“There are good people out there,” messaged an Eritrean refugee I know, after I told him about the scenes in the UK last Tuesday. Activists had laid on the street, blocking a road outside a detention centre where some of the asylum seekers due to be sent to Rwanda were being held. Protesters had also gathered outside the Home Office and the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
My contact has personal experience of Rwanda. He was sent there as part of an EU-funded evacuation scheme after he tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, was intercepted by the EU-funded Libyan coastguard and spent years locked up in war-torn Libya.
Since 2019, Rwanda has been used as a transit country for Libya’s evacuees, in a deal signed by UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and the African Union. Hundreds of people have spent time there before being moved on to new lives in North America or Europe.
