‘Rwanda is not safe and sending vulnerable people there will only bring shame on Britain’ — The Hull Story

Worse, independent international human rights organizations have reported on the Rwandan government’s abuse of any citizen who criticizes it. According to Human Rights Watch, it has “often responded violently to criticism, using a range of measures to deal with real or suspected opponents, including killings, enforced disappearances, torture, political persecutions and unlawful detention, as well as threats, intimidation and intimidation. ”.

Rwanda’s status as the wrong place to host vulnerable asylum seekers is made even clearer by the warfare record of its neighboring country, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Congo is a huge, poorly governed country. The eastern areas are close to the border with Rwanda and far from any control by the Congolese government in the capital Kinshasa, 2,400 kilometers away. Immediately after the 1994 genocide, the forces of the new Rwandan regime had a reason to intervene in eastern Congo because most of the surviving killers had fled there to rebuild their forces.

But that reason is long gone. The remaining militia in Congo, created by the previous Rwandan regime, has been reduced to a small group of 500 to 1,000 fighters and no longer poses a serious threat to Rwanda.

One of the real reasons why Rwanda continues to meddle in Congo is because the country contains vast amounts of valuable minerals, including gold, tin, cobalt and tungsten. It is believed that massive smuggling operations involving these assets will boost Rwandan public coffers and the bank accounts of some of its elites.

The United Nations says Rwanda does this mainly by supporting, equipping and leading a ruthless local militia called M23. M23 is notorious for its abuse of civilians, even by the grim standards of the region’s many guerrillas. The aid organization Doctors Without Borders reports that up to a million people have been forced to flee their homes in the past two years due to renewed fighting caused by M23. It has also treated at least 700 female victims of sexual violence by the guerrillas.

In 2012, when M23 last went on the rampage, the British government led a successful international pressure campaign to bring Rwanda into militia control and reduce the death and destruction it was causing in Congo. Now that our government’s disastrous refugee program has made it dependent on Rwanda, it no longer has such influence.

By making itself dependent on such an abhorrent regime as Rwanda’s, the Tory government is bringing shame to Britain. And all for a plan that will cost us a fortune and have no real impact on the management of immigration at all.