All UK taxpayers will from now on be complicit in legalised human trafficking, following the unveiling of the government plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda (UK Rwanda plan for asylum seekers decried as inhumane, expensive and deadly, 14 April). Rwanda has a dubious human rights record. The UK is handing over the safety and human rights of possible refugees, allegedly persecuted in their own countries, to Rwanda, a country that in 2010 was among the 10 lowest-ranked countries in the world for press freedom.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay
Hounslow, London
• History seems to be in danger of repeating itself. In the first half of the 19th century, the Royal Navy was dispatched to west Africa to intercept the shipment of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. Many of the naval initiatives were considered illegal at the time. Those “liberated” by naval action were then sent around the Atlantic world. They were given no choice as to where they would be “resettled”. Under the policy, perhaps 100,000 Africans were “rescued” from transatlantic slavery, but a further 3.5 million were still shipped to the Americas between 1807 and 1867, a million of them illegally. One suspects that the UK government’s politically motivated scheme will fare no better in inhibiting the activities of 21st-century people traffickers.
Prof David Richardson
Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull
