14, April 2022
UK announces controversial plan to fly migrants and asylum-seekers to Rwanda 0
Britain will send migrants and asylum-seekers who cross the Channel thousands of miles away to Rwanda under a controversial deal announced Thursday as the government tries to clamp down on record numbers of people making the perilous journey.
“From today… anyone entering the UK illegally as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1 may now be relocated to Rwanda,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a speech near Dover in southeastern England.
“Rwanda will have the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead,” Johnson said.
He called the East African nation with a sketchy human rights record “one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognised for its record of welcoming and integrating migrants.”
Johnson was elected partly on promises to curb illegal immigration but has instead seen record numbers making the risky Channel crossing.
He also announced that Britain’s border agency would hand responsibility for patrolling the Channel for migrant boats to the navy.
“The Royal Navy will take over operational command from Border Force in the Channel with the aim that no boat makes it to the UK undetected,” Johnson said, announcing extra funds for boats, aircraft and surveillance equipment to help detain people-smugglers at sea.
“This will send a clear message to those piloting the boats. If you risk other people’s lives in the Channel, you risk spending your own life in prison,” he said.
More than 28,000 people arrived in Britain having crossed the Channel from France in small boats in 2021.
Around 90 percent of those were male and three-quarters were men aged between 18 and 39.
The Rwanda plan swiftly drew the ire of opposition politicians who accused Johnson of trying to distract from his being fined for breaking coronavirus lockdown rules, while rights groups slammed the project as “inhumane”.
Ghana and Rwanda had previously been mentioned as possible locations for the UK to outsource the processing of migrants, but Ghana in January denied involvement.
Instead, Kigali on Thursday announcing that it had signed a multi-million-dollar deal to do the job, during a visit by British Home Secretary Priti Patel.
“Rwanda welcomes this partnership with the United Kingdom to host asylum seekers and migrants, and offer them legal pathways to residence” in the East African nation, Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta said in a statement.
“This is about ensuring that people are protected, respected, and empowered to further their own ambitions and settle permanently in Rwanda if they choose,” said Biruta.
The deal with Rwanda will be funded by the UK to the tune of up to 120 million pounds ($157 million, 144 million euros), with migrants “integrated into communities across the country,” it said.
Backlash
Refugee Action’s Tim Naor Hilton accused the government of “offshoring its responsibilities onto Europe’s former colonies instead of doing our fair share to help some of the most vulnerable people on the planet”.
“This grubby cash-for-people plan would be a cowardly, barbaric and inhumane way to treat people fleeing persecution and war,” he said.
Detention Action said that those sent there would “likely face indefinite detention under a government notorious for violent persecution of dissent.”
“At the same time, the UK currently gives asylum to Rwandan refugees fleeing political persecution,” the advocacy group said in a statement.
Scotland’s Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said the plan showed that the Conservative government was “institutionally racist”.
The government “rightly provides asylum and refuge to Ukrainians fleeing war, but wants to send others seeking asylum thousands of miles away to Rwanda for ‘processing’,” Yousaf tweeted.
Australia has a policy of sending asylum seekers arriving by boat to detention camps on the Pacific island nation of Nauru, with Canberra vowing no asylum seeker arriving by boat would ever be allowed to permanently settle in Australia.
Since 2015 the UK has “offered a place to over 185,000 men, women and children seeking refuge (…) more than any other similar resettlement schemes in Europe,” Johnson said.
According to the UN refugee agency, Germany received the highest number of asylum applicants (127,730) in Europe in 2021, followed by France (96,510), while the UK received the fourth largest number of applicants (44,190).
Source: AFP
15, April 2022
Biya has this foolish Francophone mentality of believing that even the economy would do what the head of state wants 0
Cameroon under the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo was a nation that offered good employment opportunities and social security to its well-educated population. When President Paul Biya took over, the country became a place of so little hope that people left in droves.
From widely acclaimed man of rigour and moralization to a despotic dictator, Paul Biya’s 40-year rule of Cameroon has been one of Africa’s most prominent and successful failures.
Skilled at gaining an advantage, especially deceitfully over his opponents, the 89-year-old Paul Biya has outmaneuvered his political opponents for decades. He sidelines everyone within his ruling CPDM party and government except his right-hand men in the army, the gendarmerie and the police force. It is extremely difficult to depose him.
For more than three decades, Biya has inspired other leaders in the Sub Saharan region to emulate his tactics and extend their rule by manipulating the constitution and suppressing opposition through violence and intimidation.
Biya’s current violent war in Southern Cameroons is typical of his signature action — and it has devastated Cameroon’s agricultural production, transforming what had been known as Cameroon’s breadbasket into a battle field and creating thousands of refugees.
Biya declared war against the English speaking peoples of Southern Cameroons in ringing rhetoric and stated that Cameroon remains one and indivisible. Today and as I write, it does not matter that the war in Southern Cameroons is claiming the lives of thousands of innocent civilians including army soldiers. What is more important is that billions of FCFA including Covid-19 funds injected into the war is simply going to Biya’s army generals, Cabinet ministers, cronies and blood relations to his wife, Chantal Biya.
Millions of both French and English speaking Cameroonians have migrated to the West and in neighbouring African countries, and it is routine to find a former High Schoolteacher working as a carer or security agent in Europe or North America. Thousands of Cameroonians are in Germany, France, UK, Holland and Belgium including the USA. And those who have stayed behind have coped with an unprecedented unemployment rate and tourism has dried up to a trickle.
Biya has this foolish Francophone mentality of believing that even the economy would do what the head of state wants. His ruling CPDM regime is struggling to manage a dilapidated education and health services while Biya, his family and his closest allies are amassing world-class fortunes.
His Beti Ewondo gangs both in the army and in government have made Cameroon to become one of fear as a result of Biya’s far-reaching domestic spy network, the CENER. Hundreds of opposition supporters have been killed or disappeared in Douala and Yaoundé. Many more including Southern Cameroons detainees are being tortured.
It is very hard to remember that Biya once enjoyed praise for instituting rigour and moralization into Cameroonian politics. He is now known as a leader who marginalizes critics and restricts freedoms. Human rights groups and the Holy Roman Catholic Church have documented and condemned several killings including the murder of Bishop Balla of the Diocese of Bafia which now remains the darkest stain on Biya’s record and a scar that plagues the country.
Tarnished by the killings currently going on in Southern Cameroons, Biya still has strong backing from the French and he has constantly been using the army, the police and the security network to keep the people subservient.
Biya family’s lavish ways has become outlandish, even to the French Cameroun’s jaded public. The growing outrage among Cameroonians at the excesses is finally spilling over to the military. He is going to fall in a very quick and sad way.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai