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Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
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Apr 15 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
We aren't just talking about the UK here. Johnson wants his Rwandan forced transportation plan to be a "model" for other countries. Not only does that mean denying even more refugees their rights, it means developed nations deliberately avoiding providing safety. #r4today 1/
About 85% of the world's 26.6 million refugees are located in developing nations. Note the 26.6 million by the way. When the government talks of 80 million they're conflating refugees with "displaced individuals", majority of whom are internally displaced in their own country. 2/
If this "model", a model which has already been proven repeatedly not to actually work as a deterrent in Australia, were to be taken up it would effectively end the international refugee regime and show that developed nations had no moral authority. 3/

ein.org.uk/news/academic-…
That's before you even start to get into the fact that this. exact. plan. has. already. been. tried. Yep, it's been tried and, you know what, failed spectacularly. Israel did a deal with Rwandan and it caused trafficking to escalate. 4/
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…
And all of that is before you start getting into the whole area of Rwanda's own track record of human rights abuses, which this government, this specific, Boris Johnson led, government condemned. 5/ #r4today
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-n…
There is nothing "humanitarian" about sending people 4,000 miles away when they are seeking safety. There's nothing "humanitarian" about spending time working on a deal to do so while failing to ensure refugees you have said you will take can even get to the UK. 6/
There is nothing "humanitarian" about a plan which has already been tried by other countries and found not to work and be illegal, and there is nothing "humanitarian" about expecting the poorest nations to act as a warehouse for the world's refugees so you don' take any. 7/
If Johnson wants the first people forcibly transported, because that's what we are talking about here, "forced transportation" of people who have committed no crime, it is not illegal to seek asylum, and only want safety, in the next couple of weeks he's misjudged this badly. 8/
It is illegal to penalise someone seeking asylum for manner of entry. It is illegal to fail to properly process an asylum application made in your territory. What Johnson proposes will have to face legal challenges, likely on multiple fronts. 9/ #r4today
That yesterday he blamed lawyers for causing delays shows he doesn't get this. The government doesn't keep losing cases when it enacts ever increasingly cruel policies because of the lawyers showing how cruel they are. It's because the government keeps breaking the damn law. 10/
Because this plan will be taken through the courts, it's not unreasonable to argue that in the immediacy another of the policies announced yesterday is more dangerous. Plans to emulate Greece's reception centres are all but guaranteed to see men, women and children suffer. 11/
Greece's record with refugees is appalling. Multiple violations of international law. Multiple deaths caused by their centres and policies. The UK government has dredged the bottom for the most provenly harmful, inhumane and illegal policies to emulate here. 12/ #r4today

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More from @stand_for_all

Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Apr 14
Utter rubbish. 98% of those crossing the channel sought asylum and about 79% were granted it, so they were asylum seekers. This also ignores how families will go into debt to be able to allow one member most likely to survive to make the long journey to seek asylum. 1/
Safety is subjective. most asylum seekers who reach France stay there, but for the relatively small number, in the grand scheme, who do cross the channel the main driving factors are language and family ties, because you feel safer where you speak the language and know people. 2/
Many don't have identity documents. If you are fleeing persecution it can be hard to get everything together in a hurry, and then some get stolen or lost on route, because, guess what, it is a dangerous journey they are making, but they are doing so for good reason. 3/
Read 8 tweets
Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Apr 14
While everyone is reading the stories splashed across the news about a deal with Rwanda to offshore asylum seekers, this is the question which needs to be asked. Asylum seekers don't normally know asylum law, so offshoring won't deter anyone. It will costs lives though. #r4today
The Australian model, as so lauded by the government has been shown not to work, be inordinately expensive, potentially violate laws, oh yes, and lead to deaths, and that is for a country where people have to travel further to reach it in the first place.

politico.eu/article/doubts…
Scarily, what has worked for Australia are "pushbacks". That's what's led to the drop in arrivals, pretty hard to seek asylum when you are dead. That's the thing, like offshoring, pushbacks kill, just more immediately. So, again, how many dead bodies are acceptable? #r4today
Read 4 tweets
Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Apr 13
Thread: It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the government has managed to strike a deal with Rwanda for offshoring, yet seems unlikely. If, if, they have though it will mean that there is a genuine risk of people who have fled Rwanda being sent back there. 1/
United Kingdom still receives asylum seekers from Rwanda, who generally based on the stats get their claims upheld and are provided with it. Why though? Well to say its current, let alone historic, record with human rights is dire is an understatement. 2/
amnesty.org/en/location/af…
This means that the UK would actively be sending people fleeing war and persecution to a country which refuses to sign a treaty preventing the state for "enforced disappearances" for example, not exactly a brilliant way to show your moral authority on the world stage. 3/
Read 5 tweets
Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Apr 12
That. Is. Against. International. Law. An asylum seeker may not be penalised for their manner of entry, and that includes if they "pay a people smuggler". @AlexanderDowner's opening comment would clearly violate the refugee convention, as well as being barbarically inhumane. 1/
There is then the idea almost that people choose to pay people smugglers, with Downer's "it's a racket" comment. Obviously this is false. People are forced into using people smugglers due to no other viable alternatives to reach safety. 2/
Closing more routes to those people doesn't tackle gangs. All it does is mean that they can charge even more to put people on even longer and more dangerous journeys, thereby risking even more lives. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Apr 10
I would suggest that a sizeable part of the problem is that the UK government has spent so long demonising those fleeing war and persecution that they honestly didn't think anyone would care when they did it this time round. 1/

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
One of the largely unreported things about the situation with Ukrainian refugees is just how few people have made the mental leap which would show that this is how refugees have been treated for years and how no-one seeking asylum in the UK should be demonised and dismissed. 2/
People are more aware of Ukraine, rather than Syria or Yemen, just based on geography. Geography shouldn't determine whether someone is seen as human or not though, and a lot of people have spent a lot of money making sure others see refugees as "less than human". 3/
Read 6 tweets
Daniel Sohege 🧡 Profile picture
Apr 9
Prompted by a comment earlier from @LaurenHStarkey let's have a little dive into some of the differences between "smuggling" and "trafficking", and, before we start, both are bad and both can involve exploitation. 1/
In the simplest terms, and we'll get into why this isn't simple in a bit, trafficking, more often than not, is a longer term form of exploitation than smuggling, which is often seen as a one off transaction. 2/
Some people will also add that smuggling is voluntary and trafficking is not. Now, on the surface as a purely technical statement this is kind of true, but people really aren't excitedly looking to be smuggled and the gangs which do so prey on vulnerabilities. 3/
Read 14 tweets

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