The present Home Secretary has been waging a vicious war against refugees as part of the contemporary tradition of Tory policy against the poor and defenceless, especially those with dark skins. But then, as the Government tells us, there is no systemic racism in the country, so skin-colour doesn’t come into it. It is completely useless to expect compassion from such people, or to take their public statements about their vicious policy of removing asylum- seekers to Rwanda at face value. But she might reflect on the inevitable association with the desperate history of such events; has she ever spoken to an ethnic Tatar?

To begin with, this idea that it will deter the ‘people-trafficking criminals’, doesn’t make much sense. I doubt if any of the thousands crossing the Channel in small boats are being forced to do so against their will; quite the opposite. What the present Home Secretary and the PM refer to as ‘people-trafficking criminals’ are actually providing a service for which, in the absence of a legal route to claim asylum from outside the country, there is an urgent demand. By setting up a commercial arrangement to ship people against their will to Rwanda the Government is effectively participating in true people-trafficking themselves. In any case penalising the victims of this supposed ‘crime’ seems a strange way to deter the perpetrators. Maybe locking up the victims of domestic abuse would deter violent partners? Offshore Women’s refuges?

It is essential to separate ‘people-trafficking’ (against their will) from ‘people-smuggling’ (assisting refugees). The Government would like to pretend they are the same thing. They are not. Unfortunate refugees fleeing warzones have very little choice, and quite rightly expect that what the Home Office constantly refers to as ‘our proud tradition of hospitality’, applies to them. Especially as many are victims of torture. Local communities still maintain this tradition, even in remote parts of the country. The Government does not.

In previous decades when thousands were expelled from Uganda and hundreds of thousands of boat people fled Vietnam the (Tory) Governments of the day made comprehensive arrangements for acceptance, accommodation and integration. I suspect both racism and Islamophobia play a part in today’s rhetoric and policy choices, although clearly they are an extension of Teresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ mantra. A devout Christian, Ms May of course, as the frequent photographs of her leaving church on Sunday mornings made clear, apparently without deliberate irony.

While the idea of the Rwanda trans-shipment project is obviously a nonsense as regards deterrence of the people-smugglers, another very serious aspect is the choice of Rwanda as a destination. Several refugees from Rwanda were granted asylum in Britain as recently as last year; the country does not have a good reputation for human rights at home or abroad. How it can possibly be safe to relocate asylum-seekers to Kigali is difficult to see, when as authoritative a commentator as Michela Wrong+ refers to Rwanda as ‘an African Regime gone bad.’ Ms Patel and her parents were economic migrants from Uganda before the Idi Amin period; she was lucky not to encounter the present Government’s policies on arrival or she might have found herself being shipped off to central Africa.

+ ‘Do Not Disturb: The story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad.’
Michela Wrong, 2021, Fourth Estate, London.
Edward Milner (Chair, Sante Refugee Mental Health Access Project)