Great Britain and Denmark are receiving strong criticism for their plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda – Dagsavisen
By Jan-Morten Bjørnbakk / NTB and Nils-Inge Kruhaug / NTB
35-year-old Berhani, an Eritrean refugee who was deported from Israel to Rwanda in 2015, knows what awaits those who are sent to the small Central African country. He eventually found the conditions so unbearable that he sent his family to the civil war-torn South Sudan.
Other Eritrean refugees have done the same, and some have also tried to go to Europe to seek asylum there, Berhani told the news agency AP.
The agreement the British government has entered into with Rwanda has a price tag of 1.4 billion kroner. It was announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April.
“As of today, anyone entering the UK illegally, as well as all those who have arrived illegally since January 1, will be forwarded to Rwanda,” he said in a speech in Dover.
“Rwanda will have the capacity to settle tens of thousands of people in the years to come,” Johnson continued. He described Rwanda as “one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognized for welcoming and integrating migrants”.
– Xenophobic
The government of Denmark also believes that it is a good idea to send asylum seekers to the reception in Rwanda.
All in 2018, the Social Democrats proposed to set up reception centers for asylum seekers in other countries. Last year, the Folketing passed a law that allows for this, but the issue is highly controversial.
The Danish government first negotiated with Ethiopia to set up an asylum reception center there, but rejected the plan when war broke out in the Tigray region. Talks with Rwanda then began.
The government’s support parties, the Radical Left, the Socialist People’s Party and the Unity List are not the only ones. But Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will probably get support for the plan from the bourgeois parties.
– I am worried that we are becoming a country that exports our responsibility. Which sends people we do not like out of the country, even though we are actually obliged to protect them, says Kathrine Olldag in the Radical Left to Ritzau.
– In my eyes, this is xenophobic politics, she says.
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– Horror example
NRC’s Secretary General Jan Egeland has also strongly opposed Danish law and the plan to send asylum seekers to other parts of the world.
Egeland have described the Danes’ plan as the most “stingy, petty and hypocritical” he has put in Nordic politics. According to him, the plan is a serious threat to international work with refugees.
– I will use Denmark as an example of horror in my international speeches and in my work. Previously it was Hungary, now it is Denmark, Egeland stated last year.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is critical of the plans to establish an asylum reception center in Rwanda.
– People fleeing war, conflict and persecution deserve compassion and empathy. They should not be treated as goods and sent abroad for treatment, said UNHCR’s Deputy High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs, after Boris Johnson announced the agreement.
“Such schemes simply shift the responsibility for asylum, are a circumvention of international obligations and are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention,” said Triggs.
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– Selfish
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has also strongly opposed the plan, which he believes “raises serious ethical issues”.
A country like Britain cannot outsource its own responsibility, the head of the Anglican Church said recently.
The EU’s interior commissioner, Swedish Ylva Johansson, calls the Danes’ plan “selfish” and says that Denmark can be thrown out of the so-called Dublin cooperation if it is implemented.
“If Denmark enters into an agreement with Rwanda and begins to externalize the asylum process, it is formally obliged to send the scheme to the European Commission,” she recently told Jyllands-Posten.
– If it is not in accordance with the agreement we have with Denmark – including the Dublin cooperation – it can of course have serious consequences, she added.
FRP support
Dublin agreements are a collaboration between the EU countries, Iceland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The agreement stipulates that asylum seekers can only have their application processed in one of the countries in the co-operation.
FRP leader Sylvi Listhaug believes the agreement should be set aside and that asylum reception in other countries is a good idea.
“Denmark is leading the way,” she told NTB when the Danish law was passed, calling it “a first step on the road to a new and more sustainable European asylum system”.
– Norway should definitely follow Denmark in this, she added.
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Authoritarian regime
Plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda are also receiving criticism from human rights organizations.
President Paul Kagame has ruled Rwanda with an iron fist for nearly three decades. He has been in power ever since his rebel army stopped the genocide in 1994, in which around 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were killed.
But while Kagame has been praised for bringing stability and economic growth to Rwanda, it has also been criticized for introducing an authoritarian regime in which political freedom is restricted.
Among other things, the country is in 156th place on the Reporters Without Borders’ index of press freedom in the world.
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Torture
Human Rights Watch has also documented widespread human rights violations and accuses, among other things, security forces of imprisoning people’s conditions and torturing them systematically and in the worst possible way.
Authorities are also accused of targeting the streets for the poor and for arbitrary arrests of sex workers, the homeless and street children.
The Rwandan authorities reject the criticism, saying that the country is more than willing to enter into agreements with European countries to receive asylum seekers.
Rwanda already houses 130,000 refugees from countries such as Burundi, Congo, Libya and Pakistan, the country’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta stated when the agreement with the British was signed on 14 April.
Terrified
However, refugees AP has spoken to in the country say that they are terrified of being without a job and opportunities to make a living in the country. Many of them say they will make new attempts to go to Europe.
– Many have already traveled to Sweden even if it would mean dying. Here in the camp, there is often too little food and clothing, says a man in the Gashora camp in eastern Rwanda.
35-year-old Berhani is also considering leaving the country. Now he lives with friends while on a desperate job hunt in Kigali.
– If you do not have a job, life in Rwanda is very difficult. Some of my friends have come to Europe. I have relatives who have settled in Canada. One day I can hopefully be reunited with them there, he says.
Others have found themselves at ease in Rwanda. Frezghi Alazar came from Eritrea ten years ago and has started his own bakery.
– Here you do not have to pay bribes. It’s safe here, so Rwanda also offers some benefits, he says.
The case continues during the video
Disputes and ambiguities
The agreement with the British to receive asylum seekers also provokes controversy in Rwanda.
The first to be sent to Rwanda are scheduled to be housed in a hospice outside Kigali, where survivors of the genocide now live.
They were recently notified of eviction, something they have strongly protested against.
– The agreement may trigger conflicts with Rwanda’s citizens, something we must avoid, says opposition politician Frank Habineza.
What happens to those who are denied asylum in Rwanda is also an open question.
– Will Rwanda provide repatriation, asks human rights lawyer Tom Mulisa in Kigali.
He calls for great caution in returning those who are rejected.
– It is the host nation that is responsible if they are not granted asylum, he says.
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