Aurélie Marie-Lisette Talate
Chagossian Activist and Co-Founder of the Chagos Refugees Group · 1941–2012
Who is Aurélie Marie-Lisette Talate?
Aurélie Marie-Lisette Talate, widely known as Lisette Talate, was born on 19 March 1941 on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago. She was among the roughly 2,000 Chagossians forcibly removed by the United Kingdom between 1968 and 1973 to allow the construction of a joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, and she became one of the most prominent voices of the generation that experienced the expulsion firsthand. Resettled in poverty in Mauritius, she joined fellow exiles Charlesia Alexis and Rita Elysée Bancoult in organizing demonstrations and hunger strikes in 1975, 1978, 1980, and 1981, campaigns led predominantly by Chagossian women because men were more likely to be arrested. In 1982 she co-founded the Chagos Refugees Group with Charlesia Alexis and Olivier Bancoult, the organization that has anchored the Chagossian campaign for the right of return ever since. Her case, alongside those of other exiled islanders, was pursued through British courts and the European Court of Human Rights. In 2011, then Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam named her a Member of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean and awarded her the Mauritian Order of Merit. She died in Mauritius on 4 January 2012, having never been permitted to permanently return to Diego Garcia.
Sources: Aurélie Marie-Lisette Talate, Wikipedia (biographical summary) · "RIGHTS-CHAGOS: 'My Navel is Buried There'," Inter Press Service, 24 November 2009