As Jews, as humanitarians, we say no “offshoring”.
JVL Introduction
JVL shares with those organisations defending human rights, supporting refugees and most civil society organisations our firm opposition – not to say revulsion – at the proposals to fly men, travelling alone and seeking asylum in the UK, to Rwanda for processing. Not only is this cruel, inhumane and lacking one iota of compassion but it will do nothing to protect refugees and asylum seekers, or, indeed, to deter human traffickers. To say nothing (for now) of the appalling human rights record of the Rwandan State under President Kagame.
We publish here the statement by the Jewish Council For Racial Equality along with their letter to write to your MP. And here is another, from Detention Action, with speedy link to your MP.
As JCORE states:
Such proposals are a cruel, moral failure to those in urgent need of protections….we must tell the government that unethical plans to deprive present-day refugees of their freedom cannot be in our name.
This article was originally published by JCORE on Thu 14 Apr 2022. Read the original here.
Statement on the government's plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda
This Passover – Tell Priti Patel: don’t banish asylum seekers to Rwanda
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Thanks for posting this. There are lots of petitions around, and I think it is important that people sign every one of them. But the JCORE one is perhaps the most crucial – because it comes from a community which is made up almost entirely of the children, grand children and great grand children of immigrants and refugees. We must not let the ladder of safety be pulled up behind us.
Yes! I agree with Naomi about JCORE and about our signing every petition. A young Director of the JCWRI ( joint council for the welfare of immigrants) spoke with passion and fury on BBC about the mindless viciousness of the counterproductive policy. She repeated several times that Israel is the only other country to have engaged in this ‘disgusting practice with Rwanda. Its heartbreaking that we have come to this.
I will sign every petition that condemns this disgusting plan by Ms Patel and ultimately the current government, all in the vein of nurturing their hostile environment ideology.
No human being is illegal and no humane person treats another so abysmally. They want to build prisons in another country that has many problems of their own in respect of human rights.
What a ‘convenient ‘ way to achieve an out of sight and out of mind scenario in the hope of getting loads of right wing votes!
Of interest would also be to find out what happens to those who get rejected by ‘failing’ their assessment. And should get anyone receive a visa, then how would they get to the UK?
The Nazis’ “Madagascar Plan” springs to mind and can only fill any normal decent human being with disgust.
I agree with your message. However, I think your
reference to Passover and the Exodus is misplaced. In the book of Exodus
God instructed Moses to exterminate the indigenous Canaanites and take
over their land as a gift from God.
Mike Levine
Appealing to either Johnson or Patel to “do the right thing” is a forlorn exercise as we all know. Both have often shown how their self-interest – in terms of clinging to office through pandering to their right-wing support-base – trumps their every other consideration.
Take for example their citing Australia’s inhumane policy of imprisoning its would-be immigrants in hot and unhealthy Manus Island and Nauru in Papua New Guinea for ” clearance prior to settlement in Australia” as successful re-settlement practice. Yet it was anything but!
Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer’s glowing explanation of this disastrous policy during the approximate period 2014-2021 obscured countless tales of severe illness, violence, eight murders, and a general failure as a means of establishing settlements of any sort.
By November 2019 at least eight of the detainees had died by various means, including suicide, some on Manus and some after being transferred to Australia on medical grounds. And things went from bad to worse.
As of June 2020, over 100 men from Manus and Nauru were being detained in a hotel in Brisbane after being transferred to the mainland for medical treatment then confined to quarters under lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were released into the community in February 2021.
In October of that year the Australian Government conceded the failure of its plan and cut off all support to the 124 remaining men on the island – leaving Papua New Guinea (PNG) to take over responsibility for them……
Yet Boris Johnson and his shotgun rider Priti Patel both assure us that it had been a great plan worthy of emulation. And they apparently have assurances that the plan for Rwanda to take over British illegal immigration policy is ready to go.
So the thousands of needy people of different ethnicities and from varying backgrounds wanting desperately to come to the UK will be able to rely on Rwanda’s generosity and human resources skills.
Buck passed! QED..???
@Mike Levine — nice bloke that God fella, recommending extermination of people.
I feel disgust at being British. Is this not what decent Germans horrified by the Nazi regime in their country would have felt when their Nazi regime headed by Hitler in the early 1930s planned to send all European Jews to Madagascar? Is this a ploy to get the support of racists among Red Wall supporters in the upcoming local elections? Where is the humanitarian interventions by the Opposition Parties? Outrage? Anger at such an inhumane proposal?