Monday, April 25, 2022
Government plans will send refugees into a 'concentration camp'
The Independent reports that government ministers may have been misleading us when they argued that Rwanda is a perfectly safe place to send refugees.
The paper reports that a former top Rwanda diplomat forced into exile has attacked government claims that his country is safe to receive refugees from the UK – likening it to “a detention camp”:
Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have insisted asylum seekers are to be given “a one-way ticket” to the east African nation, after crossing the Channel, will be treated humanely and given a new start in life.
But Theogene Rudasingwa, Rwanda’s ambassador to the US in the 1990s, has warned “such trust is unfounded” under the iron rule of president Paul Kagame.
“Notwithstanding Rwanda’s history, the world must be under no illusion as to the truth,” he has written in a letter to The Times newspaper.
“Rwanda is hostage to the Kagame dictatorship and is more akin to a detention camp than a state where the people are sovereign.”
Dr Rudasingwa, who has been in exile in America since 2004 after clashing with Mr Kagame, warned it will be “a case of out of the frying pan into the fire” for the asylum seekers.
He added: “So egregious are human rights abuses in Rwanda that Britain last year joined international criticism of unlawful killings, torture and other violence.
“Only months later it seems all this has been forgotten by Boris Johnson so that a transfer deal can be cut.
“Writing now as a refugee, rootless yet constantly under threat of retaliation by a spiteful regime, I feel for outsiders who battle to reach Britain only to face rendition to the Kagame state.”
The paper says that although it was initially briefed that only single men would be flown out, Priti Patel has since admitted that women and children could also be sent. She has also refused to reveal the likely colossal cost of the policy, beyond an initial £120m to be handed to Rwanda under the “partnership” deal.
It is little wonder that under Johnson, the UK is considered by some to be a rogue state.
The paper reports that a former top Rwanda diplomat forced into exile has attacked government claims that his country is safe to receive refugees from the UK – likening it to “a detention camp”:
Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have insisted asylum seekers are to be given “a one-way ticket” to the east African nation, after crossing the Channel, will be treated humanely and given a new start in life.
But Theogene Rudasingwa, Rwanda’s ambassador to the US in the 1990s, has warned “such trust is unfounded” under the iron rule of president Paul Kagame.
“Notwithstanding Rwanda’s history, the world must be under no illusion as to the truth,” he has written in a letter to The Times newspaper.
“Rwanda is hostage to the Kagame dictatorship and is more akin to a detention camp than a state where the people are sovereign.”
Dr Rudasingwa, who has been in exile in America since 2004 after clashing with Mr Kagame, warned it will be “a case of out of the frying pan into the fire” for the asylum seekers.
He added: “So egregious are human rights abuses in Rwanda that Britain last year joined international criticism of unlawful killings, torture and other violence.
“Only months later it seems all this has been forgotten by Boris Johnson so that a transfer deal can be cut.
“Writing now as a refugee, rootless yet constantly under threat of retaliation by a spiteful regime, I feel for outsiders who battle to reach Britain only to face rendition to the Kagame state.”
The paper says that although it was initially briefed that only single men would be flown out, Priti Patel has since admitted that women and children could also be sent. She has also refused to reveal the likely colossal cost of the policy, beyond an initial £120m to be handed to Rwanda under the “partnership” deal.
It is little wonder that under Johnson, the UK is considered by some to be a rogue state.
