‘I’d rather die than go to Rwanda’

Asylum seekers housed on an accommodation barge on the coast of southern England say they are afraid of being sent to Rwanda, after a controversial proposal for deportation was approved.

"I'd rather die than go to Rwanda," said one of them. But none of those living on the government-leased Bibby Stockholm knows whether they will be on the list.

"Everybody is talking about Rwanda on Bibby Stockholm," said Atuib, a 23-year-old from Sudan, who crossed the Channel from northern France in a small boat last year.

Atuib has been staying for the last two weeks on the barge, which was moored in Portland harbour near the coastal resort of Weymouth, last year.

Designed to accommodate up to 500 asylum seekers, it has been controversial because of complaints about conditions on board. Some have likened it to a prison. One man was found dead in a suspected suicide last December.

But for some there, those concerns appeared secondary on Tuesday, a day after UK lawmakers approved the government's plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

"A friend called me from London to tell me the government will send every migrant like me to Rwanda," said Atuib in Weymouth town centre. But he said Rwanda would send him back to Sudan, from where his mother and sister fled conflict in the region of Darfur.

They are now in a refugee camp in neighbouring Chad, he added. "Rwanda is not good. It's not safe," he told AFP.

Rwanda has dominated the debate about the Conservative government's plans to curb irregular migration since deportation was first mooted in 2022.

But after the first flights that year were halted by a last-minute court injunction, the plan has been beset by legal challenges.