“We want to be seen as a people. We want to be seen as human beings. We want the world to know that we are still suffering.”
This was the message from one of the 3,500 Chagossians who call Crawley home – whether they want to or not.
Hundreds upon hundreds have arrived via Gatwick Airport since 2002, when British citizenship was granted to Chagossians born between 1969 and 1982 who had resettled in the likes of Mauritius and the Seychelles.
The latest arrivals, in June, were assessed by Crawley Borough Council, and 37 were left with nowhere to stay and no right to emergency accommodation.
So a temporary rest centre was set up, first at K2 leisure centre and then Northgate Community Centre.
Such centres would usually only last for 24-48 hours, allowing those involved to make other arrangements.
But the Chagossians are still there, with a small cohort also camped outside the town hall.
Debora Simon, of Bewbush, came to the town in 2002 when she was 12 and has been helping some of the new arrivals to find their feet.
She and her partner Maxwell have four children – three born in the UK and one adopted from Mauritius.
Their wish is a simple one. To be allowed to return to Diego Garcia – the island in the Indian Ocean from which the population was forcibly removed between 1967 and 1971 to make way for a US air base.
But it’s a wish that has been essentially ignored for some 60 years – Debora said that trying to talk to the government was like ‘talking to a brick wall’.
And she has appealed for help.
She said: “We are not fighting the people in this country – we are not fighting the local councils. We are fighting the government.
“But we can’t do it by ourselves. We don’t have enough of a voice. We need help.”
The story of the injustice heaped on the Chagossians has been passed down to the children and grandchildren of the original population.
Some of the details are jaw-dropping, such as a compensation scheme for Chagossians living in Mauritius in the 1980s, which was written in English and required people to sign – or leave a thumb print – agreeing to renounce their right to return before they could receive any money.
Without the document being translated into Creole, many of the people would not have known what they were signing.
Then there was the ‘will they, won’t they’ situation where discussions about a potential return were being held one minute and then squashed the next.
Debora said: “We’ve had enough of waiting. We’ve had enough of empty promises. We’ve had enough of being seen as the bad guy.
“We’ve had enough of being treated as less than.”
While Debora and her family – like so many other Chagossians – are settled in Crawley, with homes and jobs and schools for their children, the need to up sticks and take everyone back to the land where her parents and grandparents were born is strong.
She said that the arrival in 2002 was somewhat ‘hush-hush’, with no one at the airport to greet them and help them.
She said: “The people who first came here didn’t talk about it enough. We didn’t let people know enough about our history. We just blended in – that’s what we’re good at.
“When we came here we felt so welcome. We had a lot of people from different churches come to help us, we were given clothes, food – it was amazing.
“Somehow, this time around, it’s getting such a horrible, negative feeling about it.
“I do understand why, in a way, because there’s a housing crisis going on. It’s not that we’re demanding free housing or anything like that.
“It’s not just Crawley. But we say [to the others] ‘come here because we can help each other out and then you can move on to somewhere else once you get on your feet’.”
The night before we spoke, the police were called to the ‘camp’ outside the town centre to deal with some one less than pleased to see the Chagossians there.
Debora acknowledges that her people all over the country have been laughed at and told to ‘go back’ – which is exactly what they want to do.
On a rainy day in Crawley, it may be hard for people to understand why the town is preferable to life in Mauritius or the Seychelles.
Debora said many see coming to the UK as the lesser of two evils.
She said that, in Mauritius they were seen as Chagossian, not Mauritian, and had ‘fewer opportunities’.
She spoke of the pressure of shanty town houses or no housing at all, of suicides, of families being separated from each other, adding: “If we’re not wanted in Mauritius and we’re not wanted in the UK, blooming send us back.
“Then we will not be making your housing crisis worse, we won’t be taking your money – but we won’t be contributing to it either.
“We get forgotten about. We are people. We are human beings.
“If we’re not wanted in Mauritius and not wanted here, then send us back, plain and simple.
“We won’t bother anyone.”
The issue was mentioned by Ian Duke, CEO of the borough council, at a meeting of the West Sussex Health & Wellbeing Board.
Mr Duke said predictions about thousands more Chagossians heading to the UK were looking ‘scarily accurate’ – with a prediction of a 3% increase in Crawley’s population.
He said: “It’s been a slow burn but we’re starting to see significant numbers coming through.
“We had 90 household approaches in June alone and there’s quite a steep upward curve starting to coming through and expected to continue.
“They’re UK citizens, they will be assessed in the same way.
“But for those that don’t meet the statutory duties that either ourselves or West Sussex owe, what then if they have no assets and no connections and nowhere to go?”
Mr Duke said ‘an awful lot of disinformation’ had been getting back to Mauritius from ‘actors’ wanting to make political points.
This was a view shared by Debora and Maxwell, who felt many people had been ‘fed a dream’ just to get them out of Mauritius.
Maxwell added: “They have expectations. They feel the wrong that the British government has done to the Chagossians makes them entitled [to stay in the community centre].
“I think they are also using it as a sort of protest to show the world that it’s been over 60 years and nothing has changed.
“There is nothing in place and there is no real support for Chagossians.”
Mr Duke said there were rumours that another 100 people would soon arrive at Gatwick, though this has yet to happen.
And while he told the board that the borough council was ‘about to make progress on a small cohort’, he warned the authority’s resilience was close to being breached.
The board was also told about the health needs of the Chagossians and the pressures placed on other services stepping in to help.
Mr Duke said: “We’re very much in twice or three-weekly conversations with government about [how] there needs to be a wider response to the needs coming in because this is beyond what local services can meet if the kind of numbers that we’re talking about do start to arrive.”
Crawley councillor Bob Lanzer added: “An injustice committed at a national level needs a national response.