The spiritual leaders of the Anglican Church on Sunday strongly attacked the highly controversial agreement between the government of Boris Johnson and Kigali to send asylum seekers who arrived illegally in the United Kingdom to Rwanda.
The agreement announced Thursday is the subject of strong criticism, in particular from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and NGOs.
It aims to deter dangerous crossings of the English Channel, which is booming despite Brexit promises to better control the borders.
“Serious ethical questions”
In his Easter sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said sending asylum seekers abroad raises “serious ethical questions”. “The principle must stand up to the judgment of God and it cannot,” he said.
“He cannot bear the weight of the national responsibility of our country formed by Christian values, because outsourcing our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do good like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures,” he continued.
Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said it was “so depressing and heartbreaking” to “see that asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and oppression” will “not be treated with dignity and compassion which are the right of every human being”. “We can do better than that,” he said.
28,500 Channel crossings in 2021
Home Secretary Priti Patel highlights the “unprecedented scale of migration crisis” facing the world, with a spokesperson highlighting the “changes needed to stop dastardly smugglers putting people’s lives at risk.” danger and to fix our broken asylum system.
Around 28,500 people crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2021 – a year marked by a shipwreck that left at least 27 dead – compared to 8,466 the previous year. Since the beginning of the year, they are already more than 6,000.
“Mutiny”
As soon as the device was announced on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, called for resignation by the opposition after the holiday scandal during confinement, said he expected legal action from associations.
In the press on Saturday, both the Guardian (left) and the Daily Telegraph (right) spoke of the risk of “mutiny” within the civil service, with FDA union general secretary Dave Penman highlighting the prospect that civil servants are demanding to leave the Ministry of the Interior or even the administration.
“Of the most divisive policies,” he said in the Guardian, “the choice for officials is to implement them or leave.”