The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean halfway between Africa and Indonesia. The territory comprises the six atolls of the Chagos Archipelago (Hindi and other North Indian languages: फेहंद्वीप Phehandweep ; Tamil: பேயிகான தீவுகள் Paeikaana Theevukal ; Dhivehi: ފޭހަންދީބު Feyhandheebu) with over 1,000 individual islands – many tiny – amounting to a total land area of 60 square kilometres (23 sq mi).
The largest island is Diego Garcia (area 44 km2), the site of a joint military facility of the United Kingdom and the United States. Following the eviction of the native population (Chagossians) in the 1960s, the only inhabitants are US and British military personnel and associated contractors, who collectively number around 4,000 (2004 figures).
Read more about British Indian Ocean Territory: History, Depopulation, Politics and Law, Geography and Communications, Demographics, Economy
Famous quotes containing the words british, indian, ocean and/or territory:
“The British are a self-distrustful, diffident people, agreeing with alacrity that they are neither successful nor clever, and only modestly claiming that they have a keener sense of humour, more robust common sense, and greater staying power as a nation than all the rest of the world put together.”
—Quoted in Fourth Leaders from the Times (1950)
“The Indian is one of Nature’s gentlemen—he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. I do not agree with the big way of doing things.”
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)
“When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an area of social crime where gradations don’t count; unavailable to them are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)