Torture prevention experts condemn UK’s ‘degrading’ and ‘discriminatory’ Rwanda migrant scheme

Priti Patel’s policy branded ‘punitive and discriminatory’ by human rights professors

Experts on torture prevention have condemned the government’s plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, claiming the scheme is “inherently degrading” and breaches international human rights law.

Just days before the High Court was due to hear the first legal challenge against the policy, leading academics, including two former chairs of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, warned that the process was “inherently incompatible with the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention”.

In a letter sent by Bristol University’s Human Rights Implementation Centre to home secretary Priti Patel, they wrote that “the rushed process of initial assessment” before deportation would increase the trauma of those involved.