THE Law Lords’ decision on Wednesday that sending refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan to squatter camps near Khartoum did not amount to “unduly harsh” resettlement is one for the record books.
For it must be one of the most obtuse judgements ever handed down by that august assembly of lawyers.
In April, the Court of Appeal allowed appeals by three black African Darfuris against rulings of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that they could lawfully be sent back to Sudan, where they feared that torture and death awaited them.
The Law Lords’ reversal of that decision rests on some fairly fine points of legal interpretation but it clearly has very little to do with human concern or even common sense.
For return to Darfur, in most cases, will amount to a death sentence.
And it is inconceivable that the noble lords didn’t know that.
It is hardly a secret that the Sudanese government is complicit with the janjaweed militias in a near-genocidal campaign of terror and mass murder of its black African citizens in the region.
The government is facing dozens of rebel groups who have alleged that the region is being neglected and claiming that the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs and it has used the rebels as an excuse for a vicious campaign of repression.
Refugees from Darfur have reported that, following raids by government aircraft, the janjaweed Arab militias ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering men, raping women and stealing whatever they can.
Women refugees have told of multiple rapes, abductions and sex slavery.
The situation is so out of control that the United Nations security council has recently approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force to replace the 7,000 African Union observer mission which was swamped by the problems of the region.
Millions of people have fled their towns and villages and are now immured in camps with little food, water or medicine, camps that they cannot leave for fear of prowling militias.
Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have died either in the fighting or from starvation and disease in the camps.
And over 200,000 have fled the country to neighbouring Chad, where they find that living in barren camps along the border is preferable to returning to Sudan.
This is the situation to which the Law Lords consider it right and proper to return asylum-seeking Darfuris.
Echoing the original tribunal ruling that it would not be unreasonable or unduly harsh to relocate such refugees to camps in other parts of Sudan, they found that such a return would discharge all of the government’s legal obligations to the asylum-seekers.
That may well be so but, if it indeed is, that merely serves to illustrate just how narrowly drawn and inhuman the law is.
If the decision is legally correct, it is far from morally satisfactory.
It is to be hoped that, having won her little legalistic victory in court, Ms Smith now honours her pledge to review Home Office policy on Sudan in the light of the Aegis Trust report highlighting the torture of failed Darfuri asylum-seekers who were sent to Khartoum.
Law Lords or no Law Lords, common humanity requires no less
THE Law Lords’ decision on Wednesday that sending refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan to squatter camps near Khartoum did not amount to “unduly harsh” resettlement is one for the record books.
For it must be one of the most obtuse judgements ever handed down by that august assembly of lawyers.
In April, the Court of Appeal allowed appeals by three black African Darfuris against rulings of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that they could lawfully be sent back to Sudan, where they feared that torture and death awaited them.
The Law Lords’ reversal of that decision rests on some fairly fine points of legal interpretation but it clearly has very little to do with human concern or even common sense.
For return to Darfur, in most cases, will amount to a death sentence.
And it is inconceivable that the noble lords didn’t know that.
It is hardly a secret that the Sudanese government is complicit with the janjaweed militias in a near-genocidal campaign of terror and mass murder of its black African citizens in the region.
The government is facing dozens of rebel groups who have alleged that the region is being neglected and claiming that the government is oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs and it has used the rebels as an excuse for a vicious campaign of repression.
Refugees from Darfur have reported that, following raids by government aircraft, the janjaweed Arab militias ride into villages on horses and camels, slaughtering men, raping women and stealing whatever they can.
Women refugees have told of multiple rapes, abductions and sex slavery.
The situation is so out of control that the United Nations security council has recently approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force to replace the 7,000 African Union observer mission which was swamped by the problems of the region.
Millions of people have fled their towns and villages and are now immured in camps with little food, water or medicine, camps that they cannot leave for fear of prowling militias.
Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have died either in the fighting or from starvation and disease in the camps.
And over 200,000 have fled the country to neighbouring Chad, where they find that living in barren camps along the border is preferable to returning to Sudan.
This is the situation to which the Law Lords consider it right and proper to return asylum-seeking Darfuris.
Echoing the original tribunal ruling that it would not be unreasonable or unduly harsh to relocate such refugees to camps in other parts of Sudan, they found that such a return would discharge all of the government’s legal obligations to the asylum-seekers.
That may well be so but, if it indeed is, that merely serves to illustrate just how narrowly drawn and inhuman the law is.
If the decision is legally correct, it is far from morally satisfactory.
It is to be hoped that, having won her little legalistic victory in court, Ms Smith now honours her pledge to review Home Office policy on Sudan in the light of the Aegis Trust report highlighting the torture of failed Darfuri asylum-seekers who were sent to Khartoum.
Law Lords or no Law Lords, common humanity requires no less