UK government admits Rwanda has ‘issues with its human rights record’
The government has admitted that Rwanda still has “issues with its human rights record” despite claims by Rishi Sunak that it is a safe country.
Documents released on Thursday said that “while Rwanda is now a relatively peaceful country with respect for the rule of law, there are nevertheless issues with its human rights record around political opposition to the current regime, dissent and free speech”.
The assessment has come in a government “policy statement” sent by the home secretary, James Cleverly, to MPs and lords in an effort to get backing for the Rwanda bill.
The documents are designed to support the government’s claim that Rwanda is a safe country, a key element of Sunak’s legislation to save his flagship deportation deal after it was ruled unlawful in November.
Within the policy statement, there is also an admission it could take months for Rwanda to pass a new asylum law that is needed to implement its new treaty with the UK, which the prime minister has made central in his effort to convince judges the scheme is lawful.
In 2017 Rwandan voters elected Paul Kagame to a third seven-year term as president with a reported 99% of the vote. In both the 2017 and 2018 elections, international monitors reported numerous flaws, including irregularities in the vote tabulation process, the US government found.
The 2022 US government human rights report noted that the Rwandan government “impeded the formation of political parties, restricted political party activities, and delayed or denied registration to local and international NGOs seeking to work on human rights, media freedom, or political advocacy”.
The prime minister is braced for a Commons showdown on Tuesday and Wednesday over his Rwanda plan.
The former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland has tabled a number of amendments to the safety of Rwanda bill, including one which would remove clauses that declare the east African nation a safe country.
Conservative moderates are expected to hold back from rebelling unless Sunak makes concessions to rightwing MPs from the so-called “five families” of factions who want to block international treaties from stopping flights.
The former prime minister Liz Truss has joined more than 30 rightwing MPs who wish to make the bill more hardline. Truss said: “We have told the British people time and again that we intend to crack down on illegal migration yet keep being thwarted by a range of spurious legal loopholes being
exploited by activist lawyers.
“It is essential that the legislation we are passing is watertight and closes all those possible loopholes, which is why I am backing this raft of amendments.” Labour plans to table amendments to force the government to publish the full impact assessment on the costs of the bill, including the continuing perperson removal costs and details of the financial memorandum signed between the UK and Rwanda.
Meanwhile, ministers were accused of having a “woefully inadequate” plan to curb Channel crossings after failing to offer asylum seekers more legal ways to travel to the UK. The government was dutybound under the Illegal Migration
Act passed last year to produce a report setting out what is meant by safe and legal asylum routes, and detailing which programmes were already in place, as well as any proposed additional ones.
But in a written statement published to fulfil the duty, Cleverly did not set out any proposed new safe routes.
The Refugee Council said the report “offers no new safe routes and no improvement of existing schemes”.