🧵1/12 #BorisJohnson & #PritiPatel will today announce their plans to send people seeking asylum in the UK to #offshoredetention camps in #Rwanda, to try & deter #refugees from seeking protection in the UK. Cruelty is the point of this policy. Here's why this will fail... 
2/12 Johnson & Patel were inspired by Australia's brutal & widely condemned offshore detention camps on Nauru & Papua New Guinea. Conditions for 3,127 people in those camps were deliberately dangerous & inhumane & led to suicides, avoidable deaths & abuse of children by guards.
3/12 This didn't deter people from seeking asylum in Australia. In the following year, the numbers of people arriving by boat stayed the same & the camps were quickly overcrowded. Australia has now abandoned this policy & most people detained are now in the USA or Australia.
4/12 Priti Patel assured critics that her offshore camps would be in a "safe country". Rwanda's appalling human rights record means it cannot be considered safe. Even in recent years, the UK has given asylum to refugees fleeing persecution in #Rwanda. Now it will send them back.
5/12 In 2018, Congolese refugees in Rwanda protested against the poor living conditions that they were forced to endure. Rwandan police opened fire on them, killing several. 60 were arrested and some imprisoned for protesting. Persecution of protesters is routine in Rwanda.
6/12 Rwanda's President Kagame, is notorious for persecuting, torturing & assassinating his critics, including journalists & political opposition. Human rights organisations have evidence that his government has assassinated Rwandan #refugees who have fled to other countries.
7/12 After the assassination of one of his political opponents in 2014, President Kagame said: “Whoever betrays the country will pay the price. I assure you... Any person still alive who may be plotting against Rwanda, whoever they are, will pay the price...”
8/12 Existing detention conditions in #Rwanda are often brutal. At the Gikondo transit centre, people formerly detained, including children, said they had inadequate food, water, and health care, suffered frequent beatings & were rarely allowed to leave filthy, overcrowded rooms.
9/12 #Transgender people are criminalised in Rwanda. In June 2021, before a high-profile international conference, Rwandan authorities rounded up over a dozen gay and transgender people, sex workers and street children & detained them in brutal conditions.
10/12 Gay and transgender people held in detention said that security officials accused them of “not representing Rwandan values.” They said that other people detained beat them because of their clothes and identity and nothing was done.
11/12 The lack of free media or political opposition in #Rwanda will make independent oversight of how people are treated in the UK's #offshoredetention system impossible. Proper access to any detention facilities for UK media or independent monitors is likely to be denied.
12/12 Under law the UK will remain responsible for protecting the people it sends to #Rwanda from human rights abuses, including physical and sexual assault, persecution or cruel, inhumane or degrading conditions and treatment. This Government cannot shirk those responsibilities.
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