This morning 19 year old Mauritian Yashika Bageerathi has been told that Air Mauritius cannot or will not transport her to her country of origin, despite her possessing a ticket for travel. This decision will hopefully add pressure onto the Home Office to treat her case with the human dignity we would all hope our children would receive at the hands of a foreign government. Yashika is not a street wise backpacker, wanting to return to her family, she is the daughter of a woman who arrived in the UK last Summer, fleeing from an abusive relative with her two daughters including Yashika and their brother. Although the Government intends to repatriate all four members of the family, because Yashika is over 18, her case is to be considered separately. According to Theresa May speaking on Thursday to Sky News, it would be inappropriate to interfere with the case. This is the same Theresa May who was Minister for Women and Equalities for 2 years following the 2010 election.

As you will see from the map above, the Island of Mauritius, bottom Left is the largest Island neighbour of Diego Garcia and the other Chagos Islands top right. In the 1960’s our nation purchased these Islands from Mauritius and then evacuated the residents to a number of neighbouring Islands including Mauritius itself. This then opened up the way for our military ally, United States of America to create a military base on Diego Garcia. Two MPs in the current coalition parties (Peter Bottomley and Henry Smith) have worked hard to try to get the Government (and its predecessors) to put right this obvious wrong in our historical treatment of these lands. In the meantime, many 1000’s of Chagosians have sought a home in this country, something that our state has grudgingly agreed to. The relevance of this story, although unrelated to the specifics of Yashika’s case is that our fingerprints are all over this part of the Indian Ocean, and every Mauritian will be very aware of this. The two Islands are both 6000 miles from London, and 1000 miles apart from the other.

We have plenty to be ashamed of and to make reparations for in our treatment of these Islands. Sadly our largesse to the Falklanders has never been matched by any similar commitment to the men, women and children who originally lived in the Chagos Islands. Whilst I am not aware that Yashika has any Chagossian blood, the damage and abuse that we have meted out to people who live on the Islands near her home, should ring bells for all of us. Theresa May is wrong, it would be very appropriate for her to interfere in this case, by all means send the family back to Mauritius if that is the right thing to do, but they arrived together a year ago, and they should be sent back together. That should be enough to justify intervention wherever the family came from, but in the case of Mauritians, we should be paying additional attention to the way we handle these cases.

Theresa May is a regular attender at her Parish Church, assuming that this Sunday is no different it is probable that she will attend a Mothers Day Service. Let us hope her conscience will make her consider the needs of a Mother and Daughter from Mauritius, resident in our nation today, yet unable to visit one another due to the decisions taken by Home Office Civil Servants. Perhaps as she leaves the Church she could get out her phone and authorise contact between a 19 year old woman and her family and arrange for all to be repatriated (or given leave to remain) together.