Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

The atoll is approximately 1,970 nautical miles (3,650 km) east of the coast of Africa (at Tanzania), 967 nautical miles (1,790 km) south-southwest of the southern tip of India (at Kanyakumari) and 2,550 nautical miles (4,720 km) west-northwest of the west coast of Australia (at Cape Range National Park, Western Australia). Diego Garcia lies in the Chagos Archipelago at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge – a vast submarine range in the Indian Ocean, topped by a long chain of coral reefs, atolls, and islands comprising Lakshadweep, Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago. Local time is UTC+06:00 year-round (DST is not observed).

The US Navy operates Naval Support Facility (NSF) Diego Garcia, a large naval ship and submarine support base, military air base, communications and space-tracking facility, and an anchorage for pre-positioned military supplies for regional operations aboard Military Sealift Command ships in the lagoon.

Mauritius sought to regain sovereignty, lost to the UK in 1965, over the Chagos Archipelago. Between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossians, then numbering about 2,000 people, were expelled by the British government to Mauritius and Seychelles to allow the United States to establish a military base on the island. Today, the exiled Chagossians are still fighting to return to their homeland, claiming that the forced expulsion and dispossession was illegal (see Depopulation of Diego Garcia).