- Conference
- 2023 National Black Members’ Conference
- Date
- 26 September 2022
- Decision
- Carried
Conference acknowledges that Black Migrants, including Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender plus (LGBT+) Asylum Seekers, face an unprecedented attack on their Human Rights.
We saw on 14 June 2022, four asylum seekers were forced onto a plane in tears, some in shackles, waiting to be sent 4,000 miles from the United Kingdom (UK) – the place they were seeking refuge – into a dangerous and uncertain future. The European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) issued 11th-hour injunctions to stop the deportations. The ECHR stated it had regard to the concerns before it ‘in particular [raised] by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), that asylum-seekers transferred from the United Kingdom to Rwanda will not have access to fair and efficient procedures for the determination of refugee status as well as the finding by the High Court that the question of whether the decision to treat Rwanda as a safe third country was irrational or based on insufficient enquiry gave rise to ‘serious triable issues’.
The refugee charity Care4Calais learned that former Home Secretary Priti Patel was warned by the Foreign Office that refugees should not be sent to Rwanda amid human rights concerns. Founder of Care4Calais, stated: “The government’s plan to send refugees to Rwanda is a threat to the lives of refugees,’ while the Home Office had particular concerns about the ‘ill treatment’ of LGBT+ people being more than ‘one off’.
Against this backdrop, the UK Tory government is pressing ahead with their brutal deportation plan after brief pause for them to resolve their own leadership wrangling and election. They have resumed issuing notices of intent despite legal challenges by Care4Calais, Detention Action and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), in the high court. And despite the grounding of the first planned flight to Rwanda on 14 June following legal action.
Subsequently in August 2022, newly arrived asylum seekers received letters telling them their asylum claims are inadmissible, the government intends to deport them to Rwanda to have their claims processed there and they have 14 days to raise objections to their forced removal.
Conference notes that the Rwandan government has violently restricted freedom of speech, used arbitrary detention and torture, spy networks and suspected assassinations of people abroad. According to a survey by The African Population and Health Research Centre with the Health Development Initiative, LGBT+ people are particularly at risk. A significant number of LGBT+ people reported hostility from family and communities, facing stigma and discrimination. LGBT+ people may be subjected to conversion therapy to exorcise their transgressive feelings.
The Home Office has even admitted there is a risk to LGBT+ refugees if deported to Rwanda, while Foreign Office travel advice is ‘individuals can experience discrimination and abuse, including from local authorities. There are no specific anti-discrimination laws that protect LGBT+ individuals in Rwanda.
The ECHR ruling on the UK government was exceptional. It rarely intervenes and only when people’s basic human rights are at serious risk. The ECHR ruling has increased the commitment of this UK Tory government to withdraw from the EHCR which provides judicial checks and balances.
And the Rwanda deportations are the latest in a host of aggressive, immigration policies. We are now 10 years into the hostile environment that makes health professionals, colleges, employers into border controllers. The same hostile polices wrongly removed British citizens of the Windrush generation who rebuilt post-war Britain.
The hostile environment has now been rebranded now as “fixing a failing asylum system”. Conference, we know exactly what this means – more of the same racist and LGBT+ phobic immigration policies.
Conference calls on the National Black Members Committee (NBMC) to:
1)Seek to work with Rainbow Migration and other appropriate organisations to lobby the Home Office to take urgent steps to prevent LGBT+ refugees being sent to Rwanda;
2)Work with Labour Link to raise these issues with the Labour Party;
3)Work with the National LGBT+ committee, the Equality Liaison Committee, regions and other sections of UNISON to campaign on this issue, particularly on campaigns against the ‘Removal of Rights Bill’;
4)Seek to draw any lessons from the legal challenge made by PCS union for future campaigning regarding the UK government policy of forced removals to Rwanda, on behalf of their members who work in the Home Office.