The de-facto First Minister of Chagos has declared his group will bring more people to the island after being threatened with prison.
Speaking to GB News, Misley Mandarin sent a defiant message to Sir Keir Starmer and British Border Patrol, vowing they will “have to kill him” if they want to remove him.
Mr Mandarin and former MP Adam Holloway travelled to the island of Peros Banhos on Monday to set up a permanent settlement, as the Prime Minister’s Chagos surrender deal remains delayed.
Since arriving on the island, Mr Mandarin has been issued with removal papers by British Border Patrol, threatening him with three years in prison if he fails to leave the territory.
Declaring his intention to stay on the island, Mr Mandarin told GB News: “I feel liberated here, I feel happy here. The prospect of me leaving my island, it won’t happen. I’m staying put.
“I will give my life for my country, and that still stands, because you’ll have to kill me if you want to remove me by force, and history can’t repeat itself again.
“It happened in the late 60s, early 70s. But this is 2026 and Keir Starmer has the right to stop that wrongdoing.”
Highlighting how joyous his father is to have returned to his homeland, Mr Mandarin made clear that his father will not give up easily and willingly leave the island.
Misley Mandarin and Adam Holloway have told GB News they will bring more people to the Chagos Islands
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GB NEWS
He said: “He’s happy here, every day he’s saying, ‘this is my house’, ‘this is where I went to school’. He’s so happy. You can’t break the heart of a 73-year-old man by removing him twice. He [Keir Starmer] can’t do that.”
Thanking Mr Holloway for his help in the success of the operation, Mr Mandarin added: “It felt like we were in a James Bond movie, because everything was done in secrecy.
“Adam, being a very professional ex-army SAS officer, we did it, and we’re on my homeland. Thank you to Adam.”
Revealing the next step in their plan for permanent settlement, Mr Holloway told the People’s Channel they plan to bring “more” people to the island to join them.
Misley Mandarin has been served removal papers from the British Government | GB NEWS
He said: “We finally made it., so now the key point for us I suppose is about how many people we can now bring on, so it really depends upon our ability to support life.
“Right now we’ve got five people, six people, seven people. Tomorrow, more people are coming, and ideally we bring 50, 60, 70 people.
“But we’ve got to be able to have enough water in order to do that, so that that stuff will become apparent in the coming days, but Misley here will be our commander, and we shall see how we go.”
Asking Mr Mandarin what his message to Sir Keir is, the Chagossian told Martin: “We’ve got the British patrol here threatening to remove me, but the most important thing as well is that Parliament is being misled, to the extent that Government want to give British sovereignty to another country.
The pair told GB News ‘more people will come’ to the islands
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GB NEWS
“My word to Keir Starmer, as a father, I want my children to see their grandparents’s island. They want to live on their grandparents’s island as British citizens in British territory. And we are bringing British citizens in the Indian Ocean again.”
Reflecting on how quick the British authorities have intervened in their settlement on the Chagos Islands, Mr Holloway compared their situation to the ongoing illegal migrant crisis in the UK.
He argued: “Honestly, this whole thing is quite extraordinary. This guy [Misley Mandarin], this ex-army soldier like me, brothers in arms, we are seeing every single day enormous numbers of people compared to what’s happening in this tiny little section in the world, and we are basically being told that we can go away.
“Let’s look at what’s going on across the Channel right now. It’s kind of bizarre, it’s sort of like the world of Transylvania.”