PROTESTERS chanted as they rallied outside an immigration removal centre in opposition to plans to send migrants to Rwanda from next week.
Demonstrators shook the outer fence of the Brook House Immigration Removal Centre, close to Gatwick Airport, in protest at the government’s immigration policy - and people inside the facility appeared to be shouting back.
Dozens of activists shouted “we are with you”, “set them free” and “Britain is a racist state”.
In union with protesters, people inside the facility appeared to chant “No Rwanda”.
The plans would see some people who entered the UK illegally flown to the east African nation to seek asylum there.
A High Court ruling means the first flight to Rwanda could proceed tomorrow, but campaigners are due to challenge this in the Court of Appeal later today.
Christian Hogsberg, 42, a history lecturer at the University of Brighton, told the Press Association he was at the protest against the government’s policy to “show solidarity with refugees who are facing the danger of deportation to authoritarian Rwanda at the hands of a Tory government that is playing the race card in the most shameful manner”.
Up to 130 people have been told they could be deported, with the High Court hearing that 31 people were due on the first flight, with more planes planned for later in the year by the Home Office.
According to reports in The Times and the Daily Mail, Prince Charles is reportedly “more than disappointed” by the Rwanda policy, allegedly privately calling it “appalling”.
Abbas Artan, 24, an asylum seeker originally from Somalia who crossed from Calais in a small boat in October, said he has been living in limbo in a hotel near Gatwick for the past eight months.
He fled Somalia after the militant jihadist group Al-Shabaab tried to recruit him as a soldier and knocked out his teeth with the butt of a gun when he refused.
His journey saw him cross from Somalia to Ethiopia, then Sudan, Libya, Italy, Sweden, Germany and France, before crossing the Channel.
On the government’s Rwanda policy, he told the Press Association: “The government must stop this because the people will suffer a lot.
“Someone comes here to change his life, to send them back to Rwanda when there is nothing there… some people have said ‘I will kill myself if I’m sent there’.”
Rwanda’s lead negotiator for the deportation agreement with the UK said the country is ready to accept people in the “tens of thousands”, but will start on a gradual basis.
Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical adviser to the Rwandan Ministry of Justice, also defended the country’s human rights record for LGBTQ+ people, telling Tom Swarbrick on LBC: “The freedom from discrimination due to sexual orientation of a person is guaranteed in our constitution and the rule of law is there to enforce that.”
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