06/07/2024 – 18:36
Fulfilling a campaign promise, Labour’s Keir Starmer announces that he will end the previous Conservative government’s plan to expel illegal migrants to Rwanda, Africa. The new British Prime Minister, Labour’s Keir Starmer, confirmed this Saturday (06/07) his intention to abandon the previous Conservative government’s plan to expel illegal migrants to Rwanda.
The project “was dead and buried before it even started (…) I am not willing to continue with misleading measures”, Starmer said during a press conference organized after the first council of ministers of the new British government.
During the election campaign, the Labour leader had already announced his intention to shelve the previous government’s plan to charter planes to take irregular migrants to Rwanda.
Britain’s new prime minister, whose election victory on Thursday ended 14 years of Conservative rule, is banking on a strategy to combat human trafficking networks to put an end to irregular immigration.
His predecessor, Conservative Rishi Sunak, had tried to implement the “Rwanda plan” of expulsions to discourage the continued arrival of migrants in small boats across the English Channel, which separates the coasts of Britain and France.
But Sunak and his predecessor, also a Conservative and the mastermind behind this plan, Boris Johnson, have always faced resistance from human rights organizations, who criticized the agreement reached with the government of Rwanda, which is almost 7,000 kilometers away from the United Kingdom.
Human rights groups have also pointed out that Rwanda’s veteran president, Paul Kagame, governs in a climate of fear, stifling dissent and freedom of expression. The initial cooperation agreement provided for Rwanda to receive £120 million (US$765 million) to receive the deportees. But the British government ended up paying £300 million, even without sending a single deportee.
Immigration has become a major political issue in the UK since it left the European Union (EU) in 2020.
For Starmer, a key element of the policy to stop the arrival of irregular migrants would be the creation of a new elite border security command, made up of immigration experts, with the help of the national intelligence service MI5.
More than 13,000 people have arrived in Britain via the English Channel this year, an 18% increase compared to the same period last year, the UK Home Office said in June. In 2023, there will be 29,437 arrivals via the route, down 36% from a record 45,774 in 2022.
jps (AFP, Reuters)
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