Aladeen, who is being detained in a facility in southern England, asserts that he risked his life by travelling thousands of miles from his native Syria in order to avoid being forced to enlist in President Bashar al-military. Assad's
The 21-year-old is currently trying to stay in the UK and prevent being sent to Rwanda, where the British government plans to transfer illegal immigrants, by avoiding deportation.
“It’s the end of the world for me, I can’t imagine it,” he told Reuters by phone through an interpreter and declining to give his full name while his asylum claim is considered.
Aladeen is one of roughly 130 migrants who were initially handed a ticket to Rwanda but are now stuck in legal limbo as the British government tries to meet post-Brexit voter desires for immigration while also trying to regulate its borders.
He is one of more than 20,000 migrants who have travelled the perilous 20-mile route this year from France to Britain in small boats, traversing one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.
Early in September, a collection of human rights organisations and a union will challenge the Rwanda policy in court, arguing that it is impractical and unethical and that it affects migrants like Aladeen.
The issue of how to handle an inflow of refugees leaving war-torn nations or persecution in their own countries is one that governments all around the world are struggling with. The most recent nation to explore outsourcing the settling of asylum seekers is Britain.
Australia invented the idea, and in recent years, European governments have paid nations like Libya to ostensibly curb immigration on their behalf. Although Denmark and Rwanda have a similar deportation arrangement, no migrants have yet been sent to that country.
A minimum of 166 individuals have died or gone missing as a result of the emergency, with 27 drowning in the worst catastrophe in November, according to Britain's portrayal of its policies as a humanitarian.
But it has attracted widespread criticism – from lawmakers across the political divide, the United Nations and even heir to the throne Prince Charles – while the European Court of Human Rights issued injunctions to force the cancellation of the first deportation flight hours before it was due to leave in June.
The policy is also dwarfed by the scale of the challenge.
So far Rwanda has also only set up one hostel to accept UK arrivals, with capacity for about 100 people, representing 0.35% of all the migrants who arrived in Britain last year.
A British official said the government was in talks to acquire another three or four hostels in Kigali, but even those would only provide accommodation for about 1.6% of last year’s arrivals.
“I’m not going to pretend that the Rwanda policy is the single magic bullet, but I think it can make a big difference,” outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a visit to Rwanda for a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in June.
INHUMANE, UNCOSTED AND NOT WORKING
In the meantime, the asylum seekers keep arriving, with 696 on Aug. 1 alone. A report by parliament’s cross-party home affairs committee said last month that there was no evidence the Rwanda policy was deterring asylum seekers.The numbers have been rising for several years.
In 2021, 28,526 people were detected arriving on small boats – with the highest number from Iran followed by Iraq, Eritrea and Syria. That was up from 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019, and 299 in 2018, contributing to the 1.5 billion pound ($1.83 billion) annual cost of running Britain’s asylum system.
Johnson said officials earlier this year believed a record 60,000 asylum seekers could arrive in Britain this year.
Both candidates to replace him have also pledged to pursue the Rwanda policy, and the favourite, foreign minister Liz Truss, has vowed to extend it to more countries.
A spokesperson for the UK government described the situation as “unacceptable” and insisted the strategy was needed to stop people “making dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys”.
Britain argues that 90% of the asylum seekers who make the journey are men, many of them economic migrants rather than genuine refugees.
LEAVE AS A FRIEND
At the Hope Hostel in Kigali, arrivals are greeted with a sign in English reading “Come as a guest, leave as a friend”.“As you can see, people will find it very comfortable here,” manager Elisee Kalyango said of his hostel, perched on a hillside on the outskirts of the city, with its signs printed in English, Arabic, Farsi and Albanian.
About 20 people are employed to keep the rooms clean, the grass trimmed, and the facilities in working order even though there are no guests.
The plan is for deportees to spend nine months there, on a monthly allowance of about 90 pounds, while having their asylum applications considered before being moved to permanent housing in Rwanda.
The Rwandan scheme is intended to deter people like Aladeen from making hazardous journeys to Britain and to end people-smuggling.
With five brothers and two sisters, Aladeen says he didn’t know about the Rwanda policy before he left. He says he was a farmer who had to flee when he was conscripted into the Syrian military.
He says he was kidnapped and tortured for four months in Libya until his family paid a ransom. He then headed to Tripoli where he had a cousin, but fearful of being kidnapped again, left for Britain where he had relatives, via a five-day boat journey to Italy and a train to France.
Asked why he had not sought asylum in France, a question often posed by supporters of the Rwandan policy, he said he understood he would not be treated fairly there.
“I don’t have family there to support me, all the family I know, everything I know – all the human rights … that’s why I came to the UK,” he said.
In the northern French port of Calais, he says his family paid a people smuggler – he was not sure how much – and he made a seven-hour trip with 18 others on a small boat in mid-May.
Many others pulled out, too fearful to get into the boat.
On arrival in Britain, he was taken to a holding facility before being moved to a detention centre. He was initially given a ticket to Rwanda but said his lawyers had been able to cancel it.
“I feel I am being treated like a criminal. I am not a criminal, all I am doing is looking to settle and start a new life,” he said.
Asked what he would do if sent to Rwanda, he said: “I’m not sure – my life is ended.”