Exporting people seeking asylum – Rwanda

Updated 10 October 2023: Human Rights Watch: UK: Abandon Rwanda Asylum Transfer Plan

New Report Documents Rwanda’s Global Targeting of Rwandan Refugees, Critics

  • Rwandan authorities and their proxies are using violence, judicial mechanisms, and intimidation to try to silence criticism from Rwandans living around the world.
  • Rwanda’s targeting of Rwandans abroad, including in the UK, underlines Rwanda’s contempt for human rights norms enshrined in the international protection system.
  • The UK should abandon its asylum transfer deal with Rwanda and take action to enhance the protection of Rwandan residents and refugees in the UK.

(London) – Rwandan authorities and their proxies are using violence, judicial mechanisms, and intimidation to try to silence criticism from Rwandans living around the world, Human Rights Watch said in a report published today. The abuses, which have fostered a climate of fear and self-censorship, are being brought to light as the United Kingdom government is at the Supreme Court appealing the judgment that its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful.

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New Plan for Immigration – Nationality & Borders legislation 2022 enacted

When the will is there, it can be done – that is our point:  there is hope yet … We will collate reports and legal challenges to the Nationality and Borders legislation here.

See also: https://qarn.org.uk/government-plans-for-borders-and-immigration-2023/

3 February 2023: Guardian: Alf Dubs: Braverman calling refugees ‘invaders’ was low point of my career

Labour peer who fled to UK to escape Nazis says home secretary’s words ‘deeply and personally upsetting.

Alf Dubs, the veteran Labour peer who arrived in the UK as a child fleeing the Nazis, has described Suella Braveman’s likening of refugees to invaders as “deeply and personally upsetting”, and a low point of his half century in politics.

Dubs, who fled what was then Czechoslovakia unaccompanied in 1939 and came to the UK aged six as part of the Kindertransport system, condemned the home secretary for using language that painted those also fleeing persecution as “hostile people”.

Dubs’ comments, made in a new podcast series presented by the Lord Speaker, John McFall, follow criticism of Braverman by another survivor of the Holocaust last month.

In comments made in October, shortly after she was reappointed by Rishi Sunak, Braverman said in the Commons that refugees and migrants crossing the Channel in small boats were “the invasion on our southern coast”.

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Channel Crossings

That which is morally wrong cannot be politically right

See also https://qarn.org.uk/concerns-about-the-use-of-army-barracks-etc/


Updated 1 February 2023: Gov.uk: Leadership of small boats operations returns to the Home Office

The Small Boats Operational Command (SBOC) will bring together the government’s response to small boats with 730 additional staff.

Read more: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/leadership-of-small-boats-operations-returns-to-the-home-office

Telegraph: Stop migrant boats or face defeat, Suella Braverman tells Tories

Home Secretary tells The Telegraph the party’s reputation for competence is ‘on the line’ and crossings must be tackled to win election

Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/30/suella-braverman-tories-wont-forgiven-fail-stop-channel-migrant/

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Open letter to the Heads of Commonwealth countries:

25 July 2022: Welcome to Birmingham 22

Header image - the StatusNow4All banner

The Commonwealth Games welcomes you to Birmingham 22 – but the Government with its ‘hostile environment’, its laws and Immigration Rules prevents your citizens from staying

The 2022 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XXII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Birmingham 2022, is an international multi-sport event for members of the Commonwealth to be held in Birmingham between 28 July – 8 August 2022.

People from over 30 countries are coming to compete.

In UK your citizens are welcome as athletes, administrators, trainers and supporters.  However, many people who have lived here for decades have been subject to deportation orders. Others live a precarious existence. We ask all Commonwealth Heads to support our call for equal rights and grant indefinite leave to remain for all Commonwealth Citizens irrespective of the status of your nation. We also request an end to deportations.

Read more: https://statusnow4all.org/open-letter-to-the-heads-of-commonwealth-countries/

‘Independent’ review of Border Force

Note: At a time when the Home Secretary, Priti Patel has been stalling to publish a report by the Government’s own ICIBI David Neal, she had sought an ‘independent review’ that would fully support the intensification of this hostile environment.


20 July 2022: Gov.uk: Independent review of Border Force by Alexander Downer, commissioned by The Rt Hon Priti Patel MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department.


Alexander Downing’s report is here – note the language he uses, and his recommendations that will intensify the hostile environment, for example:

10.3 Third country processing should be fully implemented People that have entered the UK should be moved to a third country rapidly for assessment under the UN Convention and other relevant legislation. The rapid movement of people that have entered the UK illegally to a third country reduces the risk of the removal process being frustrated. The eligibility for removal should embrace all cohorts of people who enter the UK illegally.

The lessons from Australia’s experience on this issue suggest that the pace with which people are moved, along with avoiding a running commentary on numbers, is useful in achieving success. The discussion of numbers at various stages of operational implementation will potentially look like the odds are still in favour of attempting dangerous, illegal migration journeys and the deterrent effect is lost.

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Little Amal – The Walk: Hope. Too BIG to ignore.

Start with Hope, change will follow

Updated 5 June 2022: Amal is back on the road in UK 19 – 27 June 2022

She will be visiting Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Bristol, Stonehenge, London, Canterbury, and ending on the beach at Folkestone where she arrived last year: https://www.walkwithamal.org/events/


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Responses to the war in Ukraine

See comments also here: QARN members’ thoughts on Community Sponsorship https://qarn.org.uk/qarn-members-thoughts-on-community-sponsorship/


Updated 25 May 2022: LocalGov: MPs warn Ukrainian refugees are being forced into B&Bs

MPs have written to the Government to raise concerns about the Homes for Ukraine scheme in light of reports of Ukrainian refugees being forced into temporary accommodation.

Clive Betts, chair of the ‘Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee’, has written to Lord Harrington, minister for refugees, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, concerning recent reports of problems with the operation of the scheme.

These problems include delays in criminal records checks for UK hosts and of accounts of Ukrainian refugees being forced into temporary accommodation such as B&Bs.

Mr Betts said: ‘There continue to be concerns about how the Homes for Ukraine scheme is operating, about the speed in helping refugees arrive, around delays in DBS [Disclosure and Barring Service criminal record] and accommodation checks, and concerns that Ukrainians who have arrived in the UK are finding themselves homeless after their initial place fell through or family members could not host them.’

Mr Betts’ latest letter follows an earlier missive, sent 4 May, which expressed ‘significant concerns’ about support for Ukrainian refugees and for local authorities.

‘There is a glaring disconnect in the current matching process which means the hospitality being offered by sponsors is not being taken up,’ Mr Betts said today.

‘The Government needs to up its game and speed up data sharing with local authorities so they can match refugees to suitable sponsors as quickly as possible and so councils can line up the resources and services to support those fleeing from Ukraine.’

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Michael Morpurgo on A Point of View speaks about welcoming refugees and migrants

BBC: Point of View:

‘Over the centuries’, writes Michael Morpurgo, ‘we have been a safe haven to so many, and they have helped make us the people we are today – at our best, a deeply humanitarian people. I fear we are not at our best today’. Michael argues that, although we need to address the issue of people smuggling and deaths from dangerous Channel crossings, we must not lose our capacity for kindness and ‘generosity of spirit’ towards those who need our help.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017cs0

This talk is worth listening to..

Released On: 20 May 2022 Available for over a year

On EU Borders

See also: https://qarn.org.uk/channel-crossings/

Updated 17 March 2022: Guardian: Fears grow of new crisis as refugees in Belarus driven into Ukraine

Dozens from Middle East ordered at gunpoint by soldiers to choose between leaving for Poland, where soldiers have beaten them, or Ukraine

Belarusian armed forces are pushing asylum seekers from the Middle East who became trapped in the country after they were promised passage to the EU to cross the border into war-torn Ukraine, according to the testimony of people in Belarusian camps.

Dozens of asylum seekers stuck for months in a makeshift dormitory in Bruzgi, a village in Belarus less than a mile from the Polish border, were ordered by a group of Belarusian soldiers on 5 March to leave the building at gunpoint and given two options: crossing the border into Poland, where guards have beaten them back, or entering Ukraine, one of them said.

Continue reading “On EU Borders”