I CONFESS I had not been following in detail the UK Government’s latest anti-immigration plans. The war in Ukraine and rising fuel prices has forced almost everything else from our news screens. I had thought the vague idea of packing off refugees who had crossed the English Channel to some third-world destination was just another daft idea in the same category as the tunnel to Northern Ireland. It would be mentioned from time to time to divert our attention from Partygate, Brexit and other UK Government policy disasters.
However, the UK Home Secretary has now actually visited Rwanda, stood on a stage with a Rwandan minister, and talked in detail about implementing this policy. I was hoping that I was still asleep, this was all some bizarre nightmare and I would wake up soon and find myself safely tucked up in bed. It was like a scene from a badly acted 1970s Monty Python sketch. I am reminded of the policy of the 1800s which saw many transported to the penal colonies of Australia.
READ MORE: Home Office refuses to rule out sending kids to Rwanda under new deal
No doubt this policy will be subject to long-running and expensive legal challenges. According to Human Rights Watch, Rwanda is a one-party state, as “under the guise of preventing genocide, the government displays a marked intolerance of the most basic forms of dissent.” Amnesty International is also critical, saying that “laws against inciting insurrection or trouble among the population had been used to imprison people for the legitimate exercise of their rights to freedom of association or of expression.”
A quick look on the internet will confirm that Rwanda is a country of few natural resources and the economy is based mostly on subsistence agriculture by local farmers using simple tools. Since the mid-1980s, farm sizes and food production have been decreasing, due in part to the resettlement of displaced people ! Despite Rwanda’s fertile ecosystem, food production often does not keep pace with population growth, and food imports are required.
READ MORE: What is the human rights situation in Rwanda?
At the UN only last year, the UK demanded investigations into alleged killings, disappearances and torture in Rwanda.
There are a million questions which need to be asked and answered on this plan, starting with: what if the refugees simply don’t want to go? Will we see them physically dragged on and off air planes on our TV screens at some point in the future?
Brian Lawson
Paisley
HOW disturbing that asylum seekers are to be decanted to Rwanda, of all unlikely places, supposedly to deter asylum seekers from coming to Britain; to allegedly break the business model of the human traffickers.
Hasn’t this desperate and unworkable proposal illustrated just how low our law-breaking Tory government have stooped, breaching fundamental standards of human decency in pursuit of the xenophobic mantra of those who would support them?
READ MORE: PM hopes Rwanda refugee plans will end Channel crossings
So if men travelling singly, who have left their family safely behind to protect them from the risk of the journey to improve their family prospects, are to be decanted to an African “wilderness”, does this mean that they will then be encouraged to bring their families with them, to expose them to the inherent dangers, in order to avoid being cast to the wind by this cruel British government action?
Won’t this just lead to more deaths of vulnerable human beings?
I despair that we in Scotland, who clearly have higher moral standards than English Tory supporters, are forced to be associated with such deplorable policies against our will.
Never in Scotland’s history has there been a greater imperative for Scots to decide if they can live with such atrocious politics by Westminster government lawbreakers making cruel and draconian laws for us, that we don’t vote for, and which they themselves breach with impunity.
I despair.
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
THE UK Government reported on Wednesday the tragic deaths of 651 of its citizens in the previous 24 hours, those deaths of individuals who had tested positive for Covid-19 in the previous 28 days.
Although the highest number of Covid-19-related deaths in more than a year (even allowing for spurious “technical issues”), this catastrophic statistic was largely ignored by much of the mainstream media, including the BBC.
READ MORE: Covid in Scotland: 40 more deaths with more than 2000 people in hospital
Of course, as the subject of another Prime Ministerial edict intended to limit criticism of UK Government policy failings, such as Brexit, regrettably most UK mainstream media political reporters and commentators appear reluctant to sniff the hands that feed them their stories and are seemingly content to consider the coronavirus pandemic effectively over.
While some choose to dismiss the importance of Partygate as Russia continues to inflict a horrendous war on Ukraine, true democracy in the UK is disintegrating under a UK Government leadership that is dishonest, blatantly corrupt, and totally out of touch with the day-to-day problems confronting most of the UK’s citizens.
The UK Government’s intention to exile those desperately seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda, while Ukrainians fleeing war continue to be subjected to a bureaucratic nightmare, are further manifestations of a perverse ideological political direction of the United Kingdom in which all citizens referred to as “British” are shamed.
Stan Grodynski
Longniddry, East Lothian
THANK you James Stevenson for your very good and funny letter in today’s National (Apr 13) comparing Boris Johnson, Gordon Brown, Priti Patel and Rees-Mogg to extinct creatures from the past. The letter brightened up my day.
Robert Anderson
Dunning
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