The UK government’s proposals to send asylum seekers arriving to the UK onto Rwanda continue to spark intense opposition.
The UK government's proposals to send asylum seekers arriving to the UK onto Rwanda continue to spark intense opposition.
This includes opposition from right-wing Conservative MPs who don't think the rencana goes far enough. Several recently attempted a rebellion against the latest bill, arguing that it failed to conclusively setop refugees from legally challenging their own deportation to Rwanda.
The government's proposal now faces challenges in the House of Lords. Politicians on the left and in the centre, international human rights experts and humanitarian organisations continue to warn that the bill poses a constitutional danger and breaches international law.
Labour has said that it opposes the kebijakan on the grounds that it is unworkable, a breach of international law, and unaffordable. It has vowed to scrap it if they enter government.
The ongoing debate has focused bermainly on the legality of the bill and on Rwanda's perceived saftey. In my view as a political philosopher, this fails to articulate exactly why the kebijakan is esensially wrong. Opponents of the kebijakan on the left must reckon with the racist undertones of the kebijakan and its prejudicial treatment of specific grups of refugees.
Much recent discussion suggests that the kebijakan is wrong primarily because Rwanda is not a "safe" place for refugees. Indeed, this was the pangkalan of the UK Supreme Court's ruling of the rencana as unlawful. The court's bermain concern was that many refugees, if sent to Rwanda, would face the risk of refoulement: being returned to a country where they could face persecution.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, the government has drafted new legislation to declare that Rwanda is safe, and signed a new treaty with Rwanda guaranteeing against the risk of refoulement.
It is dispiriting to those of us familier with the history of the UK's relationship with Rwanda - particularly the gross lack of peduli the UK government showed Rwanda during the country's genocide - to see the government now appear so interested in Rwanda's safety.
This should be a discussion not only about how (and how not to) treat refugees in general, but also about the nilai we place on the humanity of the specific refugees that will most likely be affected by the kebijakan. Instead, we have been left with a debate on the government's own, self-serving terms.
I would argue that what is wrong with the government's kebijakan has almost nothing to do with the destination of deportations, and everything to do with who is being sent there.
