Many asylum seekers who risk their lives to row across the English Channel may one day find that after their long journey to "successfully" land on British soil, what awaits them is not the good life they imagined, but a one-way ticket to the East African country of Rwanda, 6500 kilometers away.
In a speech delivered on Thursday (April 14), local time, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson proposed that the Uk is planning to deport and resettle thousands of asylum seekers who have entered the Country Illegally from the English Channel to Rwanda in order to "break the smuggling network" and curb the entry of "illegal immigrants" from the English Channel into the Uk.
"Our compassion is limitless, but our ability to help is limited"
Johnson placed the disclosure of the repatriation plan in Kent, near the English Channel. According to the BBC, the UK will pay Rwanda an advance of £120 million (about 1 billion yuan) for the repatriation scheme. British Home Secretary Pritty Patel traveled to Kigali, rwanda, on April 14 to sign an agreement with the Rwandan side.
Johnson speaks in Kent (Source: The Daily Mail)
Britain's Daily Mail reported that the cost of repatriating and resettling each stowaway is between 20,000 and 30,000 pounds (about 167,000 yuan to 248,000 yuan).
The main target of the repatriation scheme will be young, single men, who make up 70 per cent of all smuggled into the UK from the English Channel. According to the plan, future stowaways entering the UK from the English Channel and those who have already entered the country from January 2022 are likely to face the fate of being deported to Rwanda. The agreement between the Two Sides does not set a ceiling on the number of smuggled guests sent to Rwanda.
The British government also "planned" the itinerary for the deportees after arriving in Rwanda. First, the deportees are sent to so-called "emergency transit centres", and then they are faced with three options: travel to countries outside the UK to seek resettlement, return to their home countries, or stay in Rwanda. For those who chose the last option, the UK was said to pay Rwanda for their local education, vocational training and language courses.
Room in a refugee resettlement facility in Rwanda (Source: BBC)
Speaking about the motivations for implementing the plan, Johnson explained: "Our compassion is unlimited, but our ability to help others is limited and we cannot ask the British taxpayer to pay for everyone who wants to come to live in the UK. ”
The repatriation plan has not yet been adopted. But Johnson announced that from now on, the Royal Navy will take over the English Channel, trying to prevent any stowaway ship from escaping into Britain.
"I think this arrangement is suitable for both countries"
Asylum seekers smuggled into Britain through the English Channel from countries such as Albania, Iraq and Sudan remain the majority of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who go to Britain each year. But the number of this group has been climbing in recent years. According to the BBC, affected by the epidemic, the number of asylum seekers smuggled into the UK from the English Channel by rowing boat reached 28,526 in 2021, more than three times that of 8,404 in 2020.
Just the day before Johnson spoke (April 13, local time), about 600 people crossed the English Channel. Johnson estimates that the average number of people smuggled in this way will be in the thousands over the next few weeks.
From 2019 to 2022, the number of smuggled people across the English Channel to the UK has increased year by year (Source: BBC)
To make matters worse, because stowaways often crowd into small boats, their lives are so insecure that their lives are so insecure that some of them even die on the way to the bottom of the sea, unable to see where they want to go. Last November, an inflatable boat carrying stowaways capsized in the English Channel, drowning at least 27 people.
Such a thing naturally makes the British government multiply the pressure while "having no light on the face", and it is not difficult to understand the mood of "rushing to the doctor". In fact, according to the Associated Press, before finding Rwanda, the Commonwealth's "good teammate" (Rwanda became the newest member of the Commonwealth in 2009 and one of only two non-former British colonial members), britain also negotiated with Albania and the two British overseas territories of Gibraltar and Ascension Island on whether it could become a destination for British deportation stowaways, but there was no agreement, and even angrily refused.
Stowaways cross the English Channel in inflatable boats (Source: BBC)
At this time, the Rwandan government opened its arms to the British willingness to cooperate, which may be partly "due" to the fact that they are not unfamiliar with such a "division of labor". At present, a total of about 150,000 refugees are housed in six refugee camps in Rwanda, mainly from Countries such as Burundi, Congo, Libya and Pakistan.
Regarding the relationship between the UK and Rwanda in "taking what they need" in the repatriation of asylum seekers, Simon Hart, The UK's Welsh Secretary of State, said in an interview that "I think such an arrangement is suitable for both countries" and said that such deportations "provide the best opportunity for economic migrants" and that "Rwanda is an emerging economy with a good human rights record".
According to the World Bank, Rwanda's per capita GDP in 2020 will be about $798, less than 1/50 of the UK's per capita GDP in the same year.
"Are ukrainian lives more valuable than those of some other countries?"
Before the United Kingdom, few countries addressed illegal immigration through the "offshore" approach to the dispatch of stowaways to foreign countries, with only Countries such as Israel (sent to Rwanda), Australia (sent to Nauru) and Denmark (sent outside Europe) having proposed similar plans, but with little implementation. If britain passes this repatriation plan and exports stowaways to Rwanda on a large scale, it will undoubtedly set a precedent.
In response, Gillian Triggs, UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Refugee Protection, attacked. "UNHCR continues to firmly oppose the transfer of asylum seekers and refugees to third countries in the absence of adequate safety and security guarantees and standards," she commented. Such 'externalization' is shifting the responsibility for asylum and evading international obligations. ”
During Rwanda's bitter civil war in 1994, more than 800,000 Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups were killed. Although British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Rwanda "completely changed" in the past 20 years, the human rights situation in Rwanda remains questionable. Not only have human rights groups frequently slammed Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, whose rule is oppressive, last year the British government itself expressed concern about the human rights situation in Rwanda during a country-specific human rights review by the United Nations, saying there were "persistent restrictions on civil, political and media freedoms" in Rwanda.
Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda (Source: UNHCR)
Within Rwanda, there is also no controversy about whether asylum seekers sent by Britain should be accepted. Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire told The Associated Press: "The government's decision to accept migrants is problematic because Rwanda itself is a country of origin for refugees." ”
However, it is not surprising that the most ruthless "spit" on the British government this time belongs to the British themselves.
Keir Starmer, the leader of the largest opposition Labour Party, not only called the repatriation plan "unattainable" and "costly," but also questioned whether Johnson's proposal was diverting attention from the fines he paid for "party gates."
Andrew Mitchell, a former cabinet secretary, warned that the British government's plan was tantamount to creating a British version of Guantanamo Prison. Mitchell also teased that it costs taxpayers £2 million to repatriate and resettle each stowaway, and it would be cheaper to house them with a suite in a luxurious Ritz-Carlton hotel.
A member of the public named Hamid Bicester said in a radio interview: "How are we dealing with these people? Are we suddenly saying that people from Ukraine are going to have more valuable lives than people from certain countries? ”
British people hold up a sign to call on the government to admit Ukrainian refugees (Source: The Guardian)
According to data disclosed by the British Home Office, since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as of April 8, the British government has issued 40,900 visas to Ukrainians, of which 12,000 have arrived in the UK.
In response to opposition in Britain, Johnson acknowledged that he would face some obstruction at the legal level and therefore would not make the repatriation plan come into effect overnight. But according to the Daily Mail and its website Inews, Johnson is prepared to do whatever it takes to move the plan forward over a nine-month period.
Johnson hopes to have the first "repatriation flight" to Rwanda as soon as six weeks.
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