#Sunak’s Rwanda asylum law | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

salvation-within-the-void · 6 months

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The prime minister of the UK has just confirmed that he will change the law to allow the conservative party to forcibly deport immigrants to Rwanda.

The SUPREME COURT of the UK found this policy unlawful, the government were told they CANNOT do this.

Their response? Change the law

This policy is a threat to the lives of refugees who fled here seeking support and asylum, as a country we should be kind and welcoming. Instead these poor people are being sent straight back into the instability and violence they risked their lives to escape.

Rwanda has a history of being used to 'sweep refugees under the rug', having signed a similar deal with Israel. The supreme court found that Rwanda has previously violated laws protecting immigrant against refoulement, as it has sent people back to the nations they fled. Directly violating international treaties and violating the rights granted to refugees and asylum seekers.

Sunak also stated that he will not allow the European human rights court to block this policy and will revisit any treaties that may act as "obstacles" to this policy.

They are trying to get out of THE INTERNATIONAL BILL OF HUMAN RIGHTS! The refugge system in Rwanda is so unsafe that this is a human rights issue! And our government want to violate those rights for thousands of immigrants they are determined not to help.

These people are hell bent on making life miserable for refugees. The deputy chair of the conservatives stated the government should "ignore the law and start the flights anyway".

Rishi Sunak is also introducing "emergency legislation" in order to force this through parliament and the courts.

Where have we heard that before?

These are the same emergency powers that allow laws to be passed without parliamentary votes. The same emergency powers that enabled the "war on terror" so the UK and US could commit war crimes. The same emergency powers used by the nazis to legitimise the holocuase

This is facism! Plain as day.

I am very very worried for the future of my country and the future of this world. Facism is not on the rise, it is here. We must watch very very closely, at home and abroad, so that we can act accordingly and protect ourselves.

#UK politics #rishi sunak #the conservative party #Rwanda policy #immigration #immigrant rights #refugees #refugee rights #political #politics #political rant #leftism #leftist #socialism #socialist #protest #news #political news #uk news

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mariacallous · 1 month

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British exceptionalism means that we do not like to think of our politicians as extremists. Official paranoia, state-sponsored lying, half-mad ideas that play to bigoted prejudices: these evils do not afflict dear, sweet, safe old Blighty.

You need only glance at the press or watch the BBC to know that policies and politicians we would have no problem identifying as radical right if they appeared in Europe or the Trumpian corners of the United States, are treated as mainstream here in the UK.

To be fair, Rishi Sunak is not a typical strongman leader. He is small (5ft 5in) and without physical presence, oratorical skill, or a definable sense of purpose.

Sunak’s manner varies from wide-eyed chirpiness when discussing his strangely marginal political passions – banning smoking, recruiting more maths teachers – to petulance when confronted with difficulties: “He comes across as snippy, and comes across as thin-skinned — which he is, when people challenge him,” said one former minister.

Labour politicians believe he will fall apart under the scrutiny of a general election campaign.

And yet this mediocre member of the superrich (our modern Malvolio married rather than earned his wealth) who received the best education the Western world can offer at Winchester college and Oxford and Stanford universities, is by any reasonable definition an extremist.

Sunak’s only saving grace is that he is as useless at extremism as he is at everything else and thus there is a limit to how much damage he can cause.

Within the past few hours Sunak passed into law the power to send asylum seekers to the quasi-dictatorship of Rwanda. The deportees will include genuine refugees, the victims of human trafficking, and Afghans who risked their lives serving the British armed forces in the war against the Taliban.

I have no doubt that radical right politicians across Europe would like to possess the same powers. But as things stand only Rishi Sunak has them and is able to set them to the Orwellian task of remoulding reality.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that the government could not deport people to Rwanda because it is not a safe country. It’s a quasi-dictatorship under Paul Kagame, a genuine and genuinely frightening strongman, who is engaged in covert warfare against neighbouring states. There’s no real judicial independence and the Rwandan government breached the terms of a previous asylum deal it had entered into with Israel.

The UK government has got round these objections by announcing that reality is now what Rishi Sunak says it is.

Sunak’s legislation declares that Rwanda is a safe country, even though it isn’t. From now on, an asylum seeker trying to stop the UK deporting him cannot use the actual existing repressions on the ground in Rwanda to challenge the government in UK courts.

Sunak says Rwanda is safe so it must be so. Maybe Sunak will move on to declare that black is white and 2+2=5, but for the time being he is limiting himself to creating an imaginary African republic where all is peace and light.

Lord Anderson, who as a former adviser to the UK state on terrorism is hardly a knee-jerk softie, put it well when he said of the government’s plans to end judicial oversight

“If Rwanda is safe as the government would have us declare, it has nothing to fear from such scrutiny. “Yet we are invited to adopt a fiction, to wrap it in the cloak of parliamentary sovereignty and to grant it permanent immunity from challenge. To tell an untruth and call it truth.”

To insist that lies are the truth is extreme. It is also the logical conclusion of the Brexit policy of concerted lying in the service of political ends, which has been running since 2016.

And speaking of Brexit and before I go any further, I should note that, with the exception of Geert Wilders, no European far-right leader advocates taking his or her country out of the EU. But Rishi Sunak was all for Brexit, and promised that “our nation would be freer, fairer and more prosperous outside the EU”.

We know how that went.

And we almost certainly know how the Rwanda deportations will go. They will fail, and Sunak will be a failed extremist because what he wants is impossible.

Look at it from the point of view of a right-winger who is furious that tens of thousands are crossing the English Channel and entering the country illegally. Throughout his life the Conservatives have betrayed him.

David Cameron promised to reduce migration from the hundreds to tens of thousands, and failed to deliver. Brexit promised to return control of our borders. Instead, small boats cross the channel in a parody of the Dunkirk evacuation, while legal immigration has gone through the roof.

No pro-European politician would ever say this, but it does not mean that people have not noticed. By leaving the EU, the UK swapped European migrants who were largely white and, if they had a religion, it was Christianity, for migrants from the rest of the world who are largely not white and, if they have a religion, it is unlikely to be Christianity.

Despite all this Sunak is still bellowing that he will stop all the boats, which is as impossible as David Cameron’s fake promise to reduce migration to the tens of thousands.

He is bellowing because Conservatives are terrified that Reform (the latest Farage party) will send the Tories down to a landslide defeat.

They are trying to unite the right by assuming that right-wing and radical-wing voters are stupid, and won’t notice the attempt to con them with impossible promises.

It’s not working. At the moment we are in an unprecedented situation, where Labour enjoys a poll lead on immigration.

For those on left who say there is no difference between Starmer’s Labour and the Tories ought to notice that Labour holds that lead even though it is absolutely opposed to the Rwanda obscenity, when Tony Blair’s Labour party would probably have gone along with it.

In the Commons yesterday, Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s shadow immigration minister, tore into the government.

He pointed out that the cost of the vain attempt to save Sunak’s skin – will be about “£2 million per deportee”. As only a few hundred are ever likely to go, tens of thousands more will be left “in expensive hotels, stuck in a perma-backlog at a staggering cost to the taxpayer.”

Assuming, that is, anyone goes at all.

Yesterday Sunak made a rather pathetic admission that no plane will leave for 12 weeks. We shall see. Despite the government’s best efforts to rewrite the law and threaten the European Court of Human Rights, there can still be legal challenges which may last until the next election.

Cynics say the government would like nothing better than the flights to be stopped so it can blame left-wing lawyers in the campaign. I think they are attributing intelligence to the prime minister he does not possess.

Put like this, the UK’s failed extremists do not seem so reprehensible. But look at what they have done. Since David Cameron in 2010 they have never explained the necessity for immigration in an honest conversation with the public.

They have pandered to right-wing and radical right-wing sentiment and then infuriated voters by making promises they could never keep. In doing so they have prepared the ground for genuinely extremist politicians.

We have already paid a price for their trickery with Brexit and I doubt the full bill is in yet.

We are fortunate that Rishi Sunak is too hopeless to be dangerous. We may not be so lucky in the future.

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listen-to-the-inner-walrus · 6 months

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[ALT Text: Supreme court rejects Rishi Sunak’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda

Judges uphold appeal court ruling over risk to deported refugees and deals blow to PM’s ‘stop the boats’ strategy]

how many times does this policy have to be blocked on account of it abusing human rights laws before the tories finally fucking drop it? [x]

#uk politics #ukpol #britpol #british politics #tories #rishi sunak #suella braverman #priti patel #conservatives #conservative party #the guardian #asylum seekers

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justinspoliticalcorner · 16 days

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Ellen Ioanes at Vox:

The UK is again preparing to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda after Parliament created a workaround to enact a policy the high court declared unlawful.

Authorities have begun detaining migrants to deport to Rwanda under the revamped plan. But the policy faces major logistical issues, humanitarian concerns, and the likelihood that a future Labour government will scrap it. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel initially proposed the controversial law in 2022 as a way to reduce irregular migration, particularly via small boats across the English Channel, which is on the rise in the UK. Her successor, Suella Braverman, also advocated for the plan until she was fired in 2023; Prime Minister Rishi Sunak then vowed to “stop the boats” and promised that the policy would become law. Sunak succeeded on the latter front. Following legal challenges that saw the UK Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights declare the proposal unlawful, a bill declaring Rwanda safe for migrants and that limits the courts’ ability to adjudicate the country’s safety was approved as law by King Charles in late April, despite heavy opposition from the House of Lords. The government published a video on May 1 showing law enforcement authorities detaining people to send to the East African country as soon as July.

The law has been resoundingly criticized by human rights advocates, immigration lawyers, and Labour politicians who say it violates international law and is, to quote shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, “an expensive gimmick.” The law is part of a broader effort by Sunak and his Conservative Party to burnish their image as their government struggles to maintain support in the lead-up to a national election. Irregular migration has increased in recent years, but it’s not the driver of the problems that the UK is facing, including ongoing cost-of-living and housing crises. However, it is among voters’ top concerns, making the extreme anti-immigration law an appealing policy for a dysfunctional party struggling to maintain power.

[...]

The UK’s Rwanda deportation policy, briefly explained

The Rwanda plan has been a policy priority for two years now, and it’s outlived two prime ministers and two home secretaries. The ostensible goal? To deter irregular migrations via the English Channel and other routes, ostensibly for the migrants’ own safety, and to disrupt human trafficking operations.

Though the government has declared Rwanda a safe country through its recent legislation, it is the threat of being sent there instead of potentially receiving asylum in the UK that is meant to deter people from entering the country. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame claimed that his country was simply trying to help out with “a very complicated problem all over the world” when Rwanda and the UK struck their initial agreement in 2022. But Rwanda will be well compensated by the British government for its purported generosity (more on that later). And critics say it also benefits Rwanda reputationally despite Kagame’s autocratic tendencies (which include threatening or jailing political rivals, repression of the media, and changing the constitution to extend his rule), not to mention the UK government’s own concerns that Rwanda is not a safe place for LGBTQ refugees.

But immigration has become a key policy pillar for the conservative government post-Brexit. Former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, along with Sunak, all touted their tough stance on immigration, hoping to appeal to socially conservative party members who see immigration as a key issue. Sunak and Truss backed the Rwanda plan, which was first proposed by controversial former Home Secretary Priti Patel. The policy was deeply controversial from the start. It applies to the roughly 52,000 asylum seekers the government deems to have entered the UK illegally after January 2022. Under international law, everyone has the right to seek asylum, and countries are obligated to protect people in their territory seeking asylum under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The UK was one of the original signatories to that convention.

But under the new rule, regardless of whether their claims are valid, asylum seekers can now be detained, and forced to fly to Rwanda, where their asylum claims will ostensibly be processed and they will be resettled. The plan “is effectively removing the UK from the asylum convention, because it removes the right to asylum which is explicitly guaranteed,” Peter William Walsh, senior researcher at the Oxford Migration Observatory, told Vox in an interview. It also could change the UK’s legal structure: the UK has threatened to withdraw from the court’s jurisdiction should it rule against the Rwanda plan.

[...]

Costs are already adding up; though no one has been sent to Rwanda and just a handful detained, the UK has already paid Rwanda 220 million pounds (about $270 million) to create infrastructure for asylum seeker processing. That number could skyrocket to more than half a billion pounds total (about $627 million) to send just 300 people to the East African country, according to a UK government watchdog.

Because of objections from advocacy groups, the UK Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), no migrant in the UK has ever been transferred to Rwanda under the plan. (One migrant has been sent to Rwanda voluntarily under a separate policy that pays eligible migrants 3,000 pounds if they volunteer to be sent to the country.) As seven people awaited deportation to Rwanda in June of 2022, the ECHR intervened and issued injunctions stopping the migrants’ removal and pausing the controversial policy. Though the UK left the European Union in 2020, it is still part of the Council of Europe, which the ECHR has jurisdiction over, making the court’s decision legally binding. And in November 2023, the UK’s highest court ruled the scheme unlawful.

Sunak, however, doubled down on the Rwanda policy, introducing emergency legislation to have Parliament declare Rwanda a safe country, as well as working on a new treaty with Rwanda to address the court’s concerns that asylum-seekers might be sent back to their home countries. That legislation, the Safety of Rwanda Act, passed Parliament in late April and unilaterally declared Rwanda to be a safe place to resettle migrants, paving the way for King Charles’s approval and the Home Office’s moves to detain some migrants who arrived by irregular routes.

The United Kingdom’s highly controversial Rwanda deportation plan proposed in a bid to curb unauthorized immigration to the nation has already ignited controversy.

The UK cannot wait for the Tories to be gone.

#United Kingdom/Rwanda Relations #Rwanda #United Kingdom #Boris Johnson #Suella Braverman #Rishi Sunak #Liz Truss #Priti Patel #Immigration #Europe #Refugees #Safety of Rwanda Act #Paul Kagame

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hopefullydreaming · 6 months

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honestly sickened by everything happening in U.K. politics today. how so many people can vote against ceasefire, how labour can force shadow ministers out of their roles for voting in favour of a ceasefire, how neither of the two main parties seem to have any moral integrity left. how rishi sunak’s reaction to being told his rwanda policy is unlawful is to simply change the law to make that country sound safe for asylum seekers to stay in and not be deported back from instead of doing a tiny bit of moral introspection and realising maybe this was always a horrible idea like everybody said. how after everything, the one thing they keep saying is ‘stop the boats, stop the boats’ because they cannot stomach the thought of fucking helping people who need it? i am disgusted

#uk politics #tory party #free palestine

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libertineangel · 6 months

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For people who don't know, one of the flagship policies of the current British government is to ship asylum seekers & illegal immigrants off to Rwanda. This has, however, never actually fucking happened, because before the first flight even took off it was challenged in court, on the grounds that Rwanda's own asylum seeker policy can't be guaranteed not to ship people back to countries that want them dead and so the entire scheme is a breach of human rights law.

The British Supreme Court issued its final ruling on the challenge this afternoon, finding it correct, thoroughly killing one of this government's only concrete ideas.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is giving a press conference about it right now, in which he has revealed his new strategy on getting this plan to work: Just Pretend It's Fine :)

He wants to "introduce emergency legislation" that legally declares Rwanda a safe third country, so that "foreign courts" (the European Court of Human Rights, who could also challenge this if he tries to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling) can't stop him from knowingly shipping innocent people off to their deaths.

Something tells me this is not going to work.

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easterneyenews · 3 months

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hjohn3 · 5 months

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The Tory Migration Catastrophe

How Conservative Immigration Policy Will Destroy Its Thatcherite Model

Source: The Financial Times

By Honest John

LIKE A desperate gambler deciding to bet his shirt on one last turn of the roulette wheel, Rishi Sunak has staked his entire political reputation on the latest iteration of the Tories’ Rwanda bill. This is a piece of legislation which has been declared illegal by the British Supreme Court; which has so far cost the British taxpayer £240m with a further £50m due to be paid to Rwanda next year; which is considered as impractical as it is morally questionable and which has seen precisely zero asylum seekers so far sent to Rwanda to have their claims processed. This sad wheeze is going to be dragged before the House of Commons once more, while Sunak desperately claims black is white and that Rwanda can miraculously become a safe country for asylum seekers by the passing of a law in Westminster. The Prime Minister’s determination to turn Tuesday’s vote on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill into effectively a vote of confidence in his leadership is simultaneously reckless and absurd. Sunak’s desperation to quieten the increasing insurrectionary noises from his party’s right wing in the wake of the dismissal of Suella Braverman, has led him to to invest all his hopes in a piece of legislation for which there is no evidence will succeed in deterring the “small boats” (its stated claim), which will place the U.K. once again in breach of international law and will succeed only in enriching the government of Rwanda, incredulously receiving millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money for its civic infrastructure, gifted by a country whose own infrastructure is falling apart. It is actually hard to find anyone outside the fevered confines of Sunak’s inner circle who supports the plan or thinks it will work. Apart perhaps from the government of Rwanda itself that is.

It is easy to laugh at the infantile antics of a government that, in any real sense, has ceased to function and to treat this latest act in the Tory psychodrama as the piece of absurdist political theatre it undoubtedly is, but the Rwanda bill is simply the congealing icing on the top of a poisonous cake that the Conservatives have been serving up for years, masquerading as migration “policy”. This is legislation that is as contradictory as it is cruel; as performative as it is populist. For the Conservatives, migration is their key emergency break glass area of public policy. When everything else that they and the succession of hopeless lightweights they have foisted on the country as Prime Ministers, has turned to dung at their touch, they still believe that the prejudice and hatred of “the British People” toward foreigners and immigrants has no bottom level: for Tories you simply cannot go too low on immigration. The Rwanda scheme - when it was first cooked up in the days of Boris Johnson and Priti Patel - had nothing in reality to do with deterring asylum seekers from trying to cross the Channel to Britain; it was all about trying to appeal to a mythical “Red Wall” voter for whom no amount of cruelty, illegality and contempt was too much when it came to migrants. As their polling figures slumped and by election and council election results confirmed their worst electoral fears, the Conservatives still believed that victimising the victims could yet turn it around for them - no matter the dark forces their racist and bile-filled rhetoric might unleash: if they could just once again gaslight the electorate into believing that all the catastrophes of the last fourteen years of Tory rule are, in fact, the fault of incoming foreigners, all may yet be well.

This dismal flirting with the fascist playbook may have resulted in the headline-catching idiocy of Sunak’s latest Rwanda wheeze, but beneath that blather James Cleverley has announced planned measures that are far more significant, far more damaging, and far more frightening than any amount of ludicrous assertions about the Rwanda scheme. Tired of being taunted by Labour and others about the huge rise in legal migration (its net increase topped 600,000 in 2022) despite all the Tory promises to bring the numbers down over the last fourteen years, the Conservatives’ response is to quite literally attack, and potentially destroy, its own Thatcherite economic model.

For over forty years, Tory politicians have extolled Britain’s “flexible” workforce; its deregulated system; its low wage/low unemployment economy and its marketised society. Indeed, for years we were told by politicians on the right and the left that in a globalised world, mobile and non-unionised workforces, cheap production costs, outsourced supply lines and minimal regulation was essential to the easy access, low price, and plentiful supply digital capitalism that has taken hold in Britain. Key to the success of this model has been migrant labour, first from the EU and now from a swathe of sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries whose residents have been offered visas to replace the low wage flexible European workers that post-Brexit Britain apparently no longer wants. The legal migrants that the Conservatives are now in such a lather about are an essential component of the Thatcherite economic model they have all been promoting to us for decades. If, as Cleverley maintains, the government wishes to reduce net migration figures by 300,000 in 2024, then that is 300,000 workers not available to drive lorries, deliver Amazon parcels, pick our crops, clean our offices, valet our cars, serve in our restaurants and, crucially staff our hospitals and care homes. By creating a shortage of deregulated low wage labour, the Tories will simultaneously damage large parts of the service economy and drive up wages, and with it inflation. In their desperate belief that hatred of foreigners will somehow save them from oblivion at the next General Election, the Conservatives are prepared to throw overboard an approach to employment and wages that has sustained them for nearly two generations and was one of the driving ideological impulses on the right that drove Brexit. The revolution has truly begun to eat itself.

Apart from the casual abandonment of what has been the essence of right-wing Toryism for years, Cleverley has also managed to introduce the class-based nastiness of the Sklled Worker minimum salary threshold of £38,700 pa that legal migrants and their dependents must meet. This is a measure that will drive families apart, possibly force British citizens, married to foreigners but earning below the threshold, to emigrate to be with their loved ones and cause untold damage to the university sector (one of the few growth areas of the British economy) and the NHS and care sector, already on its knees after years of austerity and disproportionately reliant on migrant labour. It is as if the Tories are not content with the calamities that austerity, Brexit and Trussonomics have already wrought on British society: with this latest episode of ill-thought through prejudicial nonsense, they seem to want to finish it off altogether. I have predicted for some time the implosion of modern Toryism - its Thatcherite ideology a busted flush and its Brexit nationalist makeover lacking in depth or practical solutions; but what I hadn’t bargained for was that the Tories would try to take the whole country down with them.

Never has a government looked more threadbare, pointless, desperate and unlovable. All they have left to offer is hatred, racism and self-defeating vindictiveness. If Sunak’s absurd posturing over his doomed Rwanda bill results in his resignation before Christmas and a January General Election, the “British People” that this band of charlatans and incompetents keep claiming to speak for, but who in reality they do not understand, will breathe a sigh of relief, because we the people will at last be given the opportunity to cast this catastrophic version of Toryism into an electoral oblivion it so richly deserves and from which it will, hopefully, never emerge.

Migration may yet be modern Conservatism’s epitaph.

10th December 2023

#british politics #conservative government #rishi sunak #migration policy #Rwanda bill #tory collapse #james cleverly #Thatcherite economic model #general election now!

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head-post · 6 months

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Rishi Sunak: new draft law on asylum in Rwanda will prevent litigation

At an emergency press conference, Rishi Sunak said his new Rwanda law would prevent prosecutions and allow him to fly finally to Rwanda, The Guardian reports.

The Prime Minister said the bill “fundamentally” addressed the apex court’s concerns over deportation policies and ensured the African country is “unequivocally” safe for asylum seekers.

His irate remarks followed a chaotic 24 hours in which his immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, quit over the proposed new law, claiming it did not go far enough. The move was a major blow to the prime minister’s authority, who has come under increasing pressure from the right-wing Tories.

Releasing rebels from the Tories to vote against him, Sunak said he would not see the legislation as a vote of confidence in his leadership. With Labour already saying it would oppose the plans, it would only take 29 Tory MPs to vote against it.

Sunak said the legislation would be an “effective deterrent” to people coming to the UK illegally and would restore public confidence in the system in an attempt to contain a growing right-wing rebellion in the Conservative Party.

Read more HERE

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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bopinion · 14 days

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2024 / 18

Aperçu of the Week

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

(Mahatma Gandhi)

Bad News of the Week

It was Earth Overshoot Day for Germany. This means that on May 2, we have already used up our national share of global natural resources for the whole of 2024. In other words, we would need three Earths to maintain our current lifestyle. And we are not even the biggest "consumers" - in the USA, for example, Earth Overshoot Day was already on March 14 this year, according to figures from the Global Footprint Network.

So humanity is living off the land. Which, logically, cannot go on for long. What's more, we haven't just been doing this since yesterday and every reserve is limited. This is simply madness. The whole thing has hardly anything to do with climate change, but it all goes back to the same basic problem: "man-made". For the first time in the history of the earth, a species is not adapting to environmental conditions, but wants to adapt them to itself. But nature will not go along with this. It has lost its balance, so the imminent tipping points can be taken quite literally.

It is not yet too late. Humanity just needs to realize that it has to fundamentally change its way of life. From parasitism to symbiosis. A simple and simplified example: humans need oxygen to survive. Which they convert into carbon dioxide. The tree needs carbon dioxide to survive. Which it converts into oxygen. So it works perfectly well in a peaceful coexistence. However, if humans kill the tree by cutting it down, burning it or draining its water, they are depriving themselves of the basis of life. Pretty stupid, actually. And actually pretty easy to understand.

Good News of the Week

Preparations have begun in the UK for the controversial deportations to Rwanda. The police have arrested several people who entered the country illegally. Nationwide operations are underway, according to the Home Office. The first deportation flights are due to take place in July. The relevant law allows the deportation of asylum seekers to the East African country if they have arrived in the UK without permission. The origin of the migrants is irrelevant. The deportations can take place without the asylum applications even being examined in the UK.

Is this supposed to be worthy of a democracy and in line with European values? Certainly not. It is therefore not surprising that the High Court in London has declared the plans unlawful. The judges have doubts that the people in Rwanda will receive a fair asylum procedure. No wonder, because according to Amnesty International, the country has enormous deficits in practically all human rights. And in this ailing state, which is barely larger than Wales, the United Kingdom wants to set up a final dump for asylum seekers. A bad joke.

This joke fits in seamlessly with the Tories' government actions, which since Boris Johnson can only be described as a bad joke in general. They have now been punished for this and more in the local elections. And it is so severe that there is already talk of a "Conservative collapse". And Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may even have to face a vote of no confidence. The loss of half (!) of the seats that the Conservatives had to defend shows crystal clear that the party's shift to the right is not convincing voters either. Nigel Farage's right-wing populist Reform UK is now the real winner in third place.

And the outlook also looks bleak. According to a nationwide survey by the opinion research institute Yougov, only 18% want to vote for Tory in the general election at the beginning of next year. And 44% Labour. The Labour Party, which was significantly realigned by former Prime Minister Tony Blair at the turn of the millennium (catchwords "New Labour", "modern social democracy" and "third way"), have positioned themselves as social democrats with moderation and a middle ground. With Labor, the inhumane Rwanda deal would not have happened. Nor the protection of the rich elite. And no Brexit either. I look forward to the UK showing a human face again soon.

I couldn't care less...

...that Donald Jessica Trump continues to languish in court instead of running a classic election campaign. Even though both actually look the same: he knows everything better, he has never done anything wrong in his life, he is unstoppable, his persecution is politically motivated, unjust and the biggest scandal in history. Give me a break.

It's fine with me...

...that Venice's lagoon Disneyland now charges admission to day tourists when they are already flooding the city. Because when I'm there, I'm firstly an overnight guest who explores the city when the day tourists have gone. And secondly, I'm there for the contemporary art (Biennale di Venezia) and am not queuing in front of the Dojen Palace. And thirdly, the city needs the money to preserve its historical status. After all, if an ice cream parlor sells overpriced bad goods, hardly anything will stick for the community.

As I write this...

...it has come true: there is no longer an "imminent famine" in Gaza. Because, according to UNICEF, the "imminent" must now unfortunately be deleted. And once again, the victims are almost exclusively civilians, more than half of them children. I can't remember the concept of self-defense ever being so strained.

Post Scriptum

Freedom of the press, or rather freedom of the media, is a very valuable asset for me. Because only unhindered access to neutral information can form the basis of a sound opinion. In addition, journalism also assumes a certain control function when it observes carefully, analyzes profoundly and argues logically. It is not for nothing that many call the (reputable) media the "fourth power in the state" alongside the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Therefore, for me, an attack on media freedom is an attack on democracy.

According to Reporters Without Borders on World Press Freedom Day last Friday, 36 countries will be in the category of lowest (or non-existent) press freedom in 2023. There haven't been that many in 10 years, including, unsurprisingly, Eritrea, Syria and Afghanistan. Germany is in 10th place behind the Scandinavian countries, as there were 41 verified attacks on journalists. They tend to be associated with conspiracy theorists and the extreme right. Of course, because after all, they think the least of media freedom.

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mariacallous · 5 months

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LONDON (AP) — For holding a sign outside a courthouse reminding jurors of their right to acquit defendants, a retiree faces up to two years in prison. For hanging a banner reading “Just Stop Oil” off a bridge, an engineer got a three-year prison sentence. Just for walking slowly down the street, scores of people have been arrested.

They are among hundreds of environmental activists arrested for peaceful demonstrations in the U.K., where tough new laws restrict the right to protest.

The Conservative government says the laws prevent extremist activists from hurting the economy and disrupting daily life. Critics say civil rights are being eroded without enough scrutiny from lawmakers or protection by the courts. They say the sweeping arrests of peaceful demonstrators, along with government officials labeling environmental activists extremists, mark a worrying departure for a liberal democracy.

“Legitimate protest is part of what makes any country a safe and civilized place to live,” said Jonathon Porritt, an ecologist and former director of Friends of the Earth, who joined a vigil outside London’s Central Criminal Court to protest the treatment of demonstrators.

“The government has made its intent very clear, which is basically to suppress what is legitimate, lawful protest and to use every conceivable mechanism at their disposal to do that.”

A PATCHWORK DEMOCRACY

Britain is one of the world’s oldest democracies, home of the Magna Carta, a centuries-old Parliament and an independent judiciary. That democratic system is underpinned by an “unwritten constitution” — a set of laws, rules, conventions and judicial decisions accumulated over hundreds of years.

The effect of that patchwork is “we rely on self-restraint by governments,” said Andrew Blick, author of “Democratic Turbulence in the United Kingdom” and a political scientist at King’s College London. “You hope the people in power are going to behave themselves.”

But what if they don’t? During three turbulent and scandal-tarnished years in office, Boris Johnson pushed prime ministerial power to the limits. More recently, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has asked Parliament to overrule the U.K. Supreme Court, which blocked a plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda.

Such actions have piled pressure on Britain’s democratic foundations. Critics say cracks have appeared.

As former Conservative justice minister David Lidington put it: “The ‘good chap’ theory of checks and balances has now been tested to destruction.”

GOVERNMENT TAKES AIM AT PROTESTERS

The canaries in the coal mine of the right to protest are environmental activists who have blocked roads and bridges, glued themselves to trains, splattered artworks with paint, sprayed buildings with fake blood, doused athletes in orange powder and more to draw attention to the threats posed by climate change.

The protesters, from groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain, argue that civil disobedience is justified by a climate emergency that threatens humanity’s future.

Sunak has called the protesters “selfish” and “ideological zealots,” and the British government has responded to the disruption with laws constraining the right to peaceful protest. Legal changes made in 2022 created a statutory offense of “public nuisance,” punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and gave police more powers to restrict protests judged to be disruptive.

It was followed by the 2023 Public Order Act, which broadened the definition of “serious disruption,” allowing police to search demonstrators for items including locks and glue. It imposes penalties of up to 12 months in prison for protesters who block “key infrastructure,” defined widely to include roads and bridges.

The government said it was acting to “protect the law-abiding majority’s right to go about their daily lives.” But Parliament’s cross-party Joint Human Rights Committee warned that the changes would have “a chilling effect on the right to protest.”

Days after the new act took effect in May, six anti-monarchist activists were arrested before the coronation of King Charles III before they had so much as held up a “Not My King” placard. All were later released without charge.

In recent months the pace of protests and the scale of arrests has picked up, partly as a result of a legal tweak that criminalized slow walking, a tactic adopted by protesters to block traffic by marching at low speed along roads. Hundreds of Just Stop Oil activists have been detained by police within moments of starting to walk.

Some protesters have received prison sentences that have been called unduly punitive.

Structural engineer Morgan Trowland was one of two Just Stop Oil activists who scaled the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge over the River Thames near London in October 2022, forcing police to shut the highway below for 40 hours. He was sentenced to three years in prison for causing a public nuisance. Judge Shane Collery said the tough sentence was “both for the chaos you caused and to deter others from seeking to copy you.”

He was released early on Dec. 13, having spent a total of 14 months in custody.

Ian Fry, the United Nations’ rapporteur for climate change and human rights, wrote to the British government in August over the stiff sentences, calling the anti-protest law a “direct attack on the right to the freedom of peaceful assembly.” Michel Forst, the U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders, in October called the British laws “terrifying.”

The Conservative government has dismissed the criticism.

“Those who break the law should feel the full force of it,” Sunak said in response.

Even more worrying, some legal experts say, is the “justice lottery” facing arrested protesters. Half the environmentalists tried by juries have been acquitted after explaining their motivations, including nine women who smashed a bank’s windows with hammers and five activists who sprayed the Treasury with fake blood from a firehose.

But at some other trials, judges have banned defendants from mentioning climate change or their reasons for protesting. Several defendants who defied the orders have been jailed for contempt of court.

Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer turned environmental activist, said it’s “Kafkaesque if people are on trial and they’ve got a gag around their mouth.”

“That feels like something that happens in Russia or China, not here,” he said.

To highlight concern about such judges’ orders, retired social worker Trudi Warner sat outside Inner London Crown Court in March holding a sign reading “Jurors – You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.” She was arrested and later informed by the solicitor-general that she would be prosecuted for contempt of court, which is punishable by up to two years in prison. Britain has strict contempt laws intended to protect jurors from interference.

Since then, hundreds more people have held similar signs outside courthouses to protest a charge they say undermines the foundations of trial by jury. Two dozen of the “Defend Our Juries” protesters have been interviewed by police, though so far no one apart from Warner has been charged.

Porritt said the aim is “to bring it to people’s attention that there is now this assault on the judicial process and on the rights of jurors to acquit according to their conscience.”

IS BREXIT TO BLAME?

Many legal and constitutional experts say the treatment of protesters is just one symptom of an increasingly reckless attitude toward Britain’s democratic structures that has been fueled by Brexit.

Britain’s 2016 referendum on whether to leave the European Union was won by a populist “leave” campaign that promised to restore Parliament’s – and by extension the public’s -- sovereignty and control over U.K. borders, money and laws.

The divorce brought to power Boris Johnson, who vowed to “get Brexit done,” but appeared unprepared for the complexities involved in unpicking decades of ties with the EU.

Johnson tested Britain’s unwritten constitution. When lawmakers blocked his attempts to leave the bloc without a divorce agreement, he suspended Parliament -- until the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that illegal. He later proposed breaking international law by reneging on the U.K.’s exit treaty with the EU.

He also became enmeshed in personal scandals – from murky funding for his vacations and home decoration to lockdown-breaking parties during the pandemic. He was finally ousted from office by his own fed-up lawmakers in 2022, and later found to have lied to Parliament.

“People were elevated to high office (by Brexit) who then behaved in ways which were difficult to reconcile with maintenance of a stable democracy,” said Blick, the King’s College professor.

The populist instinct, if not the personal extravagance, has continued under Johnson’s Conservative successors as prime minister. In November, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that a plan by Sunak to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda was unlawful because the country is not a safe place for refugees. The government has responded with a plan to pass a law declaring Rwanda safe, regardless of what the court says.

The bill, which is currently before Parliament, has caused consternation among legal experts. Former Solicitor-General Edward Garnier said “changing the law to declare Rwanda a safe haven is rather like a bill which says that Parliament has decided that all dogs are cats.”

But Blick says Britain’s unwritten constitution means that checks and balances are easier to override than in some other democracies.

“Nothing can actually be deemed clearly to be unconstitutional,” he said. “So there’s no real blockage (on political power) other than that’s where you come back to self-restraint.”

A DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT?

In Britain’s system, Parliament is meant to act as a bulwark against executive overreach. But in recent years, the government has given lawmakers less and less time to scrutinize legislation. Because the Conservative government has a large House of Commons majority, it can push bills through after perfunctory time for debate. Many laws are passed in skeleton form, with the detail filled in later through what’s known as secondary legislation, which does not receive the full parliamentary scrutiny given to a bill.

It increasingly falls to Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, to scrutinize and try to amend laws that the House of Commons has waved through. The Lords spent months this year trying to water down the anti-protest provisions in the Public Order Act. But ultimately the upper house can’t overrule the Commons. And as an unelected assortment of political appointees, a handful of judges and bishops and a smattering of hereditary nobles, it’s arguably not the height of 21st-century democracy.

“Of course the Lords is indefensible, but so is the Commons in its current form,” William Wallace, a Liberal Democrat member of the Lords, told a recent conference on Britain’s constitution. “The Commons has almost given up detailed scrutiny of government bills.”

Since Brexit, academics, politicians and others have been debating Britain’s democratic deficit in a series of meetings, conferences and reports. Proposed remedies include citizens’ assemblies, a new body to oversee the constitution and a higher bar for changing key laws. But none of that is on the immediate horizon — much less a written constitution.

The protesters, meanwhile, say they are fighting for democracy as well as the environment.

Sue Parfitt, an 81-year-old Anglican priest who has been arrested more times than she can remember as part of the group Christian Climate Action, has twice been acquitted of criminal charges. She, too, was interviewed by police after holding a sign outside court reminding jurors of their rights.

“It’s worth doing to keep the right to protest alive, quite apart from climate change,” she said.

“It would be difficult for me to get to prison at 81. But I’m prepared to go. … There is a sense in which going to prison is the ultimate statement you can make.”

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purpleweredragon · 1 year

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What a despicable government

“Lord Blunkett, Labour's home secretary from 2001-4, said any new migration policy needed France's backing - and that the government knew it would not get it.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House show, he said: "They know they can't do it before the election even if it would work, and it won't.

"They're doing it in order to put the Labour party on the spot, provide a message after 13 years that they're going to get a grip of a problem of their own making."

Freedom from Torture, which provides therapy to asylum seekers, called them "vindictive and dysfunctional".”

#uk #xenophobia #tories #conservatives #racism #immigration

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beardedmrbean · 2 months

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LONDON (AP) — The British government hopes one last push can revive its stalled plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda. A bill aimed at overcoming a U.K. Supreme Court block on the deportation flights returns to the House of Commons on Monday, and could be passed into law within days.

That would be a boost for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is facing disquiet from fellow Conservative lawmakers as the party lags in opinion polls ahead of an election due this year.

Lawmakers in the House of Commons are due to consider changes made to the Safety of Rwanda Bill by Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords. The Lords inserted a series of amendments designed to water down the legislation.

All 10 amendments are likely to be removed by lawmakers in the Commons, where the Conservatives have a majority. After a back-and-forth tussle with the upper house, the Commons is almost certain to prevail because the unelected Lords can’t overrule the elected lower house.

Once the bill becomes law, it could be weeks before any flights to Rwanda take off, as people chosen for deportation are likely to lodge legal appeals.

Sunak said Monday that he was sticking to a previous promise that flights would start “in the spring.”

Britain and Rwanda signed a deal almost two years ago that would see migrants who cross the English Channel in small boats sent to the East African country, where they would remain permanently.

The plan is key to Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” bringing unauthorized migrants to the U.K. Sunak argues that deporting unauthorized asylum-seekers will deter people from making risky journeys and break the business model of people-smuggling gangs.

Just under 30,000 people arrived in Britain in small boats in 2023, many of them not from the African continent at all.

“We need to make it clear that if you come here illegally, you won’t be able to stay and we will be able to remove you. That is the only way to properly solve the issue of illegal migration,” Sunak told reporters.

The agreement faced multiple legal challenges, and no one has been sent to Rwanda. Britain has promised Rwanda at least 370 million pounds ($470 million) as part of the deal, whose cost is rapidly rising.

In November, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that the Rwanda plan is illegal because the nation is not a safe destination for asylum-seekers. For decades, human rights groups and governments have documented alleged repression of dissent by Rwanda's government both inside the country and abroad, as well as serious restrictions on internet freedom, assembly and expression.

In response, Britain and Rwanda signed a treaty pledging to strengthen protections for migrants. Sunak’s Conservative government argues the treaty allows it to pass a law declaring Rwanda a safe destination.

The Safety of Rwanda Bill pronounces the country safe, makes it harder for migrants to challenge deportation and allows the British government to ignore injunctions from the European Court of Human Rights that seek to block removals.

Human rights groups, refugee charities, senior Church of England clerics and many legal experts have criticized the legislation. A parliamentary rights watchdog said last month that the Rwanda plan is “ fundamentally incompatible ” with the U.K.’s human rights obligations.

#nunyas news

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