EDM 1400: Mauritius Treaty (No. 2)

That this House believes the Mauritius Treaty should not pass because completing the decolonisation of Mauritius cannot be achieved without reference to the people of the Chagos islands (See: UN 742 VII, 1953) who have not been afforded a voice in the treaty negotiations; observes that the Mauritian government cannot speak on their behalf because most Chogossians do not live in Mauritius where there is, in any event, evidence to suggest that they have experienced discrimination; acknowledges that the inclusion of the Chagos islands in the same colony as Mauritius was arbitrary given that their peoples relate to different ethnicities and religions separated by 1,339 miles, such that had the colony been decolonised as a whole and then allowed to express self-determination, the formation of two separate countries would have been unsurprising; strongly believes that as the Chagossian people all live in UN Member states, exploiting their absence from their islands to validate the transfer of those islands to Mauritius without consulting them, simply compounds the injustice of their forcible removal, replacing one form of colonialism with another; also strongly objects to the extortionate costs of the treaty, and its deeply troubling geo-strategic implications given the close relationship between China and Mauritius, the first African country to enter into a free trade agreement with China, and its entering into an agreement with Russia the same week the treaty was announced to boost cooperation in fishing and marine research.