The Guardian reports that a second flight could take off within weeks, although the high court hearing to consider the Government’s plans will not start until July 19th.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/03/uk-home-office-plans-second-flight-to-deport-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda

 

The first flight was halted after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. A Home Office spokesperson has said that the Government was still committed to its “world-leading migration partnership with Rwanda”.

 

Home Secretary Priti Patel has called the ECHR’s ruling “scandalous”, and some in the Conservative party are now calling for the UK to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-patel-calls-echr-decision-block-rwanda-deportations-scandalous-the-telegraph-2022-06-17/

 

Meanwhile, Eleneus Akanga, a Rwandan journalist and successful asylum-seeker who had to flee the country after criticising President Paul Kagame’s government, has warned that Rwanda’s human rights record means that it is not a country of refuge.

 

“A country that imprisons journalists, arrests people for posting opinions on You Tube and incarcerates party activists…cannot be trusted to look after those seeking protection from persecution,” he writes in the ‘i’.

 

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/rwanda-flee-criticised-paul-kagame-uk-refugee-deportation-plan-safe-1710562

 

Although the country has made progress since the genocide, Rwanda is also one of the poorest countries in the world, and the fifth most densely populated, he argues.