Rwanda safe, says UK’s Braverman
Britain’s interior minister Suella Braverman says she is convinced Rwanda is a safe country to resettle migrants who have arrived in Britain illegally, but has declined to set any deadline for the first deportations to the country.
The British government is hoping to send thousands of migrants more than 6,400km away to the east African country as part of a £120m deal to deter asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France in small boats.
The plan was announced in April 2022, but the first deportation flight was blocked by an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights. London’s high court ruled in December the scheme is legal, but opponents are seeking to appeal against that ruling.
In March, Britain set out details of a new law barring the entry of asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the channel that will also prevent them from claiming asylum and will aim to deport them either back to their homeland or to “safe third countries”.
Some charities say the proposed law could be impractical and criminalise the efforts of thousands of genuine refugees.
Braverman was asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday about a violent protest over rations in a camp in Rwanda in 2018, which Rwandan police said resulted in the deaths of at least five refugees.
Braverman said she was not familiar with that case, but was “on strong ground” in saying Rwanda was a safe country, and said it was the right solution for Britain’s small-boats problem.
“We’re looking at 2023 and beyond,” she said.
“The high court — senior expert judges — have looked into the detail of our arrangement with Rwanda and found it to be a safe country and found our arrangements to be lawful.”
Braverman, who visited Rwanda in March, would not give a deadline for the first flight to depart.
“We have to be realistic,” she told Sky News.
“We had a very strong victory in the high court at the end of last year on Rwanda. We’ve now introduced legislation. We want to move as quickly as possible to relocate people from the UK to Rwanda.”