Chagos islanders displaced for a US military base protest a deal on their future made without them

LONDON (AP) — Islanders who were forced to leave their remote Indian Ocean home to make way for a U.S. military base half a century ago protested outside the U.K. Parliament on Monday against a deal they say has decided their homeland’s fate without them.

The British government announced last week that it is handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius under an agreement that will see the American naval and bomber base stay on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.

Opponents accuse the government of surrendering sovereignty over a British territory. And the deal has left displaced residents uncertain whether they can go home.

“They announced a deal without even consulting us, which is at the center of all this tragedy,” said Frankie Bontemps, who called the U.K.-Mauritius agreement “history repeating itself.”

“They have a deal which is suitable for them, best for them, of course. And what about the people? What about the people that they ignored like 65 years ago?”

The Chagos Islands, a tropical archipelago just south of the equator off the tip of India, have been under British control since 1814. They have been known as the British Indian Ocean Territory since 1965 when they were split off from Mauritius, a then-U.K. colony that gained independence three years later.

Britain evicted as many as 2,000 people from the islands in the 1960s and 1970s so the U.S. military could build the Diego Garcia base, which has supported U.S. military operations from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the U.S. acknowledged it also had been used for clandestine rendition flights of terror suspects.

Many of the islanders resettled in Britain and fought unsuccessfully in U.K. courts to return home. Their cause has garnered international support, notably among African nations and within the United Nations. In a non-binding 2019 opinion, the International Court of Justice ruled that the U.K. had unlawfully carved up Mauritius when it agreed to end colonial rule in the late 1960s.

The U.N. General Assembly followed that opinion with a resolution demanding that Britain end its “colonial administration” of the Chagos Islands and return them to Mauritius.

Britain’s newly elected Labour government says that without the deal the status of the military base would be under threat from legal challenges.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the new government “inherited unfinished business” from the previous Conservative administration, which began negotiations with Mauritius in 2022.

“The status quo was not sustainable,” Lammy told lawmakers in the House of Commons. “A binding judgement against the U.K. seemed inevitable.”

Under the agreement, the U.K. will retain sovereignty of Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years, paying Mauritius an undisclosed rent.

U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying it “secures the effective operation of the joint facility on Diego Garcia into the next century.”

But Britain’s Conservative opposition said the decision to hand over a piece of U.K. territory sets a worrying precedent for other far-flung possessions including Gibraltar, which is claimed by Spain, and the Falkland Islands, claimed by Argentina.

The government strongly denies that. Starmer spokesman Dave Pares said Monday that “British sovereignty of Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands is not up for negotiation.”

The agreement will create a resettlement fund for displaced Chagossians aimed at letting them move back to the islands – apart from Diego Garcia. The U.K. says details of any returns are now the responsibility of Mauritius.

“They shouldn’t have made this deal without asking us what we wanted,” said Jemmy Simon, whose grandparents were expelled from the Chagos Islands. “It might just be another island to them. It might just be a military base for them. It might just be keeping everybody else safe. But to us, it is home.”

Associated Press journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.

Chagossians attend a protest to respond to the U.K. announcement agreeing to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians attend a protest to respond to the U.K. announcement agreeing to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Mary Marjorie Sophie, center, and other Chagossians attend a protest to respond to the U.K. announcement agreeing to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians attend a protest to response the U.K. announcement to agree to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians attend a protest to response the U.K. announcement to agree to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians Lucy Sagai, center, attends a protest to response the U.K. announcement to agree to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians Marie Michele, right, attends a protest to respond to the U.K. announcement agreeing to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians attend a protest to response the U.K. announcement to agree to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Chagossians Whitney Tranquille, center, attends a protest to response the U.K. announcement to agree to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands to Mauritius and against their "Exclusion" from Chagos negotiations, outside the House of Parliament, in London, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

NEW YORK (AP) — Ten years ago, Kim Gordon — a revolutionary force in the alternative rock band Sonic Youth, the ’80s New York no wave scene and the space between art and noise — debuted solo music. At the time, she was already decades into a celebrated, mixed-medium creative career.

The midtempo “Murdered Out” was her first single, where clangorous, overdubbed guitars met the unmistakable rasp of her deadpan intonations. It was a surprise from an experimentalist well-versed in the unexpected: The song took inspiration from Los Angeles car culture, and its main collaborator was the producer Justin Raisen, then best known for his pop work with Sky Ferreira and Charli XCX. Their partnership has continued in the decade since, and on March 13, Gordon will drop her third solo album, “Play Me,” announced Wednesday alongside the release of a hazy, transcendent single, “Not Today.”

“It was a happy accident,” she says of her continued work with Raisen. “In the beginning, I was somewhat skeptical of working with a producer and collaborator, really. But it’s turned out to be incredibly freeing.”

“Play Me” follows Gordon's critically lauded, beat-heavy 2024 album “The Collective,” a noisy body of work that featured oddball trap blasts. It earned her two Grammy nominations — a career first — for alternative music album and alternative music performance. Those were for the song “Bye Bye,” with its eerie, dissonant beat originally written for rapper Playboi Carti. For “Play Me,” Gordon reimagined the track for the closer, “Bye Bye 25!” She says it was the result of her thinking about the rap world, where revisiting and remixing is commonplace.

“I came up with the idea of using these words that Trump had sort of ‘banned’ in his mind,” she says of the new song's lyrics. (An example: “Injustice / Opportunity / Dietary guidelines / Housing for the future.” President Donald Trump’s administration associates the terms with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it has vowed to root out across the government.) For Gordon, because it became “more conceptual … the remake doesn’t seem as anxiety-provoking as the original.”

There is a connective spirit between “The Collective” and “Play Me” — a shared confrontation, propulsive production and songs that possess a keen ability to process and reflect the world around Gordon. “It does feel kind of like an evolution,” she says of this album next to her last. “It’s sort of a more focused record, and immediate.” The songs are shorter and attentive.

Or, to put it more simply: “I like beats and that inspires me more than melodies,” she says. “Beats and space.”

That palette drives “Play Me,” a foundation in which staccato lyricism transforms and offers astute criticism. Consider the title track, which challenges passive listening and the devaluation of music in the age of streaming. She names Spotify playlist titles, imagined genres defined by mood rather than music. “Rich popular girl / Villain mode” she speak-sings, “Jazz and background / Chillin' after work.”

“It's just representative of, you know, this era we're in, this culture of convenience,” she says. “Music always represented a certain amount of freedom to me, and it feels like that’s kind of been blanketed over.”

Sonically, it is a message delivered atop a '70s groove, placing it in conversation with an era unshackled from these digital technologies.

The title, too, “is playing off the sort of passive nature of listening to music,” she says, “But also it could be seen as defiant. Like, I dare you to play me.”

There's also the blown-out “Subcon,” which examines the world's growing billionaire class and their fascination with space colonialization in a period of economic insecurity. In the song, Gordon's lyrical abstractions highlight the absurdity, taking aim at technocrats.

“I find reality inspirational, no matter how bad it is,” she says. Where some artists might veer away from the news, Gordon tackles truth. “I’m not sure what music is supposed to be. So, I’m just doing my version of it.”

In the end, she hopes listeners are “somewhat thrilled by” the album.

“'This is the music that I’ve wanted to hear,’ kind of feeling. Does that sound egotistical? I don’t know,” she laughs. If it is, it is earned.

1. “Play Me”

2. “Girl with a Look”

3. “No Hands”

4. “Black Out”

5. “Dirty Tech”

6. “Not Today”

7. “Busy Bee”

8. “Square Jaw”

9. “Subcon”

10. “Post Empire”

11. “Nail Bitter”

12. “Bye Bye 25!”

Kim Gordon poses for a portrait in New York on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

Kim Gordon poses for a portrait in New York on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

Kim Gordon poses for a portrait on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025, in New York (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)