'Outrageous Rwanda plan is out of touch with reality – there are no jobs there'

25 November 2023 , 09:30

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Lily Inga is calling for a humane system after escaping the Rwandan genocide (Image: PHILIP COBURN)

A photographer who was just six when she fled the Rwanda genocide says the deportation plans are "completely out of touch with reality".

Lily Inga left Rwanda in 1994 with her parents and four siblings. She spent almost two decades trying to heal from the trauma, but the brutal reality of what she went through, resurfaced when Former Home Secretary Priti Patel announced the Rwanda deal in April 2022.

A Supreme Court decision earlier this month, left the plans in tatters, ruling Rwanda not a safe country to send asylum seekers to, but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his team are now drawing up draconian laws to resurrect the deal.

In the last 18 months, the Government has handed £140 million to its Rwandan counterparts, while desperately trying to push the deal ahead, which would see hundreds of asylum seekers flown 4,000 miles to Rwanda. The Government hoped it would also deter people from trying to reach the UK by unauthorised means, like small boats.

Lily spent two decades healing from the trauma of the Rwandan genocide (PHILIP COBURN)

Lily, 36, says: "I went back to visit Rwanda in 2017. There is a lot of unemployment and there are no services to help asylum seekers with their trauma and mental health. The country is far from perfect. There is little freedom there.

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"I don’t understand why the Government wants to send people there. It makes me disappointed in humanity and in England, a country that has benefitted from displaced people, with great minds and skills. Instead of spending all that money on Rwanda, the Government should be investing it on helping refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.

"Nobody chooses to leave their country. We left Rwanda because there was a war, we were not safe. Refugees don’t want to come here and take over England."

Lily, who also works as a campaigner in London, recalls the terrifying moment her neighbours were killed in the 1994 genocide. Lily was just six when she fled Rwanda, leaving everything behind.

“I remember our neighbours who lived opposite, were running towards our house, screaming my mum’s name, when they were shot dead" says Lily. "I knew something was really wrong. My mum made us hide under the bed but I could still hear the bullets. I was only six but I went into survival mode. We never thought this would be the start to a war.

Lily's mum Jeannette hid her family under the bed as neighbours were brutally murdered (PHILIP COBURN)

Jeannette (left) worked as a volunteer in a hospital during the Rwandan genocide (PHILIP COBURN)

"My dad was working in a different region, he thought we were dead. We finally found him and we all left Rwanda. We spent years travelling through Africa as refugees seeking safety, sometimes we were welcome and other times we were not. But one thing that saved me was education. I loved school and I still love learning."

The family spent three years in Kenya before Lily, her father and her brother moved to France in 1998. But the trauma continued, when they were held in a detention centre for three nights, while checks were carried out.

Lily says: "Suella, who is a person from an immigrant background herself, should have been working to give back to people in need, not trying to deport people, it is outrageous. I felt the same about Priti Patel. I don’t understand why people, especially women, would want to put people through that or put them in a detention centre. It is inhumane. We need a humane system.

"We spent three nights in a detention centre, it was so traumatic. I was so young but I remember a guy who was deported. He was screaming, it was triggering. And to learn that the UK helped fund a detention centre in France this year was hard to hear."

Two years later in 2000, the family saved enough money to call Lily’s mother and the rest of her siblings over. After years of being displaced, the family finally got their status to remain and they rebuilt their lives in France. In 2020 Lily moved to the UK as part of her work.

Lily says: "Visiting Rwanda in 2017 was a process for me to understand what happened to me. Our house was looted. Things are different and I can now say, I don’t belong there, I belong to the world, but not in Rwanda. It will always hold fond memories, especially playing in my grandmother’s house in the countryside, but it is a different country.

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Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman tours a building site in Rwanda, to see houses being built for asylum seekers (PA)

"This is why the Government’s Rwanda plan is so shocking. I try not to be angry about it, but there needs to be more dialogue, more conversations about refugees and asylum seekers. People come to the UK to seek refuge and freedom and they won’t get that in Rwanda. People who have been through a lot, will not recover in Rwanda the way they can here.

"I think it is worse for parents to heal, it takes longer. Once parents arrive in a safe country, they just put their children first, they ensure they are safe, they are fed and they get to school. For my mother, her time to heal came a lot later. I might have two university Masters, but only now have I healed, only today am I speaking out for the first time."

A spokesman from the Home Office says: "Channel crossings are down compared to last year. We've increased immigration enforcement activity, asylum decisions have tripled since the start of the year and we’ve ramped up returns. Our partnership with Rwanda, while bold and ambitious, is just one part of a vehicle of measures to stop the boats and tackle illegal migration.

"But clearly there is an appetite for this concept. Across Europe, illegal migration is increasing, and governments are following our lead – Italy, Germany and Austria are all exploring models similar to our partnership with Rwanda. We are carefully reviewing the judgment to understand implications and next steps.

"And we will continue to look at every possible avenue to disrupt the vile criminal gangs’ business model of putting innocent lives at risk for their own financial, selfish gain."

For the past 18 months the Daily Mirror’s #PeopleMove Instagram project has been providing a platform for refugees and displaced people, a place to share their stories. We share portraits of people who tell their story of an object they managed to bring with them on their journey to safety. Read Lily' story here.

Maryam Qaiser