The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-29)

8 The Sunday Times May 29, 2022

NEWS

country sends the refugees to the poor

country saying we will give you money.

The UK is the head of the Common-

wealth. It is betraying the values that they

pledge to everywhere, human rights,

democracy, tolerance and respect, free-

dom of expression, the rule of law. They

are all values Rwanda does not respect

and I think now the UK government is in

violation of the core values of the Com-

monwealth.”

Kagame, 64, has been in power since

1994 when his rebels helped to end the

genocide. In the last election five years

ago he claimed almost 99 per cent of the

vote. Critics of his rule have disappeared,

The British government is betraying the
democratic values of the Commonwealth
by deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda,
the repressive African country’s opposi-
tion leader has said.
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza spent eight
years in prison — five in solitary — after
returning from exile to challenge Paul
Kagame, the long-serving president, in
the 2010 election. She was arrested that
year and convicted of genocide denial
and conspiring against the government in
what human rights groups called a flawed
trial. Following a presidential pardon and
her release in 2018 she is living in the cap-
ital Kigali, where the Commonwealth
heads of government meet next month.
She cannot leave the country without
permission, however, and must appear at
a prosecution office once a month.
She is also unable to register her politi-
cal party, Development and Liberty For
All (Dalfa-Umurinzi) in Rwanda.
Ingabire, 53, criticised the British gov-
ernment for the deal, under which it will
pay Rwanda to take in an unknown num-
ber of people who have come to the UK to
claim asylum. “Everybody knows that we
have a dictatorship in Rwanda. That is
not a secret,” she said. “It is unacceptable
that a democratic country sends refugees
to a non-democratic country. That a rich

Rwanda’s opposition

leader — jailed for eight

years — attacks the Tories’

asylum plan and says her

country is no democracy

Hugo Daniel and Jonathan Clayton

Victoire Ingabire

Umuhoza, left,

decried plans for

Rwanda to take

migrants arriving

in Britain. Top

right, Boris

Johnson with

President

Kagame

Rail passengers’ ire

as copper thieves

steal power cables

carting away the copper.

Sergeant Lee Parsons of

South Yorkshire BTP said:

“When scrapyards are taking

raw copper in, they don’t

know it’s Network Rail cable

if it’s been stripped.”

Handling power cables can

be incredibly dangerous. “I

don’t know how we’ve not

had more fatalities,” he said.

BTP has been working with

Network Rail. Parsons is part

of a dedicated team in South

Yorkshire working solely on

cable thefts. They have been

running patrols through the

The next time your train is

delayed or cancelled, it might

be nothing to do with leaves

on the line or a strike — and

everything to do with a stolen

power cable.

Since the beginning of

March, cable thefts on the rail

network have soared, due to

the rising price of copper and

the soaring cost of living.

Thieves typically throw the

plastic-coated copper power

cable, which runs parallel to

the tracks, across the rails. A

passing train slices it into a

section that they can carry

off, saving them the risk of

cutting the 650-volt cable.

The whole network shuts

down.

Copper has long been

attractive to thieves, but the

problem is becoming more

widespread as the price of the

metal has jumped 64 per cent

from $5,694 a tonne in March

2020 to $9,345 (£7,405) today

— fuelled by the war in

Ukraine, a leading producer.

In April there were 56

metal thefts across the UK

network, compared with 30

in the same month last year,

according to the British

Transport Police (BTP).

In South Yorkshire alone,

16 reported cable thefts since

April 1 have led to 106

minutes of delays and 97 full

cancellations, and cost

taxpayers £519,530.

Rural parts of Yorkshire are

particularly vulnerable. In

cities, lines are often

overlooked, which makes

thefts more difficult.

Dean Hopper, a mobile

operations manager for

Network Rail in South

Yorkshire, said: “Something’s

changed in the past few

months. We get [signal]

failures, but we can deal with

them in an hour. Cable theft

could be a two-day job.”

Thieves will burn off the

branded plastic casing in

fields next to the railway line,

Hannah Al-Othman

I don’t

know how

there’s not

more

fatalities

night, visiting sites where

thefts have occurred and

dropping in on scrapyards.

They use drones with heat-

sensing technology to spot

suspicious activity. Parsons

added: “If there’s a cut, for

instance, at Retford or

Doncaster, that will impact all

the trains going north and

south. You’d have to have a

full stop on the line for us to

look at it, for Network Rail to

repair it.”

Thieves are also putting

lives in danger. PC Ryan

Arnold, who patrols with

Parsons, said: “The lights [at

level crossings] might be

flashing red but the barrier

hasn’t got the power to come

down, so then people are

going across... but the train

tracks are still live.”

@HannahAlOthman

Referring to a protest over food rations

in 2018 in which 12 Congolese refugees

were killed after an alleged excessive use

of force by the Rwandan authorities, she

added: “How will the UK react or feel if

something like that happened to the refu-

gees they send to Rwanda?”

Ingabire’s comments were echoed by

the daughter of Paul Rusesabagina, 67,

who saved more than 1,200 people dur-

ing the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and

was feted for his courage, but is now held

prisoner. Rusesabagina, played by Don

Cheadle in the Hollywood film Hotel

Rwanda, became one of Kagame’s most

prominent critics while living in exile in

Texas. In 2020 he was lured to his home-

land, via a private jet from Dubai, believ-

ing he was heading to neighbouring Bur-

undi. Kagame has called the operation

“flawless”. Human Rights Watch called it

an illegal “forced disappearance”.

Rusesabagina, who holds Belgian citi-

zenship, was found guilty of involvement

in deadly arson attacks in Rwanda in 2018

and 2019, charges that he denied. The

attacks were blamed on a group said to be

the military wing of the Rwanda Move-

ment for Democratic Change, a political

party he helped to found. He was sen-

tenced to 25 years for “terrorism” last

year after a trial described as flawed by

human rights activists and a sham by his

family and lawyers.

Last week the US State Department

declared that he had been “wrongfully

detained” and will now work to free him.

His daughter Carine Kanimba, 29,

hopes the announcement will serve as a

“wake-up call” to the British government.

She said that her father had suffered a

stroke and was being denied the medica-

tion he needs. If he was free he would

warn the UK to “not be fooled by this dic-

tatorship”, she said. “This deal cleanses

Rwanda’s image by presenting them as an

equal partner. Sending migrants there

isn’t just complicity, this is working with

Rwanda in the oppression of the Rwan-

dan people. It’s absolutely crazy that [the

home secretary] Priti Patel is doing PR for

a dictatorship. It is outrageous, it is inhu-

mane, it is unconscionable.”

The Home Office “country policy and

information note” on Rwanda refers to the

authorities “reportedly using excessive

force in some instances” including the

February 2018 protest “when a number

of refugees were arrested and killed”. It

adds: “This does not appear to be a com-

mon or regularly repeated situation” and

there is “unlikely to be a real risk” of it

happening to someone sent from the UK.

A spokesman said: “Our own assessment

of Rwanda has found it is a fundamentally

safe and secure country with a track

record of supporting asylum seekers,

including working with the UN refugee

agency, which said the country has a safe

and protective environment for refugees.”

GARETH FULLER/PA

died in mysterious circumstances or

been killed but he has also proved adept

at courting the West, sending troops to

fight Islamist insurgents in Mozambique,

protecting mountain gorillas and spon-

soring Arsenal football club.

Slightly bigger than Sicily, Rwanda is

one of the most densely populated coun-

tries in Africa, and already has some

127,000 refugees and asylum seekers,

according to the UN refugee agency.

According to the World Food Programme

38.2 per cent of the population live below

the poverty line and 35 per cent of under-

fives suffer chronic malnutrition.

While hotels and facilities are being

prepared for the migrants in Kigali, legal

challenges have led to the first flights

being delayed until at least June 6. The

prime minister said last month that tens

of thousands of migrants could be flown

there in the five-year deal, which is cost-

ing taxpayers £120 million. Dominic

Raab, his deputy, has subsequently said

that it was likely to be hundreds a year.

Ingabire said that she had been

“shocked” by the arrangement. “It is an

abuse of freedom if freedom gives you the

occasion not to respect the law. These

people are looking for something better

and Rwanda cannot offer them this bet-

ter life they want to have in the UK.”

Human rights, tolerance and

freedom of expression are all

values Rwanda doesn’t respect

‘A betrayal of all Britain’s values’