Rishi Sunak’s government aims to enact a law – the “Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill” – that threatens our most fundamental rights.

These are the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which Britain was instrumental in creating after World War II. They include:

• The right to freedom of expression
• The right to liberty and security
• The right to a fair trial
• The right to no punishment without law

The UK, like all other countries signed up to the ECHR, has incorporated these rights into our national law, through the Human Rights Act of 1998. The only European countries that do not belong to the ECHR are Russia and Belarus.

The Bill will “disapply” sections of the Human Rights Act, and many leading legal authorities have warned that this will mean that it breaches the ECHR. The government is pretending that this does not matter, because only the refugees it wishes to send to Rwanda will be affected. But this is to ignore the very first principle of human rights.

As the government’s own Equality and Human Rights Commission says:
“Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death. They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life.”

Removing human rights from any group of people is not just wrong in itself and in breach of a vitally important international treaty. It’s the start of a very slippery slope that history shows could easily end in the loss of rights for us all.

The Green Party will always stand up for human rights – for refugees and for everyone. Our parliamentarians will fight tooth and nail to defend our rights and stop the dangerously authoritarian Rwanda Bill.

If you agree, please sign our petition to #DefendOurRights!