Rwanda’s Anglican leader has chastised senior Church of England clerics, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, for criticising the UK’s asylum plan, reported the BBC.
Archbishop Laurent Mbanda specifically countered Archbishop Justin Welby’s claim that deporting illegal migrants to Rwanda for processing their asylum bids was ‘ungodly.’
According to Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, who revealed having spent most of his life as a refugee in Burundi before returning to Rwanda, the plan was not “immoral”. Rwanda was ready to welcome people needing a home, he stated, insisting that by accepting the asylum seekers Rwanda would help tackle a global migrant crisis.
Justin Welby in his April Easter sermon had attacked the UK government’s newly-announced plan to tackle migration.
“The details are for politics. The principle must stand the judgment of God, and it cannot. It cannot carry the weight of resurrection justice, of life conquering death. It cannot carry the weight of the resurrection that was first to the least valued, for it privileges the rich and strong”, the archbishop said during his sermon.
After Archbishop Welby called the UK Home Office’s plan “ungodly” in his Easter sermon, the UK’s Anglican bishops signed a joint letter claiming that it “shames Britain.”
However, Archbishop Mbanda said that, like him, many Rwandans had lived in exile because of the conflict between the Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups in the 1990s.
Furthermore, the archbishop urged African churches to speak for themselves rather than wait for the Archbishop of Canterbury to instruct them on what to do.
The UK government's deal with Rwandan president Paul Kagame's government has been denounced by opposition parties, human rights groups and senior Church of England clergy.
The scheme, conceived to clamp down on surging numbers of illegal migrants, would focus mainly on single men arriving on boats or lorries. These individuals would be given a one-way ticket to Rwanda for processing.
Under the terms of the five-year deal, the African country would offer accommodation and support to the migrants while their claim is processed. If their bid was successful, they would be offered long-term accommodation in Rwanda.
The measure is only one of several announced to tackle small boat crossings in the Channel. Recent analysis of Ministry of Defence data by the PA news agency revealed 11,092 people had already made the perilous journey to reach Britain’s shores this year.
While the first maiden charter flight was to set out to Rwanda on 14 June, the deal hit a roadblock. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stopped the first flight of migrants from the UK after the local courts in London said the flight could go ahead pending a judicial review of the policy scheduled for the end of July.
Both the UK and Rwanda governments had anticipated legal challenges with the policy and say they remain “undeterred. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conservative government has defended the policy, saying it will "save countless lives" from human trafficking. Rwanda has maintained that it is offering a humanitarian solution, despite critics raising issues with its human rights record.