Musings From Abroad

UK Conservatives planned 10 billion pounds for Rwanda migrant scheme, official reveals

Published

4 months ago

July 23, 2024

Britain’s new interior minister has accused the Conservative administration of hiding the cost of an abandoned proposal to deport thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda, which was estimated to cost 10 billion pounds ($13 billion).

After winning a comfortable election this month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new government ended the plan. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told parliament that taxpayers had spent 700 million pounds on charter flights that never took off, Rwandan government payments, and public workers’ hours.

Two weeks after becoming home secretary, she evaluated the “policies, programmes and legislation that we have inherited”. She declared, “It is the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money I have ever seen.”

For many Britons, leaving the EU in 2016 meant reclaiming control of Britain’s borders and curbing immigration, but reports suggest the issue persists. Already this year, 6,265 persons have been found, about 25% more than last year.

Former PM Boris Johnson approved the plan in April 2022. Illegal immigrants to Britain after January 1, 2022, are sent to Rwanda, 4,000 miles (6,400 km).

The former Conservative government declared in 2022 that it would send undocumented asylum seekers to Rwanda. In 2022, the Conservative administration declared it would send undocumented asylum seekers to Rwanda.

However, legal issues stopped anyone from being transferred to East Africa except for four voluntary migrants.

In March, Parliament’s budget inspector estimated that deporting 300 migrants to Rwanda would cost at least 600 million pounds, a small fraction of the 15,000 asylum seekers who have arrived on England’s southern coast this year.

Former Conservative home secretary James Cleverly accused Cooper of using “made-up numbers” in parliament without evidence or alternative costings.

Cooper also said that tens of thousands of asylum seekers at risk of deportation will have their petitions processed.

She added the government would also lift an Illegal Migration Act ban on asylum for illegal immigrants since March 2018.

Instead, the administration promised to halt asylum seekers’ pricey hotel stays and clear the claims backlog.

Cooper believed the reforms would save taxpayers 7 billion pounds over 10 years.

The election campaign focused on stopping French asylum seekers from crossing the Channel.

The former Conservative administration said this proposal would eliminate human traffickers, but detractors called it immoral and unworkable.

After the UK Supreme Court ruled last November that Rwanda was not a safe third country, the government passed another bill to overturn the ruling.

Musings From Abroad

Finnish court imprisons Nigeria’s Simon Ekpa for aiding terrorism

Published

5 hours ago

November 21, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian separatist leader based abroad, has been placed under detention by the Päijät Häme District Court in Finland on suspicion of inciting others to commit acts of terrorism.

According to the local daily, Helsingin Sanomat, the court rendered the ruling on Thursday following his arraignment by the Central Criminal Police for his involvement in the terror attacks that have afflicted the southeast area of Nigeria.

“The police suspect that the man has promoted his efforts from Finland with means that have led to violence against civilians in the region of South-Eastern Nigeria,” stated Otto Hiltunen, the crime commissioner and investigation head.

“The man has carried out his activity, among other things, on his social media channels.”

Hiltunen also informed the court that the police suspected four additional individuals in Finland of funding Ekpa’s activities.

According to the story, Ekpa is of Nigerian descent and was born in the Finnish city of Lahti.

His offence occurred between August 23, 2021, and November 18, 2024, according to court documents cited in the publication.

Ekpa is not the only person the police have arrested. In February 2023, they caught him at a private Lahtian flat, but he was freed the same day.

Through the Eastern Security Network (ESN) and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, Ekpa has continued to be outspoken on social media, raising money and agitating for a Biafran nation to secede. In the southeast part of Nigeria, both factions have been involved in acts of violence, murders, and maimings.

Since gaining formal independence in 1960, Nigeria has seen the emergence of several separatist organisations. The latest surge of calls for self-determination among different ethnic groups has been louder under its immediate previous President Muhammadu Buhari.

Musings From Abroad

Malian singer Rokia Traore arrested in Italy, to be sent to Belgium

Published

1 day ago

November 20, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

After Italy’s top court denied her appeal, well-known Malian singer, Rokia Traore, who was detained in Rome in June due to a global child custody dispute, will be sent over to Belgium in the next few days, her attorney announced on Wednesday.

The 50-year-old Traore is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and one of Africa’s most well-known vocalists.

“Rokia suffered an injustice. She was arrested without the Belgian criminal court hearing her voice. Now, the battle for Rokia’s rights moves to Brussels,” lawyer Maddalena Del Re said in a statement to Reuters.

The attorney also stated that in its decision late Tuesday, Italy’s Court of Cassation upheld an extradition decision from the European Court of Justice.

Under a European arrest order, Traore was taken into custody on June 20 at the Fiumicino airport in Rome. In October 2023, she was given a two-year prison sentence in Belgium related to a dispute over her daughter’s custody.

She had flown to perform outside Rome’s Colosseum, and she has been imprisoned in Civitavecchia, close to the Italian city, since her detention at Fiumicino.

Lawyer Del Re said that because a conviction was rendered without the defendant’s presence, the Belgian process goes against both international norms and Italian constitutional standards.

After she disregarded a court order to turn over her baby to her Belgian father, the singer’s divorced ex-partner, she was initially taken into custody in France in 2020 on a Belgian arrest warrant.

She disobeyed orders not to leave France until her extradition case was handled by taking a private jet to Mali months after being conditionally released. Mali is where her daughter resides.