A number of refugees in a detention center in Britain began a hunger strike, in protest against the decision to deport them to Rwanda, starting from 14 June.
According to a report by the BBC, on Friday, 17 people at the Brook House immigration detention center in London shared the details of the document they received from the Home Office regarding the plan to deport them to Rwanda, according to the Anatolia Agency.
The 20-page document stated that the deportation order would be implemented on June 14, and that the migrants could not object to the decision.
According to the migrants, the British authorities in the detention center confiscated their smartphones and gave them old devices without a camera or internet connection.
Last April, Britain announced a new scheme to resettle asylum seekers in the UK and transfer them to Rwanda.
criticism
Veteran British politician Lord Alfred Dobbs described the plan to deport immigrants from his country to Rwanda as a "disgraceful policy".
"I think we have an obligation to protect people who have fled their country in search of safety," Dobbs said, in an interview with Anadolu Agency in his office in the British capital, London.
Britain's Conservative government won the 2019 general election on promises to deliver Brexit and restore control, particularly on immigration, refugees and asylum seekers.
In an attempt to meet the demands of her supporters, Home Secretary Priti Patel revealed in April of the same year the Rwanda plan, which includes the deportation of migrants who crossed the English Channel from France to Britain in small boats, to Rwanda.
Supporters of the plan believe that this strict measure is required to respect the will of the British people, and to dismantle international smuggling gangs that profit from human trafficking.
Critics, from MPs from all parties, including the ruling party, as well as charities and even the Church of England, denounced the move as an "immoral policy that offends Britain".
Among those critics was Lord Dobbs, born on December 5, 1932 in Prague, one of the Czech children rescued from the Nazis between March and September 1939 as part of the efforts of Kindertransport, a plan She helped European Jewish children escape to safety in Britain.
Commenting on reports in local media that Muslims may face discrimination in Rwanda, a country with a conservative Christian outlook, the British politician said that "people should not be sent to a country where they are likely to be unsafe".
Regarding the famous "take back control" slogan during the 2016 Brexit referendum, Lord Dobbs says it means "keep migrants out".
He also described Britain's exit from the European Union as a "disaster", saying: "At first, it meant removing the British from the European Union, and then it turned to removing immigrants as well."
Former parliamentarian Lord Alfred Dobbs: The plan to deport immigrants to Rwanda is a "shameful policy" (Anatolia)
On the reason for the attention paid to those who arrived in small boats, he said that their route was much more visible to cameras than the previous route, as the migrants hid in trucks before being allowed out within Britain's borders.
And local media reported that more than 9,000 people had arrived in the UK by small boats since the beginning of this year, in a toll that Lord Dobbs did not consider "large".
He pointed out that "refugees represent a small part of internal migration, and in any case, Britain is currently suffering from a shortage of labour."
He expressed "his country's need for manpower, and therefore there is a need to follow a reasonable and humane immigration policy for refugees."
"If we can combine support for the human rights of migrants and benefit from them in dealing with the labor shortage in the country, that would be a good solution," Dobbs concluded.
Dobbs was an MP for the centre-left Labor Party from 1979 to 1987.
In 1994, he was appointed as a deputy to the House of Lords, of which he has been an active member and, over the years, has worked tirelessly for refugees and asylum seekers.