Britain cut food supplies to drive Chagossians out while denying their rootedness.

Evidence

British officials soon began restricting the flow of food and medical supplies to Chagos. As conditions deteriorated, more Chagossians began leaving the islands, hoping to return when the situation improved. Meanwhile, British and U.S. officials designed a public relations plan aimed, as a British bureaucrat wrote, at “maintaining the fiction” that Chagossians were migrant laborers rather than a people whose roots on Chagos stretched back across many generations. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 181