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RWANDAN PRESIDENT PAUL Kagame said Kigali was not “trading in human beings” when it agreed to a controversial deal allowing Britain to send migrants and asylum seekers to his country.
The agreement announced last week has attracted a chorus of criticism from rights groups, opposition figures in Britain and Rwanda and even the United Nations.
According to Kigali, the British government will provide up to £120 million (€144 million) and migrants will be “integrated into communities across the country.”
“It would be mistaken for people to just conclude that ‘Oh you know, Rwanda got money’,” Kagame said during a virtual seminar with a US university. A video of his remarks was posted on Twitter by his office today.
“We are not trading human beings, please. This is not the case. We are actually helping,” he said, describing the deal as an “innovation” put forward by Rwanda.
Rights groups accuse Kagame’s government of crushing dissent and keeping an iron grip on power, but while announcing the asylum deal on 14 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Rwanda was “one of the safest countries in the world.”
The UN refugee agency has criticised the arrangement, saying people fleeing conflict and persecution “should not be traded like commodities.”
Kagame argued that Rwanda, a tiny nation in Africa’s Great Lakes region that lies thousands of kilometres from Britain, has hosted refugees for “decades,” mainly from neighbouring countries.
It previously took in African refugees stranded in Libya under an agreement with the African Union and the UN refugee agency. Last year it offered temporary asylum to Afghans fleeing a Taliban takeover.
Kagame said the Libya arrangement was decided in 2018 when he was chair of the AU. The violence-wracked North African country is a key departure point for African and Asian migrants making desperate attempts to reach Europe, many of them dying on the perilous Mediterranean Sea crossing.
“When the issue came up with me, I said ‘well we are not a rich country, we are not a big country, but there are solutions, we can always help, find and solve big problems’,” he said.
According to UN figures, Rwanda was hosting more than 127,000 refugees as of September last year, almost half of them children. The majority were Congolese, followed by Burundians.
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great idea I think
Disg#sting idea…Patel has her claws all over this…hopefully it will.never fly.
@Donal O’Carroll: For economic migrants who are crossing the channel, this is a smart policy because it will discourage them.
Australia has a similar policy and numbers have reduced dramatically.
UK could not have done this while they were in the EU.
@Roger Bond: That last point ought to scare the living daylights out of ordinary Brits. Supermax prisons and a new death penalty anyone?
Expensive and cruel…a failed policy..no thanks
@Roger Bond: yes they could. Just like they could take control of their borders all along
He can say what he wants but it trading in humans. It’s a throughly vile system the British have decided on. But hey it keeps the racists happy, getting brexit done etc etc
@Keith Keith: It’s far from being vile.
Ramming people onto rubber dinghies and sending them across one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, having first charged them extortionate sums of money for the priviledge is worse than vile.
Britain has no problem with welcoming migrants or refugees who come through the correct channels. These dinghy folk are illegal immigrants, and mostly come from the African continent to start with.
@Ally Collyer: The Brits condemned Rwanda 9 months ago about their human rights record.
@Tommy Berry: does that make it, good idea-bad location or bad bad.
I think its a ballsy idea to try and stop economic migration
@Garreth mc mahon: It’s horrendous. Racists don’t care though.
@Tommy Berry: It’s nowt to do with race! It’s the fact that they’re illegal migrants.
Look up the word ILLEGAL.
Now tell me here it says anywhere about race.
They’re illegal economic migrants, and the UK has had enough of them.
We haven’t the room for them. Perhaps they’d be better off here in Ireland?
Yes of course the Rwandan gov has a great record of being just. Ask Paul Rusesabagina (see Hotel Rwanda) who was kidnapped from Dubai and is now languishing in a Rwandan jail. I’d say the Brit gov liked their style.
This set up does not look good no matter how they package it.
@andrew: Yes it does not look like an attractive option for would be channel crossers so it will be effective.
Of course it is – stop with the gaslighting
Its pretty poor and would make you wonder if the Brits ever learned from their many times through history sending people to far flung places simply because they didn’t like the look of them.
@Paul Cunningham: What are you blethering on about, man? Britain used to send its convicts to Australia. I wasn’t aware we sent them anywhere else in the world, and it was nothing to do with whether or not we did or not like the look of them!
@Ally Collyer: wonder how comes there are massive South Asian communities in Fiji,Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya,etc
Would you like to enlighten us.Thanks
have your say