New setback for the British government, justice declared on Thursday “illegal” the controversial plan to deport migrants who arrived illegally in the United Kingdom to Rwanda, but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak immediately announced that he wanted to seize the Supreme Court.
This project, already delayed by European justice, is one of the flagship measures of the Conservative government which has set itself the priority of combating illegal immigration in the country, and in particular the arrivals by the Channel of thousands of migrants. aboard small boats.
The Court of Appeal considered that Rwanda cannot as it stands be considered a “safe third country” because there is “a real risk that people sent to Rwanda will be sent back to their country of origin where they were in victim to persecution and other inhuman treatment”.
Any deportation to Rwanda would be a “violation” of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that “no one may inflict injury or torture on anyone”, the appeals court ruled. .
“Unless and until the deficiencies in its asylum process are corrected, sending asylum seekers to Rwanda will be illegal,” the court concluded in a summary of the judgment.
But the government does not intend to drop this project, presented when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he “fundamentally disagrees” with this conclusion, and announced that his government would seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
“The policy of this government is very simple, it is this country, and your government, that should decide who comes here, not the gangs of evildoers,” he said in a statement, saying he would ” whatever is necessary” to implement it. “Rwanda is a safe country,” he insisted.
Interior Minister Suella Braverman, a hard-liner on immigration, also said she was “determined to succeed”. “I will not back down,” she assured.
The government’s plan “is impractical, unethical and prohibitively expensive”, blasted opposition Labor MP for security issues Yvette Cooper, blaming the government for not having a “plan”. seriously” to combat illegal immigration.
Despite Brexit promises to “take back control” of borders, more than 45,000 migrants crossed the Channel from France in small boats in 2022, a record. And they are already more than 11,000 this year.
In 2021, 27 people lost their lives trying to cross this strait, one of the busiest in the world. At least four others died last year.
“While this decision is ultimately up to the British courts, we dispute the fact that Rwanda is not considered a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers,” the government spokeswoman told AFP. Rwandan, Yolande Makolo.
“Rwanda remains fully committed to making this partnership ‘with the UK’ work,” she added.
In terms of human rights, however, Rwanda is regularly singled out for its harsh repression of political opposition and its failure to respect freedom of expression.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “welcomed” the appeal court’s decision in a statement, repeating its “concerns about the outsourcing of (the country’s) asylum obligations”.
Welcoming a “rare piece of good news in the grim human rights landscape in the UK”, the director of the NGO Human Rights Watch in the country, Yasmine Ahmed, urged the Home Secretary to “give up this feverish dream, impractical and unethical”.
Last December, the High Court in London gave the green light to the deportation of certain illegal migrants to Rwanda.
But the judges had accepted that the appeal of several applicants and of the Charity Aid association, which provides legal support to asylum seekers and denounces in particular the risks of persecution of asylum seekers deported to Rwanda, be examined.
No evictions have yet taken place. A first flight scheduled for June 2022 had been canceled after a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
29/06/2023 18:43:20 – London (AFP) – © 2023 AFP