At the start of Lent, Pope Francis sent a message to Catholics across the world.
He quoted from St Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “Let us not grow tried of doing good”.
Clearly, his message fell on deaf ears in Downing Street as they announced the most inhumane, insensitive and heartless plan to ship already exploited, exhausted and traumatised refugees 4,000 miles away to Africa’s most densely populated country, Rwanda.
Rwanda has limited resources and land. It is over-populated. Tribal tensions over those resources and land led to a bloody civil war between Hutus and Tutsis.
In a hundred day killing spree in 1994, some 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered.
Rwanda has changed economically speaking but it’s ruled by an authoritarian who is reported as not tolerating political dissent.
The current president received a whopping (if not incredible) 98 per cent of the popular vote.
Reporters without Borders, an international media watchdog, told the BBC that Paul Kagame is a “predator” who attacks press freedom. They cited the murder or disappearance of eight journalists, the imprisonment of another eleven and the exile of 33 as evidence of his clampdown on opposition voices.
Rwanda already has some 130,000 refugees from neighbouring countries. Rwandan forces shot dead twelve refugees who protested after food rations were cut. They arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned a further 60 refugees.
According to Human Rights Watch, Rwanda has a “proven track record of extra-judicial killings, suspicious deaths in custody, unlawful or arbitrary detention, torture and abusive prosecutions”.
That this ‘off shoring’ of refugees is a policy initiative enthusiastically championed by the apparently detached Priti Patel, the home secretary, is not a surprise. The woman is described by the writer, John Crace as “by far the dimmest member of the cabinet”. Which to be honest, is an accolade in hot contention in this current Tory administration.
Patel’s Refugee Bill is crass, unworkable, costly and utterly cruel.
Refugees are already dangerously exploited by people traffickers. It’s their desperation and hopelessness which drives refugees into the clutches of these evil and exploitative criminals. Instead of tackling the perpetrators of people trafficking, Patel is criminalising the victims of the crime - the refugees.
Refugee camps are little better than prisons. Accommodation is sub standard, food is rationed and the inmates (that’s what they become) are hemmed in by walls, guards and barbed wire. Patel’s bill should be labelled the Refuse Bill as she is treating humans like rubbish.
Choosing an African country to ‘off shore’ refugees is beyond irony.
The British (and other European imperialist nations) exploited the African continent for centuries. First, they enslaved them, then plundered their resources and minerals and finally denied them democratic rights. If anyone has a responsibility towards refugees fleeing from oppression, poverty or human rights abuses in authoritarian African regimes, it’s the British government - the supposed mother ship of the Commonwealth countries.
Having stood in and witnessed refugee camps in the Balkans in 1990s, I can only say they are places of desolation, desperation and despair. I read last week that some displaced Balkan refugees were passed from camps to temporary accommodations for 22 years.
Of course, Patel’s scheme may never get off the ground. It was launched to provide some populist political cover for the prime minister and chancellor’s woes over party-gate fines.
Tory right winger, David Davis MP has called off shoring “barbaric”.
Former Tory MP, Anna Soubry, a lawyer, didn’t mince her words when tweeting: “ This is a grotesque plan. Announced today for no other reason than to save the political skin of lawbreaking liar #BorisJohnson. It’s dog whistle politics at its worst”.
When visiting refugee camps in Turkey, Pope Francis said they are the “shipwreck of civilisation”.
If Patel and Johnson succeed with their Rwandan plan for refugees it will be a stain on civilisation and any notion of global humanity.
