Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Good News Tuesday for April 23, 2024: Seven Countries using Almost 100% Renewable Energy, US Climate Corps Website and Solar Grants, EPA to Require …

Seven Countries Get Almost 100% of their Energy from Renewable Sources Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic …

Good News Tuesday for April 23, 2024: Seven Countries using Almost 100% Renewable Energy, US Climate Corps Website and Solar Grants, EPA to Require …

‘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