Handing The Chagos Islands Back

A nasty remnant of the British Empire is that we still cling to some parts of the World where we really have no right to be, the Falklands and Gibraltar the most obvious but the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean is another one until today anyway when the UN's Highest
Court ruled that Britain's actions were unlawful and that it must be handed back to Mauritius 'as soon as possible'.
It is half a century since the UK took control of the Chagos Islands and evicted the entire population of 1,500 before inviting the US to build a military base on the largest atoll, Diego Garcia.
The British Government has offered the pathetic excuse that: 'The defence facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organised crime and piracy'.
A poorer excuse is hard to think of and a dreadful throwback to our dark colonial times that the Chagos Islanders should be happy to be turfed out of their own country: 'to help protect the people of Britain'.
It is reminiscent of the referendums in Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands where the inhabitants were asked if they wanted to be British or Spanish/Argentinian and surprise, surprise, both places, which are full of Brits, decided they wanted to stay British.  
The British Empire was a bullying, murderous regime which pillaged the globes resources and to try and defend it is wrong as is to try to argue that we were doing the right thing to empty an Island nation of all it's citizens and claim it for ourselves.