On May 16, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak addressed a Council of Europe summit in Reykjavík to garner European support for his government’s controversial “anti-asylum bill”. The bill aims to block all routes to claiming asylum in the United Kingdom and to send all refugees who arrive in the country “on a small boat” to detention centres in Rwanda.If this bill were passed some 15 years ago, I might not be alive today.
I arrived in the UK in 2010, at the age of 26, on a punctured rubber dinghy. I was traumatised from the torture I endured in my homeland, Sudan, and exhausted from my long and harrowing journey to safety. By the time the leaking boat reached British shores, the salt of the seawater had created a new, rigid layer on my skin, and I was convinced, perhaps for the hundredth time that day, that I was going to die.
These days concerning developments both in the UK and Sudan are causing me to relive these terrifying memories.
While I watch with horror the conflict in Sudan intensify, the government in my new home country is pushing for anti-refugee legislation which, if passed, will deny protection to the men, women and children who are being forced t …
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