It seems as though all sorts of things that we thought were illegal - ignoring Brexit rules, ignoring or overturning or altering the Northern Ireland protocol, sending refugees to Rwanda - are all legal after all.
Here are some things Michael Rosen has posted about sending refugees to Rwanda:
"Human Rights Watch found in Jan 2020 that...children accused of being “beggars,” “vagrants, ” or “delinquents” are...arbitrarily arrested and detained in transit or rehabilitation centers in appalling conditions, without due process or judicial oversight..."
UN, Feb 21, 2021
“During the review, countries across all regions called on Rwanda to end torture and ill-treatment, and investigate cases of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and deaths in custody. "
UK-Rwanda agreement:
"16.1 The Participants will make arrangements for the United Kingdom to resettle a portion of Rwanda’s most vulnerable refugees in the United Kingdom, recognising both Participants’ commitment towards providing better international protection for refugees."
In other words, Rwanda can send refugees to the UK, comments Michael Rosen.
We really do need an international agreement on what to do about the refugee crisis but I never imagined it to be a case of “swapping” refugees, taking bunches of vulnerable people and sending them off to some other part of the world for our convenience. There has to be a better way of organising things.
Of course, many of these refugees are not the poorest in their countries. Often they are the ones who have enough to manage to get out, to pay the people traffickers, although often it’s just one family member, the rest remaining behind, working to save one or two family members. The very poorest, however, don’t even have the resources needed to do that. The most they can do is leave on foot, clutching a few belongings and hope for somewhere better.
It’s the same with the victims of the climate crisis: it’s the poor who will suffer the most. My sister, who has lived on the South of Spain for about 45 years, just about all her adult life, finally had air conditioning installed maybe 8 years ago. She’ll be needing it as temperatures soar there (40C predicted), but she’s also contributing to the problem. According to this article
“March was the hottest in India and Pakistan since records began 122 years ago. Records are being broken by large margins. In India’s capital, Delhi, thermometers reached an unprecedented 49C in May, far exceeding the previous highest-ever temperature of 45.6C in 1941.”
India had apparently promised to sell its surplus grain to help deal with the world food crisis. Now, because of drought and heatwaves they have no surplus to sell - just when the world needs an alternative source of grain.
In Ahmedabad in Gujarat state in 2010 around 1,344 people died in a heatwave. So the city made a “heat action plan”, keeping shady parks open, installing water dispensers, restricting outdoor working to cooler parts of the day, helping ordinary folk deal with the heat, saving around 1,200 deaths a year since then. The government encouraged other places to follow suit and then cut funding for such plans!!! So it goes! Follow the link and read the article for more details.
Everything I’ve read this morning seems to be doom and gloom stuff. Apparently researchers in the Canary Islands have been finding lumps of hardened tar dotted with brightly coloured bits of plastic. They’ve labelled it “plastitar”, one of the latest manifestations of how plastic pollution is taking over the world. Bits of microplastic and fragments of broken plastic items stick to tar and it hardens into these lumps, stuck to rocks on the shore. No doubt artists will be able to make something beautiful out of it. But basically, we’ve messed the planet up!
On a lighter note, I came across this headline:
What stops me worrying about the zombie apocalypse? Routine, routine, routine
Evelyn Mok
Personally I have never worried about the zombie apocalypse but Evelyn Mok, who turns out to be an actor and comedian, plays zombie apocalypse games online and suffers from anxiety in all sorts of areas of her life. I hope she’s exaggerating, for comic affect, about the zombie apocalypse stuff but really there are more important things to get anxious about in the modern world!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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