According to report, Rwanda has promised 'long term accommodation' to those who resettle in the country, but no details have been released showing what it might look like.
The
Gashora Transit Centre, 90 miles from Rwanda's capital Kigali, is the clearest
indication of where the migrants will be resettled.
Due to
recent report, asylum seekers in Rwanda have said they have been left in a
“traumatising” poverty-stricken limbo for years, barely able to afford clothes
and constantly in fear of the country’s brutal security forces, an
investigation by The Telegraph has found.
As the
Home Office prepares to send the first batch of asylum seekers 4,000 miles
south on a one-way ticket to Rwanda on Tuesday 14 June, this newspaper sent
journalists to investigate what was happening in the police state.
UK
Ministers claim that the deal to permanently settle migrants who crossed the
channel illegally to the East African nation will give people a chance to
“rebuild their lives in safety”.
Police
keep a watchful eye on the centre, refusing independent journalists access just
in case one of the refugees inside says something damaging to Rwanda's
carefully crafted image as Africa's 'miracle' nation.
Rwanda and
the UN set up Gashora four years ago with the support of the EU to house
refugees who had got stuck in Libya's civil war trying to make it across the
Mediterranean.
Today the
ramshackle collection of one-story concrete blocs contains almost 300 people
who hope to one day be granted asylum elsewhere. Take a glance at the local
apparatchik press or UN reports, and the centre seems idyllic.
“Look at the
smile of refugees from Libya hosted in Rwanda,” blares one Rwandan New Times
headline. “This centre is lifesaving for them,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN
refugee chief. “Because they find a future for their lives but also because
they are taken care of.”
But
refugees snuck out of the centre to tell Telegraph reporters the reality of
what was going on.
“The
economic conditions in the transit centre have been harsh. Since coming here, I
have not been able to support my child whom I left back in Sudan," says
one man whose wife died when he was stuck in Libya.
“The
poverty has been hard-hitting and the camp has been traumatising. No one can
stay in these conditions for long.”
Many live
in constant fear of the security forces. The refugees at Gashora have a curfew
of 8pm and are punished for being out late. Some alleged that local police had
sexually abused a 16-year-old boy outside the camp last year.
The Rwandan police have denied this, saying that the boy made up the allegations because he came back past curfew and wanted to avoid being punished.
“This is too little to have a decent living where I even find it difficult to even afford basic necessities like clothes, shoes and food outside the camp,” says another man from the Horn of Africa, who feared being punished if his name was published.
“The houses that they constructed are not enough for all of us. We lack privacy. We eat three meals a day, but the quality is so bad. We have been eating the same type of food since we arrived [several years ago]. We have nothing else because we don't have money to eat outside.”
“Medical services are not good. We fall sick and don't get medical attention on time or what is appropriate,” he continued.
The refugees said that they felt like they had been isolated in a turgid limbo at the bottom of Rwandan society, unable to speak the immensely complex local language Kinyarwanda.
Many trained professionals at Gashora are forced to work as farm labourers or domestic servants to make ends meet, but most are unemployed, relying on about £35 a month handouts.
“I never asked to be brought here and I don't want to be here. What was done was not done in my interest…They said we were being tortured in Libya. But at least people had the hope of getting a better life,” said an Eritrean man.
“Some of
our friends in this camp have been rejected for relocation and risk staying
here for the rest of their lives. This is not fair.”
While
Rwanda has undergone something of a development ‘miracle’ since the genocide in
1994 killed close to a million people, development has not been evenly spread.
T he wealth flowing in from Rwanda's
growing service sector and militia-controlled mines in neighbouring DR Congo
have transformed Kigali into a gleaming city on the hill. But most rural
Rwandans remain on average some of the poorest people anywhere.
Several
refugees interviewed that even if they got the capital needed to start a small
business to support their families, it would “quickly die” because of a lack of
money in the region.
Those in
the Gashora transit centre are the lucky ones. The country is home to around
150,000 refugees from neighbouring Burundi and DR Congo.
One
Burundian refugee in the vast Mahama camp in eastern Rwanda said that women
were often raped if they went out alone into the forests around the camp.
“The youth
consume drugs and alcohol to escape their problems. They have no vision for the
future.”
Ordinary
Rwandans say they're not sure where the UK's refugees and migrants will live.
Rwanda is slightly bigger than Wales, with a population more than four times
the size.
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