On Friday 21st March 2025, the sun will set on the British "Empire" | Hacker News Reader

On Friday 21st March 2025, the sun will set on the British "Empire"

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82 pointsredbell23 comments

I didn't know about this until now, but this BBC article seems to disagree with OP's Reddit post: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy78ejg71exo

> One of the largest islands on the tropical atoll, Diego Garcia, will remain a joint US-UK military base and is expected to remain so for 99 years with an option to renew.

> Mauritius will be able to begin a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands, but not on Diego Garcia.

So it seems like the military occupation will continue for at least 99 years if not longer, and the still living Chagossian islanders may never be allowed to return back home.

By the way, since this is a tech forum, it's worth pointing out that every time you pay for a .io domain you're funding this ongoing ethnic cleansing. BIOT is not a country, it has no permanent population and is currently nothing but a military base in a land that was completely ethnic cleansed in the 1970's.

There's a difference between being a British colony and allowing Britain to have a military base on your land, so nothing in disagreement with the original post there

According to the British government, it receives no revenue from the .io domain, which owned by a private equity company. So if that is the case, the .io domain does not fund ethnic cleansing.

As to Diego Garcia, my understanding is that Mauritius will be given back sovereignty of it, as well as the other islands, and that the UK and US governments will merely lease the island of Diego Garcia. This is not an unusual arrangement. The UK and US have military bases around the world on foreign territory, to the exclusion of the local population.

Not so sure if this qualifies as ethnic cleansing when nobody is being forcibly removed from anywhere, since they're not actually there.

While "ethnic cleansing" has overtones of torture an or murder, "forcibly removed" is accurate and occurred from 1968 to the removal of the last Chagossians in 1973.

But we they were already removed, then any revenue from .io does not support it, since it already happened.

And while the continued existence of the UK/US base prevents Chagossians from living there, that seems unrelated to the question of sovereignty; for example, the US Air Force base in Ramstein also prevents Germans from living in the territory occupied by the base's footprint, but nobody calls this ethnic cleansing.

> but nobody calls this ethnic cleansing.

Perhaps a point you might make to someone who used the term?

Were Germans forcibly removed from Ramstein?

> According to the British government, it receives no revenue from the .io domain, which owned by a private equity company

And this company operates out of jurisdiction, I presume. /s

> One of the largest islands on the tropical atoll, Diego Garcia, will remain a joint US-UK military base and is expected to remain so for 99 years with an option to renew.

This is not the same thing as maintaining sovereignty. The US has bases in many countries, but it's not native US soil

Yes. For example, in the town where I was born there's a US airbase. Well, I say airbase because that's what the paperwork says, its actual function as I understand it was a site for a school for the kids of American military personnel, there are no planes there.

When I worked for a defence contractor the Troubles were still a thing, so on the British base there'd be a chicane and armed gate guards, no crashing through the gates and blowing stuff up inside the base for you. But at the US airbase there was just a sign saying Condition Black (ie no danger) and you could walk in, presumably the terrorists weren't dumb enough to attack a bunch of American school kids whose parents were military given that a lot of their funding came from America...

Ostensibly the reason I'd be visiting that US airbase was vital urgent paperwork being transported personally by a British officer, who was entitled to the use of a vehicle which I was driving, to some senior American personnel - but we sure did seem to generate a lot of such paperwork and we always bought back donuts (which the Americans have on their airbase) ...

Anyway, that US airbase is definitely not American soil. I did actually own a passport, and I had the right to enter the US, but I was never asked about it because the airbase was in Britain, on British land, merely on loan to the Americans indefinitely.

yeah technically embassies, bases, and even individual rooms in international airports are sovereign in the legal sense afaik, ie that host country laws need not apply. By this logic I guess the sun never sets on quite a few empires. At the same time if we were talking about “native” then maybe the sun has always set on every empire, since protectorates, territories, or fully conquered subsidiaries will never seem native unless they were originally next door, in which case.. you’re unlikely to get that many extra time zones as part of the deal.

Traditionally, political thinking makes a distinction between de jure and de facto sovereignty, or respectivley juridical sovereignty and empirical sovereignty. By limiting the transfer of de facto sovereignty to a period of 99 years, the treaty ensures that it cannot be interpreted as a transfer of de jure sovereignty. However, in the context of international law the term "sovereignty" without further qualification is nowadays widely used in the sense of de jure sovereignty. This emphasises the thought that under international law a transfer of sovereignty can only be the result of a legal act -- in other words: de jure sovereignty has priority over de facto sovereignty.

Recent and related:

UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729325 - Oct 2024 (282 comments)

Also:

UK to hand over Chagos back to Mauritius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33463586 - Nov 2022 (52 comments)

Thank you. I genuinely would have had no idea otherwise, why this specific date.

That's absolutely false.

Australia and New Zealand are both in the sun and King Charles III is still head of the government of both Australia and New Zealand, and both are thus part of the British Empire.

The government of Australia is led on his behalf by governor-general Sam Mostyn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia) and the government of New Zealand is led on his behalf by governor-general Cindy Kuro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand)

It depends on what you mean by the British Empire today. If it is the countries whose head of state is the King of England, then you are right. If it is the territories ruled by the government of London (directly or indirectly), then neither Australia nor New Zealand, both sovereign states, are part of it anymore.

In 2009, Rwanda, formerly under Belgian and German rule, joined.[52] Consideration for Rwanda's admission was considered an "exceptional circumstance" by the Commonwealth Secretariat.[92] Rwanda was permitted to join despite the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) finding that "the state of governance and human rights in Rwanda does not satisfy Commonwealth standards", and that it "does not therefore qualify for admission".[93] CHRI commented that: "It does not make sense to admit a state that already does not satisfy Commonwealth standards. This would tarnish the reputation of the Commonwealth and confirm the opinion of many people and civic organisations that the leaders of its governments do not really care for democracy and human rights, and that its periodic, solemn declarations are merely hot air."[93]

In 2022, the former French territories of Togo and Gabon joined the Commonwealth.[53] ...seems like as or more of a successful model regardless!

As a Kiwi, no. The monarch being head of state is purely ornamental. The head of state only has a few honourary powers that can't really be used for diddly squat.

It's this way for tradition reasons, same as why we didn't end up changing our flag in the end, after a million dollar referendum. Tho I wish we were able to use the silver fern flag, that would've been rad.

Relevant What If from Xkcd https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons.

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