "We informed the authorities. But they did not do anything. They said they would do it. But they don't care," Nishanth said.

Petrova-Collins said many of the migrants were victims of "ill-treatment and torture" in their home countries.

"Unfortunately, the conditions in Diego Garcia and the three years they lived in uncertainty about what was going to happen to them contributed to that trauma," Petrova-Collins said.