‘Heart-breaking’: Refugees once detained offshore by Australia warn the UK government not to push through its Rwanda policy | CNN

“They stole six years of my life, and I committed no crime,” writer Behrouz Boochani tells CNN from New Zealand, where he now lives.

He does not mince his words as he describes the impact of being detained as an asylum seeker on a remote island in Papua New Guinea by the Australian government.

“I call it the machine of violence,” he says.

Fleeing persecution as a Kurd in Iran, Boochani made the treacherous journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat in 2013. At the time, under Australia’s policy of offshore detention, asylum seekers were sent to Nauru and Papua New Guinea, where they were held while their claims were processed. They were told they would never settle in Australia. Boochani was eventually able to escape after being flown to New Zealand for a literary festival to speak about an award-winning book he wrote during his time in detention; he was granted refugee status there…

Source: ‘Heart-breaking’: Refugees once detained offshore by Australia warn the UK government not to push through its Rwanda policy | CNN

The UK Again Attempts to Bend Truth on Rwanda | Human Rights Watch

…When asked about an incident in which Rwandan security forces shot and killed 12 Congolese refugees during a 2018 protest over cuts in food rations in the Kiziba refugee camp, Mitchell claimed the incident was “highly contested.” In its December 2023 policy statement, the UK government also tried to present the killings as “an isolated case [with] no information on similar incidents since 2018.”

There is nothing contested about what happened. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that Rwandan police used excessive force during the protest. Dozens of protesters were arrested and prosecuted, with those who signed a letter to the UN pleading for increased food rations receiving the heaviest sentences.

Impunity for security forces, a cover-up report by Rwanda’s National Human Rights Commission, and the jailing of dozens of refugees sent a stark warning against any further attempts to organize protests.

Mitchell also failed to mention Rwanda’s involvement in one of the largest displacement crises on the continent in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, by backing the abusive M23 armed group that has committed widespread atrocities. He omits the fact that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has opposed the UK-Rwanda asylum deal, instead seeming to deliberately mislead the audience into thinking otherwise by comparing the deal to a UNHCR transit mechanism that temporarily hosts asylum seekers and refugees voluntarily evacuated from Libya to Rwanda.

Instead of focusing on how Rwanda’s capital Kigali may be considered safe from petty thievery, Mitchell should examine how those who question the Rwandan government’s right record have been blocked from entering the countryarresteddisappeared, or ended up dead in unexplained circumstances…

Source: The UK Again Attempts to Bend Truth on Rwanda | Human Rights Watch

Dating Dangerous Liaisons | From Behind the Pen

Image Credit: cottonbro studio

While I am not a fan of dating or finding a date through an app, I try not to judge those who do. But every day I see evidence of the danger presented when the heart overrules the head. Dating apps have been gaining momentum from extortion through fake profiles and photos, to death and criminality.

Sometimes, people think this only occurs with the young and naïve believing in a state of alleged reality that those individuals masquerading as the real person depicted in the photos on these apps are tried and true. But we also find that people over 50, 60, and 70 are being spammed, scammed, and flimflammed. Victim exploitation occurs when prime candidates want to get back out on the dating scene, but are oversharing information about their loneliness, that they are a widow or widower, they are isolated and lonely, or these scammers detect obvious neediness. Bingo! They check into your life and don’t check out, at least not that easy anyway, and without repercussions.

Often I wonder how these people can live with themselves, taking things so far and threatening their victims because their victims have unknowingly fed them all they need to know to take advantage of and manipulate them to financial ruin, criminal prosecution, winding up on a missing persons report, or even death. I’ve known of a few people who are considered smart, with educational achievements, and appear to have good common sense who vow to the validity of some of these dating apps, only to come out on the losing end of the deal because they were played like a monopoly game, resulting in no love and no satisfaction.

While there are some success stories with these dating apps, you must be careful about who you let into your life and personal space when they knock. I’m sure that the developers of these dating apps designed their objective to connect like-minded people looking for love or companionship. But as always, when something has been developed for good, like social media in general, we find that shady characters look for ways to manipulate a person’s trust and see where such individuals are desperate by offering too much or all of themselves before realizing they are in too deep.

If you are using one or more of these apps, please exercise caution, because these exploiters are seasoned by what they do. They could care less about your hurt feelings or pride, they just care about how much they can extort from you.

Image Credit: Pixabay

Source: Dating Dangerous Liaisons | From Behind the Pen