UK Plan to Deport Asylum Seekers to Rwanda Considered “Cruel”

A group of peo­ple thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, by the RNLI, fol­low­ing a small boat inci­dent in the Chan­nel, Thurs­day April 14, 2022.

Fol­low­ing a recent agree­ment signed between the British and Rwan­dan gov­ern­ments on asy­lum seek­ers in the Unit­ed King­dom, sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al aid agen­cies report that some asy­lum seek­ers in the UK have gone into hid­ing for fear of being sent to Rwan­da.

Under the agree­ment, peo­ple sus­pect­ed of ille­gal­ly enter­ing the UK would be flown to Rwan­da for reset­tle­ment, pend­ing a response from British authorities.

In a joint state­ment, the Red Cross and the Unit­ed Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) say the threat of depor­ta­tion has dri­ven some asy­lum seek­ers to self-harm, with one per­son alleged­ly attempt­ing sui­cide. For these and oth­er rea­sons, the two human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions crit­i­cized the British gov­ern­men­t’s plans, accus­ing it of “a breach of duty.”

More­over, UNHCR argues that this pol­i­cy of refoule­ment may be adopt­ed by oth­er Euro­pean countries. 

“We are con­cerned” that the British “are call­ing on all their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts to do the same. I can under­stand from their point of view why they would do that: it would give such arrange­ments greater per­ceived legit­i­ma­cy if oth­ers did the same,” Lar­ry Bot­tinik, UNHCR’s act­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Britain, told the Observer.

Den­mark, a Euro­pean nation, has already expressed inter­est in adopt­ing a sim­i­lar “refoule­ment” sys­tem, and its own nego­ti­a­tions with Rwan­da have been ongo­ing for some time.

Fam­i­ly Sep­a­ra­tions Challenged

The mea­sure is retroac­tive. This means that thou­sands of asy­lum seek­ers, includ­ing many fam­i­lies with chil­dren, who are cur­rent­ly on British soil, are afraid of receiv­ing a let­ter from the Home Office announc­ing their trans­fer to Rwan­da. The Home Office has respond­ed to this by stat­ing that it will make every effort to pre­vent self-harm or sui­cide. The gov­ern­ment added that the pol­i­cy is meant to cur­tail human traf­fick­ers’ busi­ness models. 

Mean­while, Not­ting­ham-based inter­na­tion­al law firm Insta­Law filed its first for­mal chal­lenge to the Lon­don-Kigali reset­tle­ment plan, claim­ing that British Home Sec­re­tary Pri­ti Patel’s pro­pos­als vio­late inter­na­tion­al law and the UN Refugee Con­ven­tion, as well as the British Data Pro­tec­tion Act. Lawyers say the plan is a “pub­lic­i­ty stunt” designed to dis­cour­age cross-Chan­nel trav­el. The Home Office now has three weeks to respond to the chal­lenges, after which a pos­si­ble tri­al could result in Patel’s chal­lenge before the British High Court.

The law firm cites the case of an Iran­ian cit­i­zen who faces depor­ta­tion to Rwan­da while wait­ing for Lon­don to rule on his asy­lum appli­ca­tion: “He may be the only Iran­ian in the coun­try, there is no net­work, no com­mu­ni­ty, no one who speaks the lan­guage.” How will he cope, how will he survive?

“How will he get a job and an edu­ca­tion?” Stu­art Luke, a lawyer, and part­ner at Insta­Law asks. Accord­ing to an Inte­ri­or Min­istry spokesman, “our part­ner­ship with Rwan­da is ful­ly com­pli­ant with inter­na­tion­al and nation­al law. Any legal chal­lenge will be vig­or­ous­ly defended.”

Accord­ing to a dossier pre­pared by the orga­ni­za­tion Deten­tion Action, which is con­sid­er­ing fil­ing legal action against the British gov­ern­ment with oth­er British orga­ni­za­tions, LGBTIQQ+ migrants may face “dis­crim­i­na­tion.”

Author­i­tar­i­an­ism Revealed

What is dis­turb­ing about the ini­tia­tive is not just the fact of being faced with an extreme polit­i­cal pro­pos­al, but see­ing the emer­gence of author­i­tar­i­an think­ing that aims to sub­vert the foun­da­tions of a rule of law. Only an exquis­ite­ly author­i­tar­i­an polit­i­cal thought can con­sid­er that an agree­ment between states that affects fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms in a very sig­nif­i­cant way, and which, as the memo itself spec­i­fies, ‘will not be bind­ing under inter­na­tion­al law’, can be imple­ment­ed with­out con­fer­ring ‘any rights on any individual.” 

The unbe­liev­able sto­ry of this mem­o­ran­dum teach­es us many things. It is no less than oth­er unbe­liev­able laws want­ed by Den­mark on the right to asy­lum in 2021 and the ille­gal rejec­tions of asy­lum seek­ers car­ried out by Poland at the bor­der with Belarus. It is equal­ly no less than the equal­ly ille­gal and vio­lent­ly imple­ment­ed rejec­tions of migrants from nations like Greece and Turkey. 

A Gross Vio­la­tion of Human Rights 

Beyond the dif­fer­ences between them, these are, on clos­er inspec­tion, sit­u­a­tions that high­light how the vio­la­tion of the “rights of oth­ers” (those of non-cit­i­zens) can occur almost invis­i­bly to the rest of soci­ety. The man­age­ment of migra­tion rep­re­sents the most impor­tant and ardu­ous test of today’s demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems, and none of the uni­ver­sal human rights — none at all — can be said to be ful­ly acquired: they all remain frag­ile rights, always at high risk of being denied and for­got­ten, even in states with the old­est and most sol­id demo­c­ra­t­ic traditions.

This pol­i­cy shows how the very pub­lic author­i­ties that are called upon to pro­tect human rights are con­sumed with indif­fer­ence and inac­tion. In such a great rever­sal of prin­ci­ples, in order to com­bat the inter­na­tion­al traf­fick­ing of human beings, which the pol­i­cy claims it wants to solve, the vic­tims of traf­fick­ing and not the crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions them­selves are being criminalized. 

Let’s not for­get the harm and unimag­in­able vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law this pol­i­cy causes.