Home Office Rwanda Plans for Refugees Will Inflict More Torture

Responding to the news that the Home Secretary plans to build an offshore processing centre in Rwanda, Robina Qureshi, Director of Positive Action in Housing, a refugee homelessness charity, said:

“First this government forces war refugees to apply for visas. Now it plans on sending them to Rwanda. The refugee convention is effectively dead in this country and the U.K. is acting like a rogue state.

“As the failed Australian project demonstrated, most refugees will win their asylum claims, as well as significant damages for the inevitable human rights abuses that will result. It will cost around £2M per person to execute this “new plan”. The taxpayer will be the ones to pay up. The outsourcing companies will be the ones to profit.

“Offshore processing centres will simply persecute and torture those who are already persecuted and tortured. It will inflict countless  misery with next to no public scrutiny. This won’t deter human smugglers, it will embolden them, more people will drown or suffocate as desperate refugees attempt ever more dangerous journeys to reach here. The government should be creating safe humanitarian corridors for refugees, not offloading it’s responsibilities under the convention to other countries.”