人权专家谴责英国计划将寻求庇护者派往卢旺达

Starting in 2001, the Australian government sent thousands of incoming asylum seekers to the remote Pacific nations of Papua New Guinea, Manus Island, and Nauru. There, while waiting in squalid detention centers on resettlement decisions, migrants, including children, endured human rights abuses.

现在，人道主义团体担心英国以结束危险贩运路线（包括乘船跨越英国频道）的理由，将其历史重演。英国计划以澳大利亚的例子为“成功”的澳大利亚榜样，将某些寻求庇护者改为向南4,000英里向卢旺达改道，这一决定也可能与逃避战争的乌克兰难民有关。

周四，总理鲍里斯·约翰逊（Boris Johnson）宣布英国 - 拉达移民伙伴关系，a plan requiring the country to send some incoming migrants to Rwanda, as part of a new package intended to alleviate alleged pressures on the British asylum system while boosting Rwandan economic development. The government justified it as a humane way to curb dangerous and illegal people-smuggling. “Anyone arriving illegally in the U.K. may be eligible,” reads the official Home Office fact sheet, adding that those who can afford to pay for the smuggling routes are by definition not in-need asylum seekers, and are “economic migrants” from safe countries.

But human rights experts immediately decried the plan, arguing that it won’t solve the alleged issue at hand, and degrades the U.K.’s standing on the world stage. “It’s definitely a very cruel, unethical, and inhumane arrangement,” says埃米莉·麦克唐纳（Emilie McDonnell），英国人权观察的难民倡导者。她说，关于经济移民的言论是一个神话，理由是two-thirds of people who cross the Channel由于合法案件而被授予庇护。那是definition of asylum，没有寻求庇护的人。正如其他国家，最著名的是丹麦，正在考虑类似的“外部化”政策，专家担心英国的计划将触发A“竞赛到底”并鼓励其他国家类似的举措。

这种“移民离岸”模型是not without precedent。正如人权团体发现的那样several cases of abuse, sexual threats and assault, and self-harm and suicides due to ongoing detainment and dire conditions; 51% of the reported abuses in Naura involved children. Before that, the U.S. off-shored Haitian immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, starting in 1991.

去年，丹麦，这采取了针对难民的特别强硬立场，并试图将一些送回叙利亚- 批准了一项法案，该法案将使寻求庇护者搬迁到欧盟以外的国家。它还签署了理解的备忘录与卢旺达探索潜在的协议。就在本周，美国作为德克萨斯州州长的转变责任模式的回声Greg Abbott started sending无证件移民到华盛顿特区，乘坐公共汽车。

大多数在英国寻求庇护的人来自伊朗；伊拉克;厄立特里亚，东北非洲；叙利亚;麦克唐纳（McDonnell）和阿尔巴尼亚（Albania）认为，来自乌克兰的战争对手也可能会落下同样的命运。英国没有放弃对乌克兰人的签证要求，而且major delaysin processing them. Steve Valdez-Symonds, refugee and migrant rights director at Amnesty International U.K., agrees that the policy could, in theory, apply to Ukrainian asylum seekers. “Since the Ukrainian visa schemes are not working, that is a real possibility,” he said via email.

Johnson called这项耗资1.2亿英镑（1.57亿美元）的计划是“由我们共同的人道主义冲动驱动的创新方法，并由英国脱欧自由成为可能。”他断言，它具有阻止人口贩运的更广泛的目标，他说这将英国频道变成了“水墓地”。

英国在宣传自己的交易时，称赞卢旺达对移民的处理，提到了13万人从刚果民主共和国和布隆迪重新安置。人权观察声要求否则在其专制政府的指控下，“官方和非正式拘留设施中的酷刑是司空见惯的。”2018年，卢旺达警察杀死了11名刚果难民，以抗议修剪食品口粮。她说，麦克唐纳（McDonnell）指出了一个关键的讽刺意味：“英国赠款给卢旺达人逃离卢旺达的庇护”。“您如何将人们送往一个拥有英国本身的人权记录的国家？”

For the Rwandan government, the deal aligns with itsVision 2050目标是一项经济发展建议，卢旺达打算在2035年到2050年成为中等收入国家。据卢旺达新闻媒体报道基加利今天出版社, U.K. investments will contribute to some of the plan’s goals, including vocational training, small business support, and climate-resilient policies, all supposedly for the benefit of both Rwandans and asylum seekers.

但是麦克唐纳说，一旦他们在卢旺达，寻求庇护者将处于“困境”。他们将被安置在基加利的拘留中心，其中第一个Sky Newsreportedhas a communal eating area, 12 toilets, and 5 showers for about 100 people, who’ll reside in bedrooms of 12 x 12 feet. They will apparently stay for three months while their cases are processed (though in Australia, some stayed for years). “These people will never have the chance to come to the U.K. and seek protection,” McDonnell says.

该计划可能会像澳大利亚一样受到法律挑战的影响侵犯人权, including right to life, degrading treatment, and arbitrary detention. “Offshore detention and processing in this form is appalling, regardless of where it is,” McDonnell says. “It goes against the spirit of refugee law, which says that we should all be sharing responsibility for refugees—instead of just pushing them onto other countries.”