United Kingdom approves plan to expel migrants in Rwanda – DW – 04/23/2024

The British government’s controversial bill to expel regular immigrants to Rwanda was approved at around midnight in Parliament on Monday (04/22/2024) after a marathon fight between the two legislative chambers.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative party were pushing for the adoption of the text that would force judges to consider the East African nation a safe country for expelled migrants.

It would also give officials responsible for deciding asylum claims the power to ignore clauses of international and British humanitarian law and bypass a High Court ruling that found the project illegal.

The plan, launched in May 2022 by Boris Johnson’s previous government, faced stiff opposition in the House of Lords, an advisory body responsible for scrutinizing laws passed in the House of Commons.

Members of the upper house criticized the bill as inadequate and returned the text to the lower house several times with amendments.

Record number of asylum seekers

Sunak’s government is under pressure to reduce the record number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats from northern France.

Hours before the project overcame its final parliamentary hurdle, the Conservative leader announced that his plan was going to be implemented “no matter what.”

“They will move forward no matter what,” said Sunak, who has made the fight against irregular immigration one of his priorities ahead of British legislative elections this year.

Flights to the African country will begin in “ten or twelve weeks”, he stressed in a press conference aimed at presenting the means the government will use to organize these expulsions.

a highly criticized project

Rwanda’s deportation plan has faced several legal challenges since its presentation in 2022. That year, the first expellees were evacuated on a plane at the last minute after the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights. Since then no migrant has been sent there.

The project, which could still be the subject of new legal appeals, has been strongly criticized by the Labor opposition, immigrant aid unions, the Anglican Church and the United Nations.

Its High Commissioner for Human Rights, Austrian Volker Turk, said it “goes against fundamental principles of human rights.”

UN experts have suggested that airlines and aviation regulators may be “complicit” in internationally protected human rights violations if they participate in migrant deportation flights.

More than 120,000 people have crossed the English Channel in rudimentary boats since 2018, when the government began counting the number of irregular immigrants coming this way.

JC (AP, AFP)