Three years ago, 89 Tamil asylum seekers left Sri Lanka via southern India to escape persecution. Their aim was to reach Canada in an unseaworthy boat, as others had attempted before them. They expected the transoceanic crossing to take 30 days.

After 11 days at sea, their motor no longer working, they were rescued and taken to Diego Garcia, an island in the Chagos Archipelago. The archipelago is one of a few surviving British colonial overseas territories, and Diego Garcia is host to the largest US military base in the Indian Ocean.

The arrival of the asylum seekers marked the beginning of a multilayered international dispute that would go on to last three years. But their long search for safety may now be coming to an end.

After 50 years of negotiations and legal challenges, the UK announced last week that it would return sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in a "historic agreement" that allows the UK and US to keep the military base on the island for another 99 years. The UK government claimed the deal will protect its national security interests and close an irregular migration route to the UK - the route the 89 Tamil asylum seekers had inadvertently accessed.

They've been through quite the ordeal. After surviving persecution and being lost at sea, most have spent much of the past three years living in a squalid camp. The mental health conditions of many in the camp deteriorated to the point that some were transferred to hospitals in Rwanda to access medical care.

Now some of the refugees on the island and in Kigali face the option of being sent to a camp in Romania, with the potential promise of a transfer to the UK after six months.

If that promise is honoured, the Tamil asylum seekers might finally have a chance to begin rebuilding their lives. For any others not offered resettlement, the only option remaining will be return to Sri Lanka.

Escaping Sri Lanka

Anjeli, 26, is a Tamil woman from Mannar in Sri Lanka. She spoke to openDemocracy from the French territory of Réunion, where she ended up after a long journey via southern India, Diego Garcia and Mauritius. She's one of just a handful of people previously on Diego Garcia who managed to find safety elsewhere.

Her journey started when she was accused by the Sri Lankan authorities of sympathising with the long dismantled militant organisation Tamil Tigers. "There was nothing I could do or say to prove otherwise," Anjeli said.

She was imprisoned and tortured in jail. After she was released, her family helped her escape to southern India, where smuggling groups arrange boat journeys to Thailand, Indonesia and Australia.

Anjeli's boat was aiming for Canada. The roughly 14,000-mile-journey is desperately long and dangerous, but it has been attempted by many Tamil groups since civil war broke out in Sri Lanka in 1983.

In 2010, 492 Tamil refugees successfully sailed from Thailand to British Columbia in Canada. But not everyone makes it. In April last year, 303 Tamil people were rescued off the coast of Vietnam by a Japanese freighter ship after spending over a month at sea.

Stumbling across UK territory in the Indian Ocean

The group Anjeli was travelling with ran out of drinking water in less than a week at sea. Then the engine started cutting out. In distress, Anjeli said she clearly remembers the British Navy boat racing at full speed towards them and the short-lived euphoria she felt at being rescued on the 11th day.

"By the time we saw the island, many on board had already fainted from dehydration," she said. "We had no idea where we were. We didn't know the island was part of Britain."

In that she's not alone. When news of the sovereignty deal emerged, many were probably surprised to learn that the UK still owns territory in the Indian Ocean. The UK colonised Mauritius and the Chagos Archipelago in the mid-19th century. During discussions over independence with Mauritius in 1965, the UK separated the islands from the rest of its colony and started running them under the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) administration.

In the following years, the British authorities forcefully displaced the entire native population of the Chagos Islands, and shot and gassed the pet dogs the islanders were forced to leave behind. They then leased Diego Garcia, the largest island, to the US to use as a military base - receiving a $14m discount on purchase of nuclear weapons from the US in return.

After 9/11, the US used Diego Garcia to launch its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The island was also allegedly used as a site for the CIA's infamous kidnap and torture counter-terrorism rendition programme.

The Chagos islanders are now scattered across Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK. Many have spent years fighting for the right to return to their homeland. Meanwhile, the displaced Sri Lankans have been fighting to leave.

Detention in BIOT and Rwanda

The arrival of Tamil refugees on Diego Garcia posed an unexpected headache for the BIOT administration. Worried that Diego Garcia could become a "backdoor migration route" to the UK, BIOT denied the refugees the chance to claim asylum to the UK from the island. They maintained that the Chagos Islands are constitutionally distinct from the UK and that British asylum laws don't apply there.

But the 89 refugees were on the island all the same. In the absence of any alternative, tents and basic sanitary facilities were set up in a field the size of a football pitch and the newcomers were confined inside. The running of the camp was outsourced to G4S, a private security firm whose staff were revealed to be abusing and assaulting migrants at a UK immigration detention facility in 2017.

Anjeli said the warnings from the BIOT representatives were stark. "They told us the US army had their guns pointed at us and they would shoot us if we tried to leave the fenced perimeter," she recalled.

The situation in the camp quickly deteriorated. People lived with the constant threat of deportation to Sri Lanka, and pleas for an improvement to their living conditions were not met. In protest, many made repeated attempts at mass suicide by ingesting razor blades.

Lacking proper medical facilities on the island, BIOT airlifted those in life-threatening conditions to be hospitalised in Rwanda. At the time, Rwanda was still a partner in the UK-Rwanda deportation deal, which presented a possible opportunity for resettling the Tamil asylum seekers stuck in Diego Garcia.

The heavily criticised UK-Rwanda partnership was scrapped in July. A year after being sent there from Diego Garcia, eight Tamil asylum seekers still remain in Rwanda. The BIOT administration deems them too vulnerable to be returned to Diego Garcia, and too at risk to be returned to Sri Lanka. So they are stuck in Kigali.

For the remaining people in the camp on Diego Garcia, BIOT offered two alternatives: voluntary return to Sri Lanka, or to leave by boat and continue their journey. In a letter dated 5 April 2023, the BIOT commissioner warned against further suicide attempts and hunger strikes. They also stated that they are looking into "repair" of the groups' boat, so that "those who wished could leave".

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Anjeli was among those who chose to leave the island by boat. "BIOT authorities did some basic repairs to the boat," she said. "They gave us food and water and returned the life jackets we had used on the journey to Diego Garcia. We even had to pay them seven hundred thousand rupees [$2,380] for the fuel."

Anjali's boat left Diego Garcia on 26 January 2023 with 18 people on board, including five women and three children aged 3, 10 and 11 years old.

Around two weeks later, they arrived in Mauritius, where the port's authorities refused to allow them to land despite new damage the boat had suffered during the crossing. "They made us dock in the harbour for a whole day. We begged them to help us," Anjeli said. The next day, the group was given food, water and 2,000 litres of fuel, and told to keep sailing.

After two more days at sea, the group arrived in Réunion, an island just over 200km from Mauritius and a French overseas territory. "Our engine had broken down completely by then, because the fuel had mixed with sea water," Anjeli said.

In Réunion, all 18 people on board applied for asylum. Only three were accepted, including Anjeli. The remaining 15 were deported to Sri Lanka.

"I'm lucky to be here," said Anjeli. "Finally, I'm in a place where I feel safe. I am building myself a new life."

Possible relocation to the UK for remaining refugees

There are 61 people still in detention on Diego Garcia. Earlier this year, over 40 of the asylum seekers, including several children, were granted bail by a judge. This allowed them access to a road and the beach at specific times of the day. After a visit from a UK high court judge in September, many are also awaiting the results of a wider legal challenge to their detention.

Following the UK's decision to give the island back to Mauritius, some of those on Diego Garcia now face a fresh set of options. The UK government has so far agreed to accept at least 36 Sri Lankan asylum seekers currently on the island and three in Rwanda.

As part of the deal, the asylum seekers would be required to spend six months in a camp in Romania, where they will be offered other "durable solutions". If they don't accept any, they will be transferred to the UK. The asylum seekers' lawyers are reportedly advocating for the Sri Lankans to be sent to the UK immediately.

Speaking from Kigali, one of the asylum seekers (who preferred not to be named for security reasons), said, "I've been in Rwanda for 18 months without good treatment, I can't live in a camp in Romania for other six months."

Another asylum seeker currently on Diego Garcia (who also preferred not to be named) said, "many of us are angry at BIOT for the decision they made. We don't want to go back to Sri Lanka... We left on the same boats, so why are we getting different treatment?"

Via Romania or not, the journeys of the remaining Sri Lankan asylum seekers may now be coming to an end. And they are not the only ones hoping to reach their final destinations.

The UK's deal with Mauritius has set off a domino effect of deportations, displacement and relocation. And as the Sri Lankans prepare for their own potential departure, the long-displaced Chagossians hope to be offered resettlement to their islands by Mauritius - to all but Diego Garcia, where the military base will remain.

"I cannot believe what happened to all the others who travelled with me," Anjeli said. "The ones who are stuck in Rwanda, or detained in Diego Garcia, or those who were deported to Sri Lanka. If I was any of them, I would be dead by now".

From openDemocracy