Supreme Court rules Rwanda scheme unlawful.

 

Suella Braverman 

Suella Braverman's dream of sending aeroplane loads of immigrants on a one way trip to Rwanda, now lies in tatters after the Supreme Court ruled the British government's Rwanda policy unlawful yesterday.

The proposal to deport migrants who arrive illegally into the UK, some 4,000 miles to Rwanda, in east Africa, was first announced by Boris Johnson in April 2022. The policy was meant to deter people from crossing the English Channel in small boats or in the back of lorries, but it hasn't deterred. The British government said that anyone who entered the UK illegally after 1 January 2022, could be sent to Rwanda with no limit on numbers. The government said that when in Rwanda, their asylum claims would be assessed and if successful they could remain in Rwanda or apply for asylum in another country, but not Britain. If they were unsuccessful, they would be returned to the country of their origin from which they had fled.

While some migrants such as unaccompanied asylum seeking children, asylum seekers from Rwanda, the disabled, pregnant women, and those with sexual issues, are exempt, those eligible for a one way trip to Rwanda are migrants who had failed to claim asylum in the first safe country they have entered and those deemed to have tried to enter the UK by dangerous means. Migrants from Rwanda are exempt because the British government doesn't consider it a safe country in which to return them but nevertheless, considers Rwanda a safe country for other refugees. However, the government's main target turned out to be young single men.

Some critics immediately denounced the Rwanda plan has unlawful, unworkable, and a political stunt by the Tory government. The Rwanda scheme has already cost the British taxpayer £140 million and yet not one migrant has been deported to Rwanda.

For the last 18 months, the British government have been embroiled in costly legal actions that seek to challenge the legality of the plan under international law. In June 2022, the first flight to Rwanda was halted after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) examined the case of a 54-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker who crossed the Channel in a boat. The ECHR said they were granting an interim measure and told the British government that the applicant should not be removed to Rwanda until three weeks after the delivery of the final domestic decision on his ongoing judicial review. Although the ECHR didn't rule on whether the policy or relocations were unlawful, the interim measure was issued because it was felt there was an "imminent risk of irreparable harm" to the Iraqi national who is believed to have suffered torture. It also opened the door to other legal challenges. 

In December 2022, the High Court ruled that the government's plan to deport migrants to Rwanda was lawful in principle. However, the court didn't make a determination on whether Rwanda was a safe country to deport migrants to. It simply considered whether the Home Secretary had made a lawful decision.

By a majority decision the Court of Appeal, found that there was a real risk of asylum claims receiving inadequate consideration in Rwanda and a consequent risk of claims being refused and asylum seekers with valid claims being returned to their country of origin where they might suffer persecution, which is known as 'refoulement', which breaches the ECHR and the Refugee Convention. The court also ruled that Rwanda is not a "safe third country." The British government appealed against this decision.

The Supreme Court ruled that Rwanda is not a safe country and that it would be unlawful for refugees to be removed there. The court declared that Rwanda is widely acknowledged to have a poor human rights record and is in breach of numerous treaty commitments it has made. It noted that the courts in Rwanda don't act as an effective check on government behaviour and there is no real judicial independence. The Supreme Court said that Rwanda had breached the terms of a previous asylum deal it had entered into with Israel.

Although Rishi Sunak has said that his Conservative government will press ahead with the Rwanda plan in spite of the Supreme Court ruling, and have said that Britain might leave the ECHR, no-one credible, thinks the Rwanda plan is practical or that it deters significant numbers of refugees. What are the likely costs of detaining tens of thousands of refugees in detention camps and then flying them to Rwanda? The Home Office say it costs £169,000 to send one asylum seeker to Rwanda. The chartered Boeing 767 Rwanda asylum flight that had to be cancelled in June 2022 because of a legal challenge, cost an estimated £500,000.  In 2022, the British government managed to remove around 500 failed asylum seekers. And how many refugees can Rwanda really take? In reality, the Rwanda scheme, is likely to apply to probably a few hundred individuals.

Most countries recognise that something has to be done about the issue of refugees and asylum seekers, but the British government's policy of deterrence, isn't really working. The country needs to speed up the process of dealing with the backlog of asylum claims and ensure that the process is quicker and less complex.

While Suella Braverman talked about England being invaded by asylum seekers, the UK actually receives far fewer refugees than other countries in Europe or elsewhere. The Supreme Court judgement will prevent the UK government from lawfully removing anyone to Rwanda based on the evidence as it currently stands.

Suella Braverman SACKED.

 

Minister for Hate Suella Braverman

Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman, who has just been sacked as Home Secretary, is not exactly reliable when it comes down to telling the truth. She's was no stranger to embellishing the truth when she wanted to make the headlines. As the Home Secretary, she often made public statements that were at odds or were even contradicted by evidence held by the Home Office and were inaccurate and baseless.

Two examples come to mind - bogus asylum seekers and the ethnicity of grooming gangs. In December 2022, Braverman backed the assertion made by her predecessor former Home Secretary Priti Patel, that "70% of individuals on small boats are single men who are effectively economic migrants." In December 2021, Braverman told MPs, "There is considerable evidence that people are coming here as economic migrants, illegally."

When the Home Office was asked for the evidence to support the claim made by former Home Secretary Priti Patel that the majority of those who are trying to reach the UK are so-called "economic migrants", they couldn't provide it. The Home Office said: "We have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information requested." However, the "Home Office's own data did confirm that most of the people who reached the UK by small boat in 2022 - at least six in ten (60%) - would be recognised as refugees." This is because many of them are fleeing war, persecution, trafficking, violence and torture, and qualify as asylum seekers.

The fact that refugee’s/asylum seekers try to cross the English Channel in small boats is because the British government have closed or severely restricted safest routes to the UK. This makes room for traffickers.

According to government figures around 70 to 75% of those claiming asylum in the UK, are successful, with another 25% of claims being rejected. Many of these rejected claims are won on appeal. Although the Home Office failed to provide any evidence to support the claims made by Braverman and Patel that the majority of those refugees trying to reach the UK are "economic migrants", the statements made by both Home Secretary's, were never corrected or retracted. Both Patel and Braverman deliberately gave the public misleading figures on refugees and boat people to gain a political advantage and to pander to the base instincts of some English voters, who fear being swamped by illegal immigrants or dislike foreigners.

Though Braverman and Patel have vilified and demonised refugees, both their parents are of Indian origin and came to this country as immigrants from East Africa.  Braverman's father, Christie Fernandes, who was born in Nairobi, left Kenya in the late 1960s along with many other Asians, when restrictions were placed on them by Jomo Kenyatta, the leader of the newly independent Kenya. There was political turmoil in Kenya and a policy of "Africanisation." Fernandes was offered a British passport and left the country. Ugandan Asians were expelled by Idi Amin.

Braverman's mother, Uma, was recruited from Mauritius to work in the NHS. As the Tory Health Minister during 1960 to 1963, Enoch Powell, famous for his rivers of blood speech, recruited many nurses from abroad to work within the NHS and many were from the West Indies.

Before being sacked as Home Secretary, Braverman falsely claimed that child grooming gangs in the UK were "almost all British-Pakistani." The press regulator, Ipso, found that her decision to link "the identified ethnic group and a particular form of offending was significantly misleading" because the Home Office's own research had concluded that offenders were mainly from white backgrounds. Four days after publishing the article, the Mail on Sunday, who published the article, offered to amend the article to make clear that the claim related specifically to high profile grooming gangs. The wording was rejected by the complainant who took the case to Ipso. The Mail on Sunday also said that before publishing the article they had double checked with advisers to the Home Secretary and the prime minister about Braverman's decision to single out British Pakistanis, who confirmed they had "no concern with this particular line."

Since her sacking, Braverman, has been denounced as the most divisive British Home Secretary in history and dubbed the 'Minster for Hate' and Cruella Braverman. A Buddhist with a Jewish husband, she was a divisive and authoritarian figure who sowed racial division and unrest and inflamed racial tensions in this country which played into the hands of the far right. Her language was inflammatory and dangerous. This daughter of immigrants said she dreamt of seeing immigrants deported to Rwanda and believed that rough sleeping was a lifestyle choice. She denounced the pro-Palestinian marches has "hate marches" and called on the Met to ban them entirely.

It seems some protestors were carrying placards depicting Braverman and Sunak has "coconuts", and there have been press reports that the Met are now treating this has a possible "hate crime." This analogy is often used as a derogatory term for a black or Asian person who is perceived to conform to "white culture", at the expense of his or her own ancestral culture. The term "Uncle Tom" syndrome, is also used. Braverman's husband, Rael Braverman, who has lived in Israel and some sources say was born in South Africa, describes himself as a "proud Jew and Zionist." He works for the Mercedes -Benz Group as a manager.

What’s a Terrorist?

 What’s a Terrorist? By Les May

The only definition which makes sense to me is that it is someone who uses violence, or the threat of violence against the civilian population to achieve a political goal. If we accept that definition then it is legitimate to refer to Hamas as a ‘Terrorist Organisation’ when it kills or kidnaps Israeli civilians as it did on 7 October 2023.

You may prefer to call the military wing of Hamas ‘Freedom Fighters’, but bear with me a moment because the definition above has some interesting consequences.

AlJazeera English Service on Freeview channel 235 is the ONLY TV news channel with reporters in Gaza. What it has broadcast for the past month is the visual evidence of repeated attacks by the Israeli military on the civilian population of Gaza in pursuit of a political goal. Israel fits the definition of being a ‘Terrorist State’.