The High Court in London ruled Monday that the controversial immigration law under which the British government seeks to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is legal.
The judges have dismissed appeals filed in April that initially won the first flight to Rwanda scheduled for mid-June. However, they ruled in favor of eight asylum seekers, finding that the British government had acted wrongly in their individual cases.
In hearings since then, asylum seekers and their lawyers have been complaining that this procedure is not only unlawful, but also «grossly unfair» as they risk being deported without access to legal advice.
At the same time, they have warned that Rwanda’s conditions for hosting these people are not the best due to its poor human rights record. «They torture and kill those they consider to be their opponents,» the lawyers denounced at a hearing in September.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has also intervened and argued before the court that Rwanda does not have the «minimum» necessary to sustain a «reliable, fair and effective» asylum system.
For its part, the British Home Office has argued that the agreement between the British and Rwandan governments complies with all the guarantees that these people will receive proper treatment once they arrive in the African country, being able to access the various «integration programs» envisaged in a plan valued at some 120 million pounds (137 million euros).
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
