Some who have entered the UK illegally will be flown to Rwanda (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)We don’t yet know whether today’s flight to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, will take off with even one passenger on board. But the policy of sending asylum seekers 4,000 miles away to central Africa raises difficult questions for all of us.
What does it say about Britain as a country, about who we are and how we want the world to view us? It is no coincidence that so many people, from religious leaders to the Prince of Wales, who must travel to Kigali for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting next week, have come out against this policy.
It bears repeating - this is not a policy of offshoring, where people’s claims for asylum will be carefully considered. It is instead taking people against their will to a place they have likely never been, have not chosen not go to, run by an autocratic regime where, according to Human Rights Watch, “arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial detention facilities is commonplace”.
We need to have a mature debate about immigration and asylum. To grapple with the very real issues around push-and-pull factors and the brutality of the people smugglers, rather than tokenistic policies.
The Rwanda asylum plan fails on these terms.
