Removal reduced Chagossians to landless, workless poverty at the Navy’s whim

Evidence

Aurélie herself experienced fainting spells and couldn’t eat. She had been “fat” in her homeland, she recounted, but in Mauritius she soon became alarmingly skinny. “We were living like animals,” Aurélie said. “Land? We had none.… Work? We had none. Our children weren’t going to school.” The Chagossians had lost almost everything, for no reason other than the happenstance of living on an island desired by the U.S. Navy. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 187