Hello, I volunteer with UK Chagos Support Association, a voluntary Chagossian support group that Plan.io and other .io firms and users have donated to since thi

Hello, I volunteer with UK Chagos Support Association, a voluntary Chagossian support group that Plan.io and other .io firms and users have donated to since this issue was raised in a tech magazine a year or two ago. Someone Twitter tagged us and linked to this discussion and it's great to see so much support for the community. Couple of links on the background below. http://archive.chagossupport.org.uk/index.php/category/io/ http://archive.chagossupport.org.uk/index.php/category/io/ https://gigaom.com/2014/07/02/seats-io-donates-money-to-chagos-islands-charity-over-io-domain-use/ https://gigaom.com/2014/07/02/seats-io-donates-money-to-chag... A couple of .io start ups set up a site to encourage others to support us and other Chagos-related support groups which allowed us to a lot more of our work - campaigning, supporting community projects and issuing crisis grants - over the past few years. Called 'The Dark Side of .Io,' it's actually offline now but the owner has assured me it'll be back on shortly. I've no expertise to comment on technical issues. On the moral side, I've not met anyone in the community who has a serious issue with firms using the .io domain name - most are impressed that so many firms have chose to back the Chagossian community out of their own pocket. As someone mentioned below, as recently as one year ago the UK government refused to allow Chagossians to return to the Chagos Islands. The community will not see any money from the renewal of the lease on their homeland for use as a military base. These are the main issues, and while the .io domain name is somewhat symbolic of the wider exploitation of the Chagossian people - others profiting from their homeland with the community itself seeing no benefit - there is at least a positive side to this, which is harder to find in the government's decision to continue the exile. If anyone is interested in finding out more please see our website (not .io - but that's out of cost and ignorance factors more than ethics) www.chagossupport.org.uk We're actually planning a bit of a revamp of the site shortly and I'd be remiss if when posting here I didn't ask for anyone interested in getting involved in that - contact@chagossupport.org.uk