Rwanda ready for UK migrants

Rwanda says it’s ready to receive migrants from the United Kingdom after the British Parliament this week approved a long-stalled and controversial bill seeking to stem the tide of people crossing the English Channel in small boats by deporting some of them to the East African country.

There is even a place ready for the migrants – a refurbished Hope Hostel in the upscale neighbourhood of Kagugu, an area of the Rwandan capital of Kigali home to many expats and several international schools.

The hostel once housed college students whose parents died in the 1994 genocide, this African nation’s most horrific period in history when an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed by extremist Hutu in massacres that lasted over 100 days.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has pledged the deportation flights would begin in July.

A Rwanda government spokesperson said yesterday that authorities here have been planning for the migrants’ arrival for two years.

The plan was long held up in British courts and by opposition from human rights activists who say it is illegal and inhumane. It envisages deporting to Rwanda some of those who enter the UK illegally. Migrant advocates have vowed to continue to fight against the plan.