UK’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda draws criticism

LONDON – British Conservative government reached an agreement with Rwanda to send some asylum seekers thousands of miles away to the East African nation, a move that opposition politicians and refugee groups have condemned as inhumane and unethical. can work and waste public money.

Interior Minister Priti Patel visited the Rwandan capital Kigali on Thursday to sign what the two countries called an “economic development partnership”. The plan, which will see some people arrive in the UK in small boats across the English Channel picked up by the UK government and flown 4,000 miles to Rwanda, is clearly beneficial.

Migrants have long used northern France as a jumping-off point to reach Britain, either by queuing on lorries or ferries, or – increasingly since the coronavirus pandemic shut down other routes in 2020 – by dinghy and other small boats organized by smugglers.

More than 28,000 people entered the UK in small boats last year, up from 8,500 in 2020. Dozens of people were killed, including 27 in November when a single boat capsized .

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday that action was needed to stop “evil smugglers[who]are abusing vulnerable people and turning the Channel into a graveyard full of water”.

In a speech near the Channel coast, Johnson said “those who attempt to line up or abuse our systems” will be “quickly and humanely removed to a safe third country or country”. their origin”.

He said “anyone who entered the UK illegally … can now be transferred to Rwanda.”

Opposition politicians accuse the government of trying to distract attention from a scandal involving government parties in violation of pandemic containment rules. Johnson was this week among dozens of people fined by police for parties, making him the first British leader ever found to have broken the law while in office.

He is resisting calls from opponents, and from some lawmakers in his own party, to resign.

Labor lawmaker Lucy Powell said the Rwanda plan might please some Conservatives and get a lot of attention, but “is not feasible, expensive and unethical”.

“I think this is not about dealing with small boats but more about dealing with the prime minister’s own sunken boat,” Powell told the BBC.

Rwanda confirmed the deal in a statement, but no government has provided full details on how it will work. The Rwandan government says migrants will be given “many opportunities to build a better life in a country consistently ranked as one of the safest in the world”.

Johnson denied that the move was “lack of compassion” but acknowledged that it would inevitably face legal challenges and would not take effect immediately.

Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, and competition for land and resources there has fueled decades of ethnic and political tension, culminating in genocide in 1994, in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutus tried to protect them were killed. Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized President Paul Kagame’s current government as repressive.

Johnson, however, stressed that Rwanda has “completely changed” over the past two decades.

The policy of sending refugees abroad has been controversial in the past. In 2013, Australia began sending asylum seekers trying to reach the country by boat to Papua New Guinea and the small atoll of Nauru, vowing that no one would be allowed to settle in Australia. The policy completely ended the route of people smuggling from Southeast Asia, but was widely criticized as a cruel breach of Australia’s international obligations.

British Government Secretary Simon Hart said the deal with Rwanda would cost Britain about $158 million to start. He said the goal was to “disrupt” the business model of criminal gangs that smuggle people.

Refugee advocates say the plan is too extreme and undetectable.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, refugee director at Amnesty International UK, said the UK government’s shocking fantasy would go even further in causing suffering while wasting money. a large amount of public money.” He said that Rwanda’s “bad” human rights record makes the idea even worse.

The British and French governments have attempted for years to prevent cross-Channel voyages, but with little success, frequently swapping accusations about who was responsible for the failure. Last year, Britain agreed to give France $74 million to help fund a doubling of police patrolling French beaches.

Britain’s Conservative government has made other proposals, including building a wave generator in the English Channel to steer boats back and send migrants to third countries. Some of the previously proposed locations for migrants to be brought in – including remote Ascension Island, Albania and Gibraltar – were rejected by the countries themselves, sometimes angrily.

Rwanda’s plan faces obstacles both in the British Parliament and the courts. Johnson’s Conservative government has enacted a tough new immigration bill that will make it harder for people to enter the country by unauthorized routes to claim asylum and will allow asylum seekers to overseas test. It has yet to pass Congress, with the House of Representatives seeking to dilute some of its most draconian provisions.

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here