LONDON (AP) – The British Conservative government has reached an agreement with Rwanda to send some asylum seekers thousands of miles into the East African country, a move condemned by opposition politicians and refugee groups as inhumane, incapacitated and a loss of public money.
Interior Minister Priti Patel visited the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on Thursday to sign what the two countries called an “partnership for economic development”. The plan will see some people arriving in Britain as stray trucks or small boats across the English Channel, taken by the UK government and flying 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) to Rwanda, apparently forever.
Migrants have long used northern France as a starting point to reach Britain, either by hiding in trucks or ferries, or – increasingly after the coronavirus pandemic closed other routes in 2020 – in boats 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 died, including 27 in November when a boat capsized.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said action was needed to stop “vicious human smugglers (who) abuse the vulnerable and turn the English Channel into a water cemetery”.
In a speech near the English Channel, Johnson said that “anyone who enters the United Kingdom illegally … can now be relocated to Rwanda.”
The Rwandan government has said the agreement will initially last five years, and Britain has paid 120 million pounds ($ 158 million) in advance to pay for housing and the integration of migrants.
Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta said the agreement “ensures that people are protected, respected and empowered to develop their own ambitions and settle permanently in Rwanda if they choose”.
He said his country is now home to more than 130,000 refugees from countries including Burundi, Congo, Libya and Pakistan.
Johnson denied that the plan lacked “compassion”, but acknowledged that it would inevitably face legal challenges and would not take effect immediately.
Rwanda is the most populous nation in Africa, and competition for land and resources there has fueled decades of ethnic and political tensions, culminating in the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutus trying to protect them. Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized the current government of President Paul Kagame for repression.
However, Johnson insisted that Rwanda has “completely transformed” over the past two decades.
The UK says relocation decisions will not be based on the migrants’ country of origin, but on whether they have used “illegal or dangerous routes” to reach the UK from a safe country like France. Not all such arrivals will be considered suitable for dispatch to Rwanda; it was not clear what the decision criteria would be.
Previous policies for sending refugee applicants abroad have been highly controversial.
In 2013, Australia began sending asylum seekers trying to reach the country by boat to Papua New Guinea and the small atoll of Nauru, promising that no one would have the right to settle in Australia. The policy nearly ended the ocean’s smuggling route from Southeast Asia, but has been widely criticized as a brutal lifting of Australia’s international obligations.
Israel sent several thousand people to Rwanda and Uganda on a controversial and secret “voluntary” scheme between 2014 and 2017. It is estimated that few remained there, with many trying to reach Europe.
Steve Valdes-Symonds, director of refugees at Amnesty International UK, said that “the shockingly ill-conceived idea of the British government will go far beyond inflicting suffering by losing huge amounts of public money”.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the UK-based Refugee Council, called him “dangerous, cruel and inhuman”.
Rwandan opposition leader Victor Ingabire told the AP that her government’s decision to accept migrants is questionable, given that the country is also a source of refugees.
“Rwanda is constantly ranked (as) one of the safest nations in the world, but at the same time it is always a country where its people are unhappy,” she said.
The British and French governments have worked for years to halt travel across the English Channel without much success, often exchanging accusations about who is to blame for the failure.
The British Conservative government has made proposals, not all of which are working, including building a wave machine in the English Channel to return boats. Johnson said Thursday that the Royal Navy would take responsibility for responding to the passage of small boats, but that the idea of pushing ships back to France was dismissed as too dangerous.
Several previously proposed locations for the UK to send migrants – including the remote island of Ascension, Albania and Gibraltar – have been rejected, sometimes angrily, by the nations in question.
The Rwanda plan faces obstacles in both the British Parliament and the courts. Johnson’s Conservative government has introduced a strict new immigration bill that will make it harder for people entering the country through unauthorized roads to seek asylum and allow asylum seekers to be scrutinized abroad. It has not yet been approved by parliament, with the House of Lords trying to dilute some of its most draconian provisions.
Opposition politicians have accused the government of trying to divert attention from a scandal over government parties that violated pandemic blocking rules. Johnson is resisting calls for his resignation after being fined by police for the parties.
Labor lawmaker Lucy Powell said Rwanda’s plan might appeal to some conservative supporters and grab headlines, but was “unfeasible, costly and unethical”.
“I think it’s less about working with small boats and more about dealing with the prime minister’s own sinking boat,” Powell told the BBC.
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Ignatius Suuna in Kigali, Rwanda and Andy Meldrum in Johannesburg, South Africa, contributed to this story.
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