Raymonde Desiree was 25 when she was forced to leave her native Chagos Islands as Britain emptied the Indian Ocean archipelago of its inhabitants to make way for a strategic military base.

Fifty-one years later, the petite matriarch says she, like many Chagossians living in Britain, is angry at not being given a say in the islands' fate as they are now handed over to Mauritius.

Britain announced Thursday that it would transfer sovereignty of the remote archipelago but keep the joint American-British base on Diego Garcia island, an agreement U.S. President Joe Biden hailed as "historic."