ORPHANS OUTRAGE
Genocide survivors to make way for UK migrants
TRAUMATISED Rwandans orphaned by horrific genocide may be kicked out in days due to Priti Patel’s refugee plan.
The Home Secretary’s controversial scheme would mean their hostel is used for asylum seekers arriving from Britain to be processed.
The orphans are now in their 20s but some are battling life-long mental health problems with no financial or family support. The 22 remaining there were given just a fortnight to ship out.
On Thursday Ms Patel was given a stage-managed “private visit” of the property, called Hope House.
Officials said the 50-bed building is a privately-owned former tourist hostel. There was no mention of the orphans who live there or that it was specially built to secure shelter for orphans of the country’s devastating 1994 genocide.
Yesterday it emerged Ms Patel issued a ministerial direction, only the second in 30 years by the Home Office, to push through the plans, despite her own officials’ concern at value for money.
Even Prime Minister Boris Johnson has admitted he expects a legal challenge over the £120million British-taxpayer funded deal. And an official from UN refugee agency UNHCR said they believe the scheme is illegal.
Last night one vulnerable woman who has lived at the shelter in the capital Kigali for eight years told us: “I barely
know any other home.”
The woman, too afraid of reprisals to be named, added: “I was only told about moving out a few days ago. I have not figured out where I will go.”
Hope House is run by a local good cause the Association des Etudiants Et Éleves Rescapés Du Genocide (AERG), which was founded in 1996 by 12 victims of Rwanda’s genocide to help kids whose immediate families had been wiped out.
In 2007, the Rwandan government mounted a fundraising campaign to raise funds to build a number of
shelters for orphans, including Hope House. Well-wishers all over the world donated and in 2014 the complex was completed in the city’s Gasabo district.
More than 190 orphans moved in, including students enrolled in secondary schools, universities and vocational training. Most have since moved out after finding work and homes of their own, but 22 remain, including the youngest who was born in 1994 just weeks before both of her parents were killed. One said there had been plans to turn the hostel into a guest house.
The orphans losing their home is the latest twist in Ms Patel’s plan, which will see asylum seekers who arrive in Britain on dinghies or fridge trucks detained before being herded on to one-way flights around 6,000 miles to Africa.
Experts have warned the policy, which has been described as “inhumane”, will
cost a fortune and is doomed to failure.
Heartless
Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael MP said: “The Government’s proposals to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was already shocking enough but to now be evicting Rwandans from their homes is appalling.”
And there is growing dissent in Rwanda, which is still one of the world’s poorest countries, despite signs of improvement in recent years.
Between April and July 1994 it was devastated by the then Hutu government’s genocide against the Tutsi population, killing up to 800,000 people.
British government officials last night remained in talks to use Hope House, despite having already unveiled it.
It is understood AERG will not benefit financially. Co-ordinator Emmanuel Muneza said: “We had plans to make the orphanage a commercial guest house and raise money to support our members. But the plan has changed.”
The Home Office insisted Rwanda is a “fundamentally safe and secure country”. It added: “Rwanda will process claims in accordance with the UN Refugee Convention, national and international human rights laws, and will ensure their protection from inhuman and degrading treatment or being returned to the place they originally fled.”