LONDON
Britain’s Conservative government won the 2019 general election on the promise of getting Brexit done and taking back control – especially over immigration, refugees and asylum seekers.
As part of its attempt to satisfy its supporters’ demands, Home Secretary Priti Patel, in April this year, unveiled the Rwanda plan, which involves deporting migrants who have crossed the English Channel from France to Britain in small boats to Rwanda, where their claims will be assessed offshore.
Supporters of the plan say this tough action is required to respect the will of the British people and break up international smuggling gangs profiting from human trafficking.
Critics -- ranging from members of parliament (MPs) from all parties, including the governing party, as well as charities and even the Church of England -- say it is an immoral policy that shames Britain.
One such critic is Lord Alfred Dubs, born in December 1932 in Prague. He was one of the Czech children rescued from the Nazis in the Kindertransport, a scheme that helped European Jewish children escape to safety in Britain.
He was an MP for the center-left Labour Party between 1979 and 1987 and, in 1994, was appointed as a peer to the House of Lords, of which he has been an active and high-profile member. Over the years, he has lobbied tirelessly on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers.
“Well, I do have a view,” the 89-year-old told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview from his London office.
“There have been doubts expressed about human rights in Rwanda anyway and whether it is legitimate to even consider sending people there if one can overcome the other issues of principle,” he said. “I think we have an obligation to protect people who fled for safety.”
Responding to reports in local media that LGBT+ people and Muslims could face discrimination in Rwanda, a country with a conservative Christian outlook, he said people should not be sent to a country where they were potentially unsafe.
‘Shameful policy’
Lord Dubs said he agreed with the government insofar as the British asylum system is dysfunctional and that people smugglers were criminals willing to watch people drown in the Channel.
“But I don’t believe that breaching the 1951 Geneva Convention, which is what sending people to Rwanda would mean, I don’t believe that that is moral,” he said. “I believe it is a shameful policy, and I believe it is one which will be challenged in our courts. I don’t think it’s even going to work.”
He criticized Patel’s attacks on what she views as liberal, specialist lawyers holding up deportations.
“Priti Patel has been making hostile statements to lawyers for a long time,” he said. “There are legal challenges to what the government does, and I think that’s healthy. I don’t see many legal challenges in Russia. I don’t see many legal challenges in China. But I do see legal challenges possible in many democratic countries, and it’s part of our tradition.”
Lord Dubs added that it is a “pretty expensive” plan. Local media have reported that the Rwanda plan could cost around £120 million ($151.5 million), including flights, accommodation and living costs.
He said there were better ways of dealing with the problem but that these involved better relations with the French -- noting “it’s no good shouting at the French and blaming them” -- as well as a Europe-wide refugee policy because “I think each country doing a different thing doesn’t work.”
Vote Leave’s now-famous slogan during the 2016 Brexit referendum was “Take back control,” which Lord Dubs said meant “Keep them out.”
“Initially, it meant to keep people from the EU countries out, but it just transformed into keep other people out,” he said, describing Brexit as a “disaster.”
Lord Dubs said the reason those arriving in small boats have received so much attention is that their route has been much more visible to cameras than the previous route, which involved people hiding in lorries before being let out inside Britain’s borders.
“I would like the cross-Channel dinghies to stop,” he said. “But I want it to stop in a way that recognizes the legitimate aims of people who’ve got to Calais and want to come to this country.”
Local media reported that over 9,000 people had reached the UK via small boats so far this year alone, but Lord Dubs was unperturbed by the figure.
He said refugees were a small part of inward migration and that, in any case, Britain is currently experiencing a labor shortage.
“We need people,” he said. “We’ve got to look at a sensible migration policy and a sensible and humanitarian refugee policy.”
“If we can combine support for free human rights with helping to deal with labour shortages here, then that’s not a bad thing.”
Kindertransport
Lord Dubs spoke passionately about his own lived experiences and how they inform his views on those seeking safety today.
“I think if I hadn’t got on a Kindertransport, I doubt I would have survived the Holocaust,” he said.
“Remember in that time, 1938-39, no other country would take the Kindertransport children. It was only the UK. Even the United States said they were additional to the quota. So Britain had a very generous policy, although there were objections to it, in taking 10,000 children,” he said.
“I said goodbye to my mother and (spent) two days on a train and got to London.”
Lord Dubs said that while we have to respect that the situation facing children today is “not identical” to the one he faced in 1938-39, his journey on the Kindertransport was still “much easier.”
He described the journeys that some child refugees take today as “terrifying,” with some of them lasting a year.
“The journeys are much, much worse than they were for the Kindertransport,” he said.
He recounted the story of a young Syrian boy whose relative was killed by a bomb in front of him, adding that one reason there has been more sympathy for Ukrainian refugees than others was that the events unfolding in Ukraine are broadcast daily in the media, whereas those in Syria and Afghanistan are not.
‘We can do better’
Race also plays a role in the refugee debate in the UK, Lord Dubs suggested.
“The Ukrainians are white, and the Afghans and the Syrians are perceived not to be white, and we’ve got to make sure that human rights are not based on the color of skin, (that) they’re based on the human need to escape persecution,” he said. “We’ve got to go on saying that. So there’s as much need to welcome a Syrian or an Afghan as there is to welcome a Ukrainian.
“I want to welcome them all,” Lord Dubs said. “We can’t welcome everybody to this country, but I want to welcome in principle, whatever the background is, and see how many of them can come here as part of a wider European approach.”
He said it was unfair to question why Middle Eastern countries were not doing more for Muslim refugees in their region, citing Turkiye as an example, as it had taken in millions of Syrian refugees.
“We’re arguing about a few thousand coming to this country, so let’s keep a sense of proportion as to what other countries are doing,” he said.
“Yes, I think we can do better,” Lord Dubs said. “I don’t think we can take them all in this country, but I think we can do better than we have done.”
The Home Office was approached for comment.
