London,April16,2022: The British government has been accused of trading people like commodities after it unveiled a controversial plan to send asylum seekers on a one-way ticket 6,000km (3,700 miles) away to Rwanda.
In a speech on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said anyone who has entered the United Kingdom irregularly since the start of the year “may” be relocated to the country in central-east Africa.
“Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not,” he said in Kent, a county in the UK’s southeast and a hotspot for refugees and migrants who cross the English Channel and land on British soil.
Johnson said “thousands of refugees” could be transported during the years under the scheme, which, he argued, would “save countless lives” and clamp down on human smugglers.
Many disagreed, however. Rights groups and refugee organisations swiftly blasted what they called a “cruel”, “inhumane” and “neo-colonial” plan, and questioned both its cost to the British taxpayers and effect on migration.
“It’s truly shocking and inhumane,” said Steve Valdez-Symonds, the refugee and migrant rights programme director at Amnesty International UK.
