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Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire leaves Nyarugenge prison in September 2018, after eight years.

MundoÁfricaEuropa, , , ,

In the recent race to become Britain’s next Conservative Party leader and prime minister, there was one item the final candidates all agreed on – sticking with a controversial plan to send asylum seekers arriving on their shores halfway across the world to Rwanda.

Just a few weeks into the top job, freshly anointed prime minister Liz Truss doesn’t appear to be changing course anytime soon. (The closest the plan came to happening was in June, when a plane of asylum seekers set for Rwanda was grounded following a last-minute injunction by the European Court of Human Rights).

Now, as the British government faces legal challenges to the scheme from campaign groups representing asylum seekers, renewed focus has turned to Rwanda’s human rights record – including its imprisonment of political opponents.…  Seguir leyendo »

Priti Patel with the mayor of Kigali, Pudence Rubingisa, left, visiting premises allocated for refugees in Rwanda on 14 April 2022. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

MundoÁfricaEuropa, ,

It’s easy to fall prey to misconceptions about Rwanda. I’ve done so myself while writing about the small country – about twice the size of Yorkshire – to which we are dispatching our “migrant problem”. With flights to Kigali imminent, and the president, Paul Kagame, proposing alleged UK-based “génocidaires” be extradited to face trial, I wonder if we really understand what we’re getting into.

Faults in Priti Patel’s policy should not need rehearsing. Yet so great is western ignorance and amnesia about Rwanda (and the wider Great Lakes region of Africa) that the arguments against require reinforcement. For there has, since the genocide, been a “blank ahistoricism” about the country, as the Rwanda expert Michela Wrong has put it.…  Seguir leyendo »

A member of the British Border forces and another man help a child to disembark from a boat with other migrants, in Dover, England, on April 18. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

MundoÁfricaEuropa, ,

We knew the global refugee system was broken. But Britain, with Rwanda’s help, wants to smash it with a hammer.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel last week announced a plan to fly migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and resettlement, this being the Johnson government’s answer to the thousands who have lately arrived across the English Channel from mainland Europe. For its trouble, Rwanda would get around $157 million for housing, job training and other services. Patel termed this a “joint new migration and economic development partnership.“

That’s a very posh way of saying: We are going to pay a poorer country to take human beings we don’t want.…  Seguir leyendo »