There are mixed reactions surrounding the decision by Britain to bring refugees into East Africa.
Most groups are actually criticizing the decision.
The UK has just sealed deal with Rwanda to send some asylum-seekers into the tiny East Africa Country.
A number of British politicians and refugee groups are condemning the move citing it as inhumane, unworkable and a waste of public money.
The United Nations said the decision raises a number of human rights concerns.
According to the new arrangement, all people who arrive in Britain as stowaways on trucks or in small boats will be picked up by the government and flown 6,400 kilometers, to Rwanda.
And once in Rwanda the stowaways are expected to remain in the country for good.
Now the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is being blamed for the move.
Some observers claim that Johnson is using the issue to distract attention from a scandal over government gatherings that breached pandemic lockdown rules.
It is being reported that more than 28,000 people entered infiltrated into the United Kingdom last year.
In 2020 the number of refugees who moved into Britain was 8500.
Dead men’s chest?
Some get killed in the process like during the case when a boat capsized late last year.
Last week, dozens of men, women and children were picked up by British lifeboats and brought ashore at the Channel port of Dover as Johnson, speaking just a few miles away, outlined the plan.
“Anyone entering the U.K. illegally … may now be relocated to Rwanda,” Johnson said in a speech to troops and coast guard members at an airport near Dover.
Rwanda through its foreign Affairs Minister Vincent Biruta said the agreement to host UK refugees would initially last for five years, but should they choose to settle permanently in the country they were welcome.
Britain paid 120 million pounds equivalent of USD 158 million, up front to pay for housing and integrating the migrants.
Rwanda is already home to more than 130,000 refugees from among other countries, Burundi, DR Congo, Libya and Pakistan.
Also, Rwanda is Africa’s most densely populated nation.
Competition for land and resources are cited as some of the factors that caused ethnic and political tensions that climaxed with the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 majority Tutsis and a few Hutus were killed.
The Central African Director at Human Rights Watch, Lewis Mudge, expressed concern that Rwanda may still not as safe country as being touted.
However, for more than two decades now, Rwanda, which shares the East African Community with Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and three other states, has always been calm and very prosperous economically.
The refugee placement was officially inked last Thursday April 14 when British Home Secretary Priti Patel, flew to Kigali where he tweeted a video boasting the move to be …
‘…world-first migration partnership,’ which will ‘not only set a new standard for managing migration and break the business model of people-smuggling gangs, but may also help fix the broken asylum system.”
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