The European Court of Human Rights ( ECHR) on Tuesday evening stopped the inaugural flight of a controversial UK scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
The flight was originally scheduled to take off on Tuesday night but given the stiff opposition and protest by human rights activists and the last minute intervention by the European Court of Humor Rights , the flight could not take off as planned.
According to the UK’s Media News Agency,” all migrants have been removed from the plane and the flight to Rwanda will not take off as scheduled tonight”
The British Government had made a deal with the Rwandan Government in April to allow asylum seekers in Britain to resettle in the east African country. The government insisted that the program was aimed at disrupting people smuggling networks and deterring migrants from making the dangerous journey across the Channel to England from France.
Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss had said that the deportation flight would depart regardless of how many people were on board.
She had said the flight was neccessary so” that we establish the principle and we start to break the model- the business model- of these appalling people traffickers who are trading in misery”.
But on the evening of departure, the ECHR issued a series of rulings in the cases of the last Rwanda bound asylum seekers, ordering the British government not to remove them.
In its ruling for one Iraqi national,the court ordered the UK Government that “the applicant should not be removed to Rwanda until three weeks after the delivery of the final domestic decision in his ongoing judicial review proceedings”
The ECHR found out that asylum seeker had not exhausted all legal proceedings in the UK with British Courts planning to hear the applicant’s judicial review challenge in July, and should not be removed until the determination of the matter.
Advocacy groups and government officials have applauded the ruling.
Mayor of London,Sadiq Khan tweeted” Tonight’s inhumane deportation of asylum seekers to#Rwanda has been stopped by the ECHR- minutes before it was due to depart. Sending people fleeing violence to a country thousands of miles away was already cruel and callous. It’s now potentially unlawful too”.
Care4Calais refugee charity tweeted upon news of flight cancellation” NO ONE iS GOING TO RWANDA.”
