As many as 15 fishermen from Tamil Nadu were reportedly detained near the Diego Garcia Island — a part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) —for allegedly crossing the maritime boundary recently.
About Diego Garcia:
It is a coral atoll, the largest and southernmost member of the Chagos Archipelago, in the central Indian Ocean.
It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and accounts for more than half the land area.
Discovered by the Portuguese in the early 16th century, it was for most of its history a dependency of Mauritius.
In 1965 it was separated from Mauritius as part of the newly created BIOT.
In 1966, the UK leased Diego Garcia to the US to create an air and naval base.
To construct the defense installation, the inhabitants of the island were forcibly removed.
Diego Garcia is the United States major geostrategic and logistics support base in the Indian Ocean.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled in an advisory opinion that Britain’s decolonization of Mauritius was not lawful because of continued Chagossian claims.
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