QARN Leaflets: Download them here

8 February 2024: Please note that in our leaflet: ‘QARN – What do Quakers hope for, after the 2024 General Election‘, we mention a model letter for MPs. We have instead produced a crib sheet to highlight the concerns raised in the leaflet, in the hope that people can use this to write to/ speak with prospective MPs or wherever it is useful.

QARN What do Quakers hope for, after the 2024 General Election – leaflets you can download and print off:

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‘Safety of Rwanda’ Bill

Following the passing of the ‘safety of Rwanda’ Bill … and no ICIBI to oversee what is happening!

13 May 2024: Irish Times: UK Rwanda deportation law provisions should not apply in Northern Ireland, judge rules

High Court finds measures in UK government’s legislation undermine human rights protections guaranteed under post-Brexit arrangements

Mr Justice Humphreys delivered judgment at Belfast High Court on Monday in two challenges against the Act that focused on the peace process human rights protections guaranteed by the Windsor Framework.

The judge found that several elements of the Act do cause a “significant” diminution of the rights enjoyed by asylum seekers residing in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.

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Civil servants threaten ministers with legal action over Rwanda bill

12 March 2024: Guardian: Civil servants threaten ministers with legal action over Rwanda bill

Exclusive: Union says Home Office staff could be in breach of international law if they implement deportations

Civil servants have threatened ministers with legal action over concerns that senior Home Office staff could be in breach of international law if they implement the government’s Rwanda deportation bill.

The FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, have warned they could also be in violation of the civil service code – and open to possible prosecution – if they followed a minister’s demands to ignore an urgent injunction from Strasbourg banning a deportation.

It has sent a pre-action legal letter to James Cleverly, the home secretary, calling for clarity – with a request to either amend the legislation or change the code.

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We utterly dissociate ourselves from the Rwanda Bill

7 December 2023: QARN: We utterly dissociate ourselves from the Rwanda Bill

Asylum Seekers come to our country because they believe they will receive the protection of a regime which upholds democracy freedoms and human rights. We deeply deplore the fact that our country proposes to disapply these freedoms and these rights from those our Christian faith and practice most calls on us to support and cherish. As has been said, “refugees are human rights made visible”; they have “the right to have rights”. We believe that human rights are defined as universal, inalienable, indivisible and Interdependent; withholding them from anybody is an attack on everybody. 

For this reason alone we utterly dissociate ourselves from the Rwanda Bill. But the survival of our democracy depends not only on respect for all human beings but also on respect for the constitutional separation of powers. It is alarming to see that our executive now proposes to defy the Rule of Law both nationally and internationally in order to place narrow nationalistic loyalties above the things that bind us together in our Global Village . 

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The courts won’t save us from the Home Office’s cruelty.

14 November 2023: Open Democracy: Supreme Court Rwanda ruling is a victory – but not the slam dunk you think

The courts won’t save us from the Home Office’s cruelty. Those who defend refugees must get bolder – fast

he UK Supreme Court has ruled that the government’s flagship Rwanda deportation plan for refugees is unlawful – a decision that will bring relief to thousands of men, women and children seeking asylum in this country who are trapped in the government’s backlog in crummy hotels or on the prison barge.

The Supreme Court found unanimously that there were clear grounds to believe refugees would not be safe in Rwanda, where 100% of people from Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan have had their asylum claims rejected, and where the government itself is accused of torture, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances. The real and serious danger in which our government was aiming to put people who came to us seeking protection is unthinkable and must never be forgotten.

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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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