“My dream is breaking”: Deterrence, Detention, and Deportation as a Result of the UK’s ‘Rwanda Policy’
Recent eviction by the police in Calais as part of the Zero Fixation Policy.
“My dream is breaking, my dream to go to the UK.”
Anonymous Testimonial
There have been people on the move based in Calais since the late 1990s seeking to enter the UK via irregular routes. Methods to deter those based here have varied, from the destruction of the established living site known as ‘The Jungle’ in October 2016, to increased funding of the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) - the police force who are deployed for riot and crowd control and have a stronghold in Calais to police the beaches, employing brutal methods to prevent crossings like slashing boats and deploying tear gas. In April 2022, the Conservative Government announced the ‘Rwanda Policy’ - an immigration policy that could see those who had sought asylum via irregular routes at risk of being deported to Rwanda, to have their asylum case heard there and to resettle there as a refugee. This policy has caused significant distress to those who seek to cross, who have previously viewed the UK as a place of safety and that respects human rights.
Current living site in Calais.
The Safety of Rwanda Act 2024
“Using this position [to send people seeking asylum to Rwanda] for all the people is breaking the human rights. It’s not about immigration, it’s a political issue.”
Tembe, Sudan
On Friday 25 April, the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 became law, in a controversial move that has been widely denounced as violating human rights. The Supreme Court has previously, unanimously, held that the policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful, due to the risk of refoulement. Since then, the Government has pushed through a fast-tracked emergency Bill that declares Rwanda to be a safe country, and ratified the treaty with Rwanda that claims to prevent refoulement. This Bill has bounced between the Houses of Parliament multiple times, with amendments to soften the bill made by the House of Lords and rejected by the House of Commons, and was made into law less than a week before local elections in the UK. The Act has been criticised as a last ditch attempt by the Conservative Party to gain ground with nationalist voters by deliberately removing safeguards that are put in place to protect people from further persecution and human rights violations.
The changes to the Bill deem that Rwanda is a safe country, and means that people must prove that they would face a “real, imminent and foreseeable risk of serious irreversible harm” if deported to Rwanda, a measure which could prove difficult to reach and does not allow leniency for those who have experienced torture, modern-slavery, or human trafficking. It applies only to those who have reached the UK by means that could be described as “dangerous”. This would apply to everyone that is based in Calais and forced to make the crossing by small boat or lorry because there are no safe and legal humanitarian routes available to them. These routes are restricted to the Hong Kong BN(O) visa, the Ukraine Scheme visa, and the UK Resettlement Scheme for a very limited number of people from Afghanistan. There is no provision for the nationalities widely represented in Calais, despite the widely documented civil wars in Syria and Sudan, and the human rights abuses in countries like Eritrea and Iran.
“All my friends are scared for this decision. Some people have taken six or seven years to be here. You are suffering for your life in Libya with guns or militia, and then you get sent to Rwanda and suffer with the same things.”
Anonymous Testimonial
The Supreme Court’s rejection of Rwanda as a safe country for people seeking asylum derived from the previous experiences of asylum seekers from Israel, who deported 4,000 people to Rwanda and Uganda between 2014 and 2017. Research published in 2015 by International Refugee Rights Initiative, who took testimonies of some of those who had “voluntarily” departed Israel for Rwanda, found that the majority of those arriving in Rwanda were smuggled to Uganda within days of arriving and did not receive legal status, instead being encouraged either to leave the countries or to live below the radar without legal recognition. This resulted in people finding themselves on the move once again, forcing them into the hands of people-smugglers, or living destitute in Kigali and Kampala. While the UK-Rwanda Treaty has ostensibly been ratified to prevent this treatment, there is no way to guarantee that it will be upheld - particularly if, in the event of a Labour victory at the next General Election, the scheme is scrapped with no further support for anyone who has already been deported. The policy is indicative of a party who has chosen to trade human lives for the chance of more votes, at the expense of international human rights law.
Indefinite detention
Following the Safety of Rwanda Act becoming law, on 29th April 2024 the Government launched a shock operation that saw people seeking asylum being detained during routine immigration appointments at reporting centres and in immigration raids across the country. Failure to appear at these appointments results in Section 95 support being cut off, meaning that people lose access to their financial and accommodation support, and their asylum claim being closed. Once taken into detention, people have their personal phones removed from them and replaced with a basic phone with little internet and a very limited timeframe in which to appeal the notice of removal.
The UK is the only country in Europe that allows indefinite detention, which means people are locked in immigration removal centres (IRCs) with no known end date. The purpose-built IRCs are built to the same specifications as Category B prisons (the second highest level of security), causing and/or exacerbating mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Brook House, situated on the grounds of Gatwick Airport, is one of these IRCs. Following over three years of investigation, on 19th September 2023 an inquiry was published into the mistreatment of those being housed in the facility between 1 April 2017 and 31 August 2017. The inquiry identified 19 instances where there was “credible evidence” of actions that amounted to mistreatment under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment inflicted or facilitated by State actors. On the 9th May 2024, 10 days after the commencement of the shock operation detaining people for removal to Rwanda, it was reported that people seeking asylum who were being held in these detention centres were on hunger strike. While Brook House has changed management since the period covered by the inquiry, it remains clear that these facilities are fundamentally unchanged. They remain wholly unsuitable to house people, especially those who are fleeing war and persecution, and the Government is making an active choice to re-traumatise people who are in their care rather than fulfilling their humanitarian obligations.
“It’s not good for human rights. I took a lot of risk to be here. I crossed the White Sea. I came from Sudan, to Libya, to Tunisia, to Europe. I crossed mountains. When I get taken to Rwanda I am in the same dangers I was in before. I don’t see Rwanda as safe… They don’t respect human rights.”
Anonymous Testimonial
Many of the people on the move in Calais have experienced arbitrary detention during their journey to Europe. Research conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières found that refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants held in detention centres in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, have been “... assaulted, sexually abused, beaten, killed and systematically deprived of the most basic humane conditions”. In Amnesty International’s submission for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for Malta of the UPR working group January-February 2024, they report that in 2022 Malta “... continued to arbitrarily detain asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, beyond permissible legal periods and without adequate access to a remedy”. These are just two of many countries that people on the move have passed through on their way to Calais. The use of detention centres to hold people who have already experienced this level of trauma for an expected 8-10 weeks, but potentially longer, before being forcibly deported to a country that they have not chosen to seek asylum in is a deliberate decision made by the Government, betraying both the reputation of the UK as a country that respects human rights, and the people who have sought sanctuary there.
An effective deterrent?
Despite the threat of removal to Rwanda, people on the move in Calais are not deterred from making the crossing to the UK. From the 4th-10th May, 980 people were recorded arriving by small boat. The Rwanda Policy does not change the causes of migration, and it ignores the complex and often difficult decisions that people seeking asylum have already had to make in order to reach the UK. The policy has been discussed for years by the communities in Calais, and it does not act as a deterrent. All it does is add to the distress of people already forced into degrading living conditions by a brutal border policy which has seen 411 people die since 1999.
“I’ve known [about the Rwanda policy] since 2022. If it happens to you, maybe there’s some way to get out.”
Anonymous Testimonial
The Rwanda Policy is not about deterring people from risking their lives making dangerous journeys on small boats. It is not about the subsequent disruption to people smuggling gangs. It is a political decision (some could suggest it is an attempt to win votes) which villainises and dehumanises human beings who are seeking safety, deporting them to an unsafe third country against their will. The British Government funds and facilitates operations in Calais that put people on the move directly in harm's way, forcing them into making dangerous journeys because there are no other options available to them.
The way to prevent the loss of life in the Channel and combat people smuggling gangs is not by further militarising the police on the beaches, or threatening those who have sought asylum in the UK with deportation to a third country. It is by providing safe passage.
Words by Emma Richardson
Photos by Pavlina Hatzopoulos