Faith Nyasuguta
With Britain pushing ahead with plans to send migrants to Rwanda, Hadi, a gay asylum-seeker who fled Iraq, says ut would be better if he were sentenced to death.
A controversial law passed in April details UK plans to send asylum-seekers deemed to have arrived illegally on British soil to Rwanda, an East African country some 6,000 kilometres (3,728 miles) from London, starting in mid-June.
Relaxing at a park in Manchester’s Gay Village, a neighbourhood in the heart of the northern English city, Hadi — not his real name — informed the AFP about his escape from persecution and rape attempts in Iraq.
He is still bearing the scars.
“I was hit on the arm and back and I lost consciousness because of the pain,” he said.
Hadi, in his twenties, sought asylum in Britain in January 2022 after crossing Europe from east to west.
On hearing about the plan to send migrants to Rwanda, he thought he was reliving his worst nightmares.
“We suffered and escaped death, we crossed the sea, all to be sent to Rwanda? Kill me or sentence me to death instead of sending me there,” he said.
In his view, the move is “unjust and criminal“, amounting to “a death sentence for all refugees” — and called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson and interior minister Priti Patel to abort the plan.
Despite homosexuality not being banned in Rwanda, LGBTQ people are frequently sacked from their jobs, disowned by their families, deprived of medical care and sometimes beaten up.
Britain’s interior ministry, the Home Office, admitted in a report to having “concerns” about the treatment of LGBTQ people in Rwanda.
‘DISMAY’
“Why do you want to deport them to Rwanda? So that they will be persecuted more?” Aderonke Apata, who founded the NGO “The African Rainbow Family” and helps LGBTQ migrants integrate into British society said.
Apata, herself a lesbian and ex-asylum-seeker, said Hadi “lives in fear every second”.
“He thought the UK respected gay rights… Now that he is there, he is suddenly faced with the prospect of being deported.”
She expressed fears there would be “no oversight of what’s happening… in detention”, and argued the monitoring mechanisms set to be put in place in Rwanda are not realistic.
“Here in the UK, personally, I had a homophobic attack when I was in detention,” she recalled.
“That was here in the UK. Now tell me, if people are now taken to Rwanda, who is going to protect them?
“For me, what the government is doing is a way of washing their hands of the conventions that guarantee human rights for refugees,” Apata added.
The government says its plan seeks to deter the growing number of migrants making the perilous journey across the English Channel.
Over 28,000 people arrived in Britain having crossed the Channel from France in small boats in 2021, compared with 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019, and 299 in 2018.
However, the move has attracted strong criticism from human rights groups, which on Wednesday launched legal action to block it.
It is unclear when the first flight will be able to depart, given the court challenge.
