Refugee Barrister Takes Down Tories on BBC Question Time

It's been another week of rows and resignations over the Tories' plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and on Question Time, barrister Hashima Hamid said it wasn't worth all the energy. We know it's not worth it, you know it's not worth it, I'm sure Bim really deep down in his heart knows it's not worth it and yet let's think about what's happening right now. First things first, it's important to acknowledge that people are really concerned about the boats crossings and so many people are dying and something has to be done. I think any rational person agrees on that level. Two years ago I travelled to Dresden, the German town, and I met an Eritrean man who had been deported from Israel to Rwanda. He'd been paid to go to Rwanda, Rwanda had a reciprocal arrangement with Israel to take refugees. When he got there the Rwandans said you don't need to stay, there's the door and he used the money that he was given to make his way back that treacherous journey and he made his way to Dresden where he sought asylum again. The Supreme Court in Israel struck down that law and when we got to our Supreme Court there's a passage by our learned judges where they said the Home Office hadn't even assessed the Israel-Rwanda policy before they decided to adopt it. That's really interesting that final point because he's saying look you know the UK often say this is an experimental policy of course it's not going to work straight away but we are sort of a front line when it comes to working out how to deal with asylum seekers in the 21st century in a very cruel way by the way. But he's saying this has been tried before and it didn't work and the reason it didn't work is because you can send people to Rwanda but if they're free to leave again you know they didn't want to go to Rwanda in the first place. I mean it sounds like in this instance they wanted to go to Israel then they got sent to Rwanda and then they ultimately go to Germany. I suppose as the Tory party you could say well if they go to Rwanda and then they leave Rwanda and go to a different European country fine as long as they don't come back here. I mean that might be the conservative policy. As we've you know said so many times though on this show the Rwanda policy isn't going to deter anyone because the plan has only ever been to sort of send one percent of people to Rwanda. If people risk their lives to come from the Middle East or North Africa they're not going to be deterred by a one percent chance of getting sent to Rwanda where they might just leave again. Hashim Mohamed is a very impressive guy and he's very well qualified to speak on the topic of the law and refugee policy. This is from a profile of him in The Guardian. Mohamed is a Somali who was born in Kenya where he lived in a rundown part of Nairobi with his four siblings, another having died, his mother who also had six children from a previous marriage and his traveling salesman father. When his father died in a car accident in 1993 Mohamed and three of his siblings were sent to England as refugees. They lived with an aunt and then in various low rent housing some of it rat infested and were eventually reunited with their mother. A confused and alienated boy he spent most of his teen years in a state of geographical and psychological dislocation. He went to a struggling comprehensive in northwest London where the head teacher was beaten up and laughed at but he eventually managed to get a place at the University of Hertfordshire to study law and French. From there he was awarded a postgraduate scholarship to Oxford, gained a position at number five chambers, noted experts in planning law, became a successful barrister, an accomplished public speaker and a broadcaster. He's made two well-received documentaries for Radio 4 and he's just written a book. Now if this was something that was sort of in discussion in the public domain now you'd say what he came as a refugee just because his father died that doesn't sound like a real refugee right? Now I don't know the history of this guy but the facts of the matter are he came to Britain, got an incredibly you know impressive education against all the odds and is now working as a very impressive barrister right? Clearly an asset to British society and we would say well you're not entitled to asylum just because your father has died. So you know he's a good example of how it can be a bit short-sighted to sort of treat everyone with suspicion who's trying to come to the country. With that in mind let's see what Muhammad went on to say next. We know it's not going to work, it's unviable, it's expensive and the only person it's working for is the Rwandans because they won't give us a penny back and what we're seeing right now instead of them actually dealing with this properly and actually having some real ideas, do you know what they're doing? They're attacking our judges, they're attacking our rule of law, they are dividing a society, they are making us feel like refugees are the scum and who are foreign. They refer to the European courts that we are a part of that have United Kingdom judges as foreign courts. It's not only just disgusting as this young lady was saying, it's unconscionable. The rhetoric is poison and we have to acknowledge that and absolutely I end where I started which is this is an issue that we need to grapple with. The gentleman talked about the French authorities. The French authorities have offered for us to station ourselves over there provided we pay. Imagine how much we could have used for that 400,000 pounds on that side of the channel, 400 million I beg your pardon, for us to be on that side of the channel to monitor it. Instead this week with everything that's happening in the world, everything that's happening in this country, this week our prime minister spent his precious time dealing with the loonies in his parties. It's unconscionable. Again very very well put. I mean it was interesting he was sort of saying something does need to be done about this. This isn't a sustainable situation. He sort of proposed that if the UK had a I suppose a processing centre was it or just a monitoring centre. I suppose a processing centre in Calais would make sense to stop people crossing the channel. Of course that only would work in a way would be piggybacking off the the harsh border control that the European Union has because people can only get to the UK from France of course or obviously some other northern European countries, Belgium, potentially the Netherlands. I think it's mainly France and Belgium isn't it. This is an issue where actually I don't know where it's going to go because obviously if you're a European country, if you're Italy and you put a processing centre in North Africa I think you'll get lots of people applying and then lots of people who won't get accepted and then they might still take the boat route. So I do think this is a difficult issue but I do think that the conservatives they're just doing a ridiculous form of politics. Hours and hours and hours of rowing, resignations, drama on political news programs for something that everyone recognizes won't work. And there's sort of another suggestion as to why this won't work which has come out this week which I've found very interesting. It's from Faisal Islam. So he's offered some commentary on what he's been hearing in Davos and it all sort of comes from this impromptu interview with Rwanda's president at Davos on Wednesday. BBC, is the UK deal working? Ask UK. The Supreme Court said that your country's not safe. Is it safe for refugees? Ask UK, which is UK's problem, not Rwanda's problem. But you're getting hundreds of millions of UK taxpayers money with not a single refugee. Faisal Islam has now followed up from that interview with these posts on Twitter. So he says epic Davos buzzfraid which is a little bit ridiculous but let's go on. Leading African figures told me privately that Kagame's clear frustration with the UK Rwanda deal communicated to me, it's UK's problem, we have money back or we can have money back. Also reflect eyebrows being raised in other African nations about general look for a man who likes to be seen as the modern leader of a confident Africa and who may have clocked that it may be reversing his considerable investments in nation branding. For example, I'm sponsoring Premier League football teams. He goes on, remember there are two sides to this deal, so the UK Rwanda deal. I got a note from a very connected commentator after my doorstep, quote, it's a really bad look for him. He knows at the whole point of this policy is to make the UK government look tough on migrants on the grounds that Rwanda is presumptively a terrible place to be sent to. It puts the Rwanda country brand back like 20 years. The only thing people associate with the country is the worst place the Brits can think to send people. Now context here, some real buzz about Africa jumping value chains, not just producing minerals but the finished products the world needs and doing so within a massive new free trade area. I thought this was a really interesting angle, Aaron, that isn't talked about much in the UK media and to be frank, which we haven't talked about much on this show either, which is that if you are, well in this case a Rwandan government, but any other government that the UK might seek to make such a deal with, you want to present yourself as a great place to invest, a positive up and coming place in the world. If you're famous for being, for want of a better phrase, a dumping ground for migrants that other people don't want, and actually a deterrent. Our whole country is a deterrent. When you think of deterrents you think of you think of prison, don't you? You say as a deterrent we're sending people to Rwanda, it's putting Rwanda sort of on the same level as a prison. It's not a good look, is it? And so it might be the case that even if this gets up and running, countries are reluctant to engage in these kinds of deals with countries in the global north. Oh we don't want these migrants so we'll give you some money to take them. It's like well that doesn't, you know, that's not really the role we want to be playing in the global economy. Now that's totally right. I mean the deal that was mentioned there in terms of, you know, national branding is obviously Arsenal. I don't know if people know this but, you know, you've got Visit Rwanda sponsoring Arsenal Football Club, obviously a major global football brand, not cheap, that's about 10 million pounds a year that deal. You're flushing money down the toilet, right? If on the one hand you're saying oh let's, let's, you know, promote our national brand, people can do ecotourism or god knows what in Rwanda, I think it's quite good for that, right? Go look at, you know, megafauna and these, you know, giant creatures and whatnot and, and, and kinds of wilderness that broadly, well that exists in some of Europe but no, nothing, nothing like what you get in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa obviously. On the one hand you're promoting that, on the other hand you're saying yeah okay we'll take, to be fair it's a lot of money, right? I think so far they've taken 300 million from the British government, they've not had to do anything, but basically they're advertising to the world that we're a dump, we're a shithole, we're the worst possible place you could send people, and I don't think Rwanda is that by the way, I think Rwanda's probably, I'm sure has the potential to be a remarkable country, amazing, you know, natural assets, great climate, lots of solar potential, if you're thinking about becoming a more prosperous country in the 21st century, it has a lot going for it, but you're certainly not doing that by allowing the Tories to depict you as like the worst hellhole imaginable. The analogue here is of course Nauru, which is used by the Aussies for their undocumented migrants, they send them to this, you know, small island, I think there's another one as well, I think it's primarily Nauru, isn't it? You know, that's different, that's a micro-state fundamentally. Rwanda is a country, it's not a large country, but it has a very densely populated by African standards, it's a largish country, and this whole point about well what kind of country do you want to be in the 21st century, broadly speaking Africa is not developing as it should be, you know, it's not falling into the slipstream that was created, it's not East Asia in the 70s, right? But there are some countries that are moving up the value chain and doing pretty well. In Kenya's one, you know, Nairobi is becoming a major global hub, partly because of its location near the Gulf, young population, very well connected, but if you look at, for instance, the major cities on the face of the earth, I think even by 2050, all the world's largest cities will be in Sub-Saharan Africa, by 2100, literally all of them, you know, Kinshasa, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Lagos, you know, so between population growth and urbanization, Africa is going to see a hell of a lot of growth over the next 70-80 years, economic growth. Will it be enough to meet the needs of people in Sub-Saharan Africa? That's the $64 million question, particularly with climate change, particularly with not using fossil fuels, we don't know the answer to that. However, there are some countries who look like they could step up economically, and there are others which have the potential to be, you know, economic global superstars like Nigeria, enormous country with incredible mineral assets. Whether or not that happens, again, a question for another day, but what you're definitely not trying to do is advertise the whole world that we're a shithole and we're a dumping ground for people that the Brits don't want. That is not what the Koreans and the Chinese and the Indonesians and various other countries in East Asia have been doing over the last 30-40 years as a developmental model. Megaphone's the world, yes, we're a dumping ground. Doesn't seem wise, and I think, frankly, Kagame will probably pull out of it, I think. I mean, they've got $300 million for nothing, but it seems to be more of a headache than it's worth at this point. You know, realistically, given the prospects of a Labour government, they wouldn't want to continue the deal. I mean, my god. There are very few examples of such toxic marketing, you know, self-imposed toxic marketing strategies by a country. This is up there for sure. I'm not a contract lawyer, but I assume if you've just been handed £300 million and you think the other side is going to withdraw from the contract, you wait for that to happen instead of saying, oh no, we're going to pull out of the contract and presumably therefore lose your rights to that £300 million. If I was the president of Rwanda, I would be biding my time, say, you know, Labour are going to be in power soon and they'll pull out, then we get to keep the money because that's how the contract works. I mean, as I say, I haven't read the contract, but that would seem, you know, from what I've read in the newspapers, it seems like they don't actually have an obligation to give that money back. I'd have thought if they pull out, they would do. So in a way, they're laughing, but they probably don't want this to go on for much longer. So maybe if the Conservatives pull, you know, a rabbit out of the hat and dramatically win the next election, they might say, you know, we're not doing this for another five years.