A former top Rwanda diplomat forced into exile has attacked government claims that his country is safe to receive refugees from the UK – likening it to “a detention camp”.
Boris Johnson and Priti Patel have insisted asylum seekers are to be given “a one-way ticket” to the east African nation, after crossing the Channel, will be treated humanely and given a new start in life.
But Theogene Rudasingwa, Rwanda’s ambassador to the US in the 1990s, has warned “such trust is unfounded” under the iron rule of president Paul Kagame.
“Notwithstanding Rwanda’s history, the world must be under no illusion as to the truth,” he has written in a letter to The Times newspaper.
“Rwanda is hostage to the Kagame dictatorship and is more akin to a detention camp than a state where the people are sovereign.”
Dr Rudasingwa, who has been in exile in America since 2004 after clashing with Mr Kagame, warned it will be “a case of out of the frying pan into the fire” for the asylum seekers.
He added: “So egregious are human rights abuses in Rwanda that Britain last year joined international criticism of unlawful killings, torture and other violence.
“Only months later it seems all this has been forgotten by Boris Johnson so that a transfer deal can be cut.
“Writing now as a refugee, rootless yet constantly under threat of retaliation by a spiteful regime, I feel for outsiders who battle to reach Britain only to face rendition to the Kagame state.”
The prime minister has argued legal powers already exist to allow asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda, but the policy faces an inevitable challenge in the courts.
Although it was initially briefed that only single men would be flown out, Ms Patel, the home secretary, has since admitted that women and children could also be sent.
She has also refused to reveal the likely colossal cost of the policy, beyond an initial £120m to be handed to Rwanda under the “partnership” deal.
The plan has also embroiled the prime minister in a damaging row with the Church of England, after the Archbishop of Canterbury also attacked it.
The Church accused Mr Johnson of a “disgraceful slur” on Justin Welby, after he told his MPs that the Archbishop had been more “vociferous” in his criticism of the policy than of the Ukraine invasion.
The prime minister then told reporters: “All I was saying was that I think we have an excellent policy to try to stop people drowning at sea in the Channel.
“I was surprised to find it criticised. I think it’s the morally right thing to do to stop criminal, cynical gangs from exploiting people and sending them to a watery grave.”
Human rights group have dismissed the claim that sending refugees to Rwanda will do anything to curb trafficking across the Channel – and the Home Office’s top civil servant said there was no evidence to back it up.
