During the five-day hearing over the deal to send away illegal migrants, a number of internal documents showing UK's officials concerns over the agreement were revealed.
According to documents cited by The Guardian that were presented at the British high court hearings, an unspecified number of UK officials reproached the deal. They cited allegations of extrajudicial killings, the alleged recruitment of refugees to conduct armed operations in neighboring countries, as well as human rights violations. Rwanda was accused of oppressing its local LGBT community and implicated in the disappearance of opponents of the country’s president, Paul Kagame.
Human rights activists, cited by The Guardian, has also claimed that “techniques like mock execution, asphyxiation and electric shocks are widespread in Rwanda."
After the UK and Rwanda struck the agreement, aimed at removing illegal migrants from the UK for the period while their asylum claims are being processed, the first flight was set to take place on June 14.
Britain's Home Secretary Priti Patel, left, and Rwanda's Minister of Foreign Affairs Vincent Biruta, right, sign what the two countries called an "economic development partnership" in Kigali, Rwanda Thursday, April 14, 2022. Britain's Conservative government has struck a deal to send some asylum-seekers thousands of miles away to Rwanda, a move that British opposition politicians and refugee groups condemned as inhumane, unworkable and a waste of public money. (AP Photo/Muhizi Olivier)
© AP Photo / Muhizi Olivier
However, just minutes before the plane was set to depart, the flight was cancelled due to a corresponding decision by the European Court of Human Rights.
The lawyer of an asylum-seeker who was among those to be sent to Rwanda had appealed to the ECHR to adjudicate.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened to withdraw the UK from the ECHR and accused the lawyers who made the applications of "helping criminals who exploit asylum seekers."
Europe's migration crisis arose in the fall of 2015 amid a flood of new refugees from the Middle East and North Africa; it continues to this day. According to the European Statistical Agency, by 2020 the number of people illegally residing in the EU totaled 557,500 people.
Illegal immigrants entering the UK by sea set a record with almost 700 people crossing the English Channel on September 1, 2022. According to the British Ministry of Defense, the previous record was set in April this year: then 651 migrants crossed the border in a day.
In 2022 more than 17,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the UK from France across the English Channel so far, according to the British government. Last year there were 28,500 of them, and in 2020, only 8,500 people arrived.
According to Siobhan Mullally, the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, the forced relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda would undermine the international principle of refugees’ non-refoulement.
However, the British government had argued that sending migrants to Rwanda while their applications for asylum were being processed would prevent human smuggling and the illegal flow of migrants across the English Channel.