LONDON: Charities have raised concerns over the potential for asylum seekers to be criminalized or transferred to Rwanda as the number being granted refuge in the UK hits a 30-year high.
The Guardian reported on Friday that Home Office data for the 12 months to March shows 75 percent of asylum claims were granted, with Syrians, Eritreans and Sudanese forming the majority of people making their way from countries with typically high approval rates.
However, most of them entered the UK by small boats or other irregular routes now exposed to risks of prosecution under the Nationality and Borders Act passed last month.
The same dataset also showed an increase in the number of Afghans making their way to the UK via the dangerous English Channel crossing, indicating that the resettlement schemes launched after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban last year are not working.
“The government has said it is giving Afghans a ‘warm welcome,’ but these figures reveal that many have felt they have been left with no option but to take this dangerous route to make it to the UK,” said Marley Morris, associate director for migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research.
“The government’s new plans in response to the Channel crossings could mean that Afghan asylum seekers will be sent to Rwanda.
“Contrary to the government’s claims, there are few safe routes for people forced into small boats to make it to the UK.”
Concerns raised over criminalization, transfer of asylum seekers in UK
https://arab.news/677rc
Concerns raised over criminalization, transfer of asylum seekers in UK
- Number being granted refuge hits 30-year high
- Most enter via small boats or other irregular routes now exposed to risk of prosecution
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
