UK PLAN TO SEND REFUGEES TO RWANDA GOES AGAINST GOD -ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

Mon 18 April 2022:

Since the news broke about the UK government’s proposal to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, there has been a barrage of criticism from all sides.

According to media sources, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby claimed “subcontracting out our responsibilities” to refugees cannot stand up to God’s scrutiny, adding to a long list of condemnations.

In the Easter Sunday sermon at Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England, the Anglican church leader made the direct political intervention, which was unusual.

Justin Welby told his Easter sermon congregation that the UK has a duty as a ‘Christian country’ to not ‘sub-contract our responsibilities’ after anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since January 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under a new deal.

Boris Johnson’s government said it would help to break people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants across the Channel, which has faced immediate and heavy criticism from politicians and charities.

There are “serious ethical questions about sending asylum-seekers overseas. Sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God, who himself took responsibility for our failures,” Welby said.

“While the details are for politics and politicians, the principle must stand the judgment of God and it cannot,” Welby added.

In a statement over the plan, the Home Office has said Britain had settled hundreds of thousands of refugees from around the world.

“However, the world is facing a global migration crisis on an unprecedented scale and change is needed to prevent vile people smugglers putting people’s lives at risk and to fix the broken global asylum system,” it said.

Echoing Welby over his thoughts on the migrant scheme, the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said at York Minster ‘we can do better than’ the Rwanda scheme.

Cottrell said: ‘It is so depressing and distressing this week to find that asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and oppression from deeply, deeply troubled parts of the world will not be treated with the dignity and compassion that is the right of every human being, and instead of being dealt with quickly and efficiently here on our soil will be shipped to Rwanda.

On Friday, the United Nations also criticised the proposal as an ‘egregious breach of international law’. Gillian Triggs, a UNHCR assistant secretary-general, said the agency ‘strongly condemns outsourcing the primary responsibility to consider the refugee status.’

Put to her that Australia had effectively deployed a similar tactic to cut migration numbers, Ms Triggs said: ‘My point is, just as the Australian policy is an egregious breach of international law and refugee law and human rights law, so too is this proposal by the United Kingdom Government.

‘It is very unusual, very few states have tried this, and the purpose is primarily deterrent – and it can be effective, I don’t think we’re denying that.

‘But what we’re saying at the UN refugee agency is that there are much more legally effective ways of achieving the same outcome.’

She said attempting to ‘shift responsibility’ for asylum seekers arriving in Britain was ‘really unacceptable’.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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