UK Home Secretary visits Rwanda to discuss controversial deportation plans CNN

CNN
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UK Home Secretary Suera Braverman arrived in Rwanda on Saturday, controversial agreement This will force the UK to deport asylum seekers deemed to have arrived illegally in African countries.

The plan has been plagued with legal problems and no one has been deported yet. Braverman’s visit has been criticized for inviting right-wing journalists to accompany him, with the exception of liberal journalists.

Braverman landed in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, where he was greeted by Rwandan Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Clementine Mukeka and Rwanda’s British High Commissioner Omar Dale. Afterwards, she visited an estate that will provide accommodation for future migrants.

The visit comes 11 months after the British government outlined plans to send thousands of migrants believed to have entered illegally to Rwanda to process asylum claims.

The government claims the program is intended to destroy smuggling network Discourage immigrants from crossing the Channel from France to England on the perilous sea journey.

The UK’s plan to pay Rwanda $145 million (£120 million) over the next five years has faced backlash from NGOs, asylum seekers and civil servants’ unions who have questioned its legality. The government decided to delay its implementation.

After the first scheduled flight to Rwanda was canceled at 11:00 in June, there have been no flights yet. intervention A complaint before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), followed by months of legal challenges, has stalled the program.

Before leaving, Braverman reaffirmed his commitment to the plan, stating that it would “serve as a powerful deterrent to dangerous and illegal travel.”

But Sonya Sheets, chief executive of the charity Freedom from Torture, told CNN it was “very misguided.”

“Deterrence policies don’t work if you’re trying to target people fleeing torture, war and persecution,” Sheets said.

She added that the decision to invite only government-friendly media to travel “confirms that we have stopped even pretending to speak to the entire country about this issue.”

The UK government has made it a top priority to stop migrants arriving on shore in small boats.

The Illegal Immigration Bill being debated in Parliament gives the government the right to deport people who have arrived in the UK illegally. In many cases there is no safe and legal route to the UK. This means that many asylum seekers can only enter the country illegally.

Alexander Betts, director of the Center for Refugee Studies at the University of Oxford, said that under the bill people arriving in the UK would not be allowed to have their asylum applications examined, even if they were refugees from war-torn societies. No,’ he said.

Instead, they face immediate deportation to their country of origin, or to a third country like Rwanda.

However, there are concerns that the proposed bill is illegal.

“When you open the bill, there’s a big red flag on the first page that says, ‘This may violate the European Convention on Human Rights,'” Betts told CNN.

He added that the proposed bill would be of “historical significance” because it would amount to “a free and democratic state that waives the principle of the right to asylum.”

The United Nations Human Rights Court warned If this bill is enacted, it would be a “clear violation” of the Refugee Convention.

There are concerns that the bill will not be enacted. The Rwandan government indicated Only 1,000 asylum seekers can be processed in the first five years.

In contrast, 45,755 people Estimate In 2022 alone, let’s say you arrive in the UK by small boat crossing the English Channel.