Groups condemn UK Rwanda asylum plan
LONDON, April 23, (AP): Britain’s plans to send some asylum-seekers to Rwanda were swiftly condemned by international humanitarian organizations after Parliament approved legislation allowing the deportation flights to begin later this year.
Both the UN refugee agency and the Council of Europe on Tuesday called for the UK to rethink its plans because of concerns that the legislation undermines human rights protections and fears that it will damage international cooperation on tackling the global migrant crisis.
“The new legislation marks a further step away from the UK’s long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement. “Protecting refugees requires all countries - not just those neighboring crisis zones - to uphold their obligations.”
The statement came just hours after Britain’s House of Lords dropped its attempts to amend the legislation, paving the way for it to become law. On Monday, Prime Minister
Rishi Sunak said deportation flights to Rwanda would begin in 10-12 weeks. Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, criticized the legislation for preventing asylum-seekers from asking the courts to intervene when they are they are threatened with being sent back to the countries they are fleeing.
The reaction came as French media reported that at least five people died Tuesday when a boat carrying about 100 or more migrants got into trouble while trying to cross the English Channel.
❑ ❑ ❑ ‘$620m military aid for Ukraine’:
The UK on Tuesday pledged an additional $620 million in new military supplies for Ukraine, including long-range missiles and four million rounds of ammunition, at a time when Ukraine is struggling to hold off advancing Russian forces on the eastern front line of the war, now in its third year.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday morning to confirm the assistance and “assure him of the U.K.’s steadfast support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s brutal and expansionist ambitions,” Sunak’s office said.
Sunak was traveling to Warsaw later Tuesday to meet with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for talks about further aid for Ukraine.
❑ ❑ ❑ ‘Tower strike part of intimidation campaign’:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a Russian missile strike that smashed a television tower in Kharkiv was part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to intimidate Ukraine’s second-largest city, which in recent weeks has come under increasingly frequent attack.
The strike sought to “make the terror visible to the whole city and to try to limit Kharkiv’s connection and access to information,” Zelenskyy said in a Monday evening address.
The northeastern Kharkiv region straddles the approximately 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line where Ukrainian and Russian forces have been locked in battle for more than two years since Moscow’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine. The front line has changed little during a war of attrition, focused mostly on artillery, drones and trenches.
❑ ❑ ❑ Russia withdraws forces from Karabakh:
Russian forces are being withdrawn from Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, where they have been stationed as peacekeepers since the end of a war in 2020, officials of both countries said Wednesday.
In a conference call with journalists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed reports of the withdrawal but did not give further details. Hikmet Hajiyev, the head of foreign policy in Azerbaijan’s presidential administration, also confirmed the withdrawal, saying it was agreed to by both countries.
Hajiyev did not say why the forces were being withdrawn, but their presence appeared superfluous after Azerbaijan regained full control of the region last year.
❑ ❑ ❑ German EU lawmaker’s aide arrested:
A man who works for a German far-right lawmaker in the European Parliament has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China, authorities said Tuesday. The detention came less than 24 hours after three people were arrested for spying for China in a separate German case.
The suspect was arrested Monday in the eastern German city of Dresden, federal prosecutors said in a statement. They said that he has worked for a German lawmaker in the European Union’s legislature since 2019.
The German national is accused of working for a Chinese intelligence service and of repeatedly passing on information on negotiations and decisions in the European Parliament in January. Prosecutors allege that he also snooped on Chinese dissidents in Germany.
Prosecutors didn’t identify the lawmaker for whom he works, but Maximilian Krah of the far-right Alternative for Germany, who is his party’s top candidate in the European Parliament election in early June, said in a statement that he found out about the arrest of employee Jian Guo from the press on Tuesday.
❑ ❑ ❑ Police clear out a migrant camp in Paris:
French police evicted migrants from a makeshift camp in Paris a few steps away from the Seine River on Tuesday, the latest operation in what aid groups call a campaign of ‘’social cleansing’’ ahead of the Summer Olympics.
Before dawn on an unusually cold April morning, around 30 teenage boys and young men from West Africa were awakened by police and urged to pack their tents and belongings. Most of them were underage and in the process of seeking residency papers.
“I was already scared but I am even more scared because I don’t know where to go,” said Boubacar Traore, 16, who said he fled conflict in Burkina Faso and arrived in France two months ago.
The operation came days after police carried out a large-scale eviction at France’s biggest squatter camp in a suburb south of Paris.