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Third largest ocean, extending between Africa and Australia

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km² (approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface). It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia and on the south by the Southern Ocean or, depending on definition, by Antarctica. It is named after India.

Geographical type: Ocean

Latitude: 20° S — Longitude: 80° E

Area: 70,560,000 km²

Featured Places

  • Mauritius - Islands in the southwest Indian Ocean, ruled since 1992 by the Republic of Mauritius

Articles

The U.S. Base on Diego Garcia: An Overlooked Atrocity, by Sheldon Richman, 4 Jun 2013
Describes the disheartening and shameful story of the forced evacuation of Diego Garcia's native inhabitants by Great Britain during 1968-1973, so that the United States could set up a Navy base, as well as current efforts to redress those actions
[David] Vine, who teaches anthropology at the American University ... has written a book, Island of Shame, and a follow-up article at the Huffington Post about the savage treatment of the people of Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean ... According to Vine, African slaves, indentured Indians, and their descendants had been living on the Chagos islands for about 200 years ... In 1968, Britain began blocking the return of Chagossians who left to obtain medical treatment or to go on vacation, "marooning them often without family members and almost all their possessions," Vine writes.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Indian Ocean" as of 8 Nov 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.