Trowbridge, 17 December 2023
Dear Sir,
Boris Johnson has successfully wrecked the Tory Party on the rocks of Brexit.
Rwanda is largely irrelevant.
The migrants in boats are coming via the EU. The only way to deflect and stem the flow is to work effectively with EU countries like France and Spain.
If your house has a leak, you go to the source and block it. Turn off the stop cock. Desperately mopping up water and then passing it on to someone else to get rid of, will definitely not solve the problem! Co-ordinated action, working to target the source of the problem is far more logical.
Unfortunately the Euro-phobic right wing of the Tory Party chose to ignore reality and seek to dump their problem on a Third World country, most famous for one of the biggest genocides in history.
Rwanda’s population increased from 1.6 million in 1934 to 7.4 million in 1989. This led to growing competition for land. The genocidal infighting in 1994 led to 300,000 to 500,000 being killed, one source claims it was up to a million.
Historians like Gerard Prunier, an expert on African history, believe the 1994 genocide can partly be attributed to population density. Now the British government want to place further stress on that population density. To add a growing number of migrants, with no connection to Rwanda, which has proved in the past to be an extremely combustible country, is surely unwise, indeed totally irresponsible.
The British government, for its own convenience, is claiming this to be a safe solution! Risking re-igniting the Rwanda tinderbox to solve a problem that could be sorted much closer to home in partnership with the EU…? Yet another misjudgement with potentially terrible consequences!
Sincerely,
Andrew Milroy
Editor’s note: The views expressed are the author’s own
Comments please to: editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
