© KEYSTONE/AP/Matt Dunham
Asylum seekers arriving in the UK will be sent to Rwanda, under a controversial deal announced on Thursday. Boris Johnson’s government is hoping to deter record illegal Channel crossings.
The plan sparked outrage, with human rights groups decrying its ‘inhumanity’, while the opposition ruled the UK PM was trying to distract after being fined for a birthday party in full lockdown.
While the Conservative leader had promised to control immigration, one of the key issues in the Brexit campaign, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel has tripled in 2021.
Regain popularity
Eager to regain popularity and seduce his voters, Boris Johnson and his government have been seeking for months to conclude agreements with third countries where to send migrants while waiting to process their file. Mentioned, Ghana firmly denied in January being in discussion with the United Kingdom on the subject.
An agreement was finally announced on Thursday with Rwanda, where British Home Secretary Priti Patel visited. “Rwanda welcomes this partnership with the United Kingdom to welcome asylum seekers and migrants, and offer them legal avenues to live” in this East African country, said in a press release the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Vincent Biruta.
£120 million
London will initially finance the device to the tune of 120 million pounds sterling (144 million euros).
In a speech planned in Kent (south-east of England), not far from the English coast where migrants arrive by boat, Boris Johnson must detail his measures to “break the structures of smugglers, intensify operations in the Channel, bring more criminals to justice and end the barbaric trade in human misery,” according to Downing Street.
“I understand that these people are looking for a better life (…) and the hopes of a new beginning”, must declare Mr. Johnson, according to his services. “But those hopes, those dreams, have been exploited. These smugglers abuse vulnerable people and turn the Channel into an underwater graveyard.”
Sending asylum seekers more than 6,000 kilometers from the United Kingdom aims to discourage candidates leaving for the United Kingdom, who are ever more numerous: 28,500 people made these perilous crossings in 2021, compared to 8,466 in 2020. .and only 299 in 2018, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.
“Scandalous” and “barbaric” policy
But human rights activists denounced this policy as “scandalous” and “barbaric”.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, director of refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty International UK, denounced “a scandalously ill-conceived idea” which “will cause suffering while wasting enormous sums of public money”, also pointing out the “dismal human rights record” of the African nation.
For the director general of Refugee Action, Tim Naor Hilton, it is a “cowardly, barbaric and inhumane way to treat people fleeing persecution and war”.
“Attempt to divert attention”
On the political side, the opposition also denounced the “inhumanity” of the project. Even in the Conservative ranks, criticism has flared, MP Tobias Ellwood estimating on the BBC that it is a “huge attempt to divert attention” from the setbacks of Boris Johnson in the “partygate”.
The British Parliament is also about to adopt a law which could authorize the creation of centers abroad to deport migrants while their applications are being processed or even authorize the coast guard to push migrants out of British waters. migrant boats.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), this law, if adopted, would contradict the Geneva Convention for Refugees, which the United Kingdom has signed.
The announcement of the new measures comes as the Prime Minister is struggling after he was fined for breaking the rules against Covid-19 by attending a rally to honor his 56th birthday at Downing Street. The conservative leader is trying to bounce back ahead of local elections in May which will be a test for his conservative party.