Boris Johnson’s government will continue with its controversial plan to send asylum seekers who have arrived by illegal routes to the United Kingdom to Rwanda, despite the great setback received by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), whose intervention led to cancel, at the last moment, the plane that on Monday night had to transfer the first expelled. Without a doubt, a strong setback for a prime minister in his lowest hours and who had precisely become a great standard-bearer for Brexit with the motto of “regain control of the borders”.
The Minister of the Interior, Priti Patel, daughter by the way of immigrants, was responsible yesterday to defend in the House of Commons one of the most controversial measures of the post-Brexit era, assuring that the Executive “remains committed” to the program agreed with Kigali for more than 140 million euros.
After several NGOs have denounced the worrying balance in human rights in the African country, Patel condemned those who “denigrate” it “without knowing what they are talking about” and announced that “preparations have already begun” to organize a next flight.
The minister stressed that the ECHR did not declare the British plan as a whole “illegal”, but only prohibited the deportation of three migrants – out of seven expected passengers – as a precautionary measure, until the English Justice rules on the initiative in July. In this sense, she assured that legal pressures will not prevent a policy that she described as “morally responsible” from prospering, despite the torrent of criticism received both inside and outside the United Kingdom.
“We will not accept that we do not have the right to control our borders,” said Patel, who insisted that trafficking gangs operating in the English Channel must be “dissuaded.”
The ECHR ordered the paralysis of an Iraqi, Iranian, Vietnamese and Albanian. The other three immigrants were also held by an English court. So the flight ran out of passengers just 30 minutes after takeoff. The European court recalled that the Human Rights Convention does not apply in Rwanda, so there are no guarantees that immigrants can later return to the United Kingdom if it is decided that their deportation had been illegal.
This court is not linked to the European Union but to the Council of Europe, a body that has nothing to do with community institutions and of which the United Kingdom, despite Brexit, continues to be a part. In any case, the hard core of the Conservative Party has asked the Government to disassociate itself from the 1953 European Declaration of Human Rights that underpins it, and which, paradoxically, London helped develop. In this sense, the premier, whose authority is more than questioned and depends more than ever on the support of Brexiteers, has already opened the door to a possible exit.
Two asylum seekers awaiting deportation told Iranian human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr that they had been treated like criminals, including describing a man who was wheeled onto the plane in a wheelchair after fainting. According to the immigrants’ version, they were held in separate vans at the airport, each guarded by three guards. While one said he had been handcuffed, the other explained that his wrist had been tied to one of the seats. “They were already traumatized by the hard journey they had to make to come to the UK and the uncertainties of what was happening to them. It is an inhumane way of treating people,” the lawyer told the BBC.
For its part, Rwanda confirmed yesterday that it also remains “fully committed” to the signed agreement and ensures that it has its facilities ready while waiting for the first deportees to arrive.
In Parliament, the Labor Home Affairs spokeswoman, Yvette Cooper, stated that the Government’s plan “is a disaster” and urged to focus attention on expanding and improving the current asylum system, which presents delays in decisions of up to five years. .
In addition, he reproached Patel for trying to get the first flight to take off on Tuesday despite ongoing legal demands, at a cost to the public treasury of half a million pounds (580,000 euros), and knowing that among the people he planned to send to Kigali there were “victims of torture and trafficking”, that “there was no adequate selection process” and that in the initial group “there were minors”.
Amnesty International declared yesterday that the cancellation of the flight should have been the end of this “cruel” policy. “We must not forget that the people who were to be deported to Rwanda last night have done nothing more than exercise their right to seek asylum in the UK,” said UK chief executive Sacha Deshmukh, who criticized London leaving ” its responsibility under the Refugee Convention” and recalled that Israel has already unsuccessfully tried to outsource the management of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Discussion about this post