WHEN governments close the door to the press and the public, it’s always a pretty clear sign that something rather unpleasant is going on, hidden from sight.

A few days ago, Iain Overton - an excellent investigative journalist who also works with the NGO Action on Armed Violence - contacted me with a sinister account of his recent attempts to get into Rwanda to report on what’s happening to refugees there. As a British journalist, he - rightly - saw it as a matter of public interest, given the UK Conservative government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda en masse.

Overton was refused entry as a journalist. He’s not alone. A number of other reporters claim they’ve also been denied access. In 2018, 12 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo were shot and killed by Rwandan police as they protested outside UN offices. So clearly, there’s grounds for concern over how the regime treats refugees.

The moves to stonewall reporters getting into Rwanda comes in the same week as it emerged that a Foreign Office official raised concerns about the UK government’s refugee deportation plans.

The official cited state surveillance, arbitrary detention, torture and killings by the government. The information emerged during the High Court hearings into whether the plan by the Tory government to send refugees to Rwanda is lawful or not.

The Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, frontrunner in the Tory election race, applied to keep ten passages from government documents secret during the hearings. Newspapers responded with submissions to the court saying this was not in the public interest. Fittingly, the mechanism by which Truss wants to cast a veil of secrecy over the matter is known as a 'Public Interest Immunity Certificate'. It’s now been ruled that four extracts from advice from the Foreign Office to the Home office on the Rwanda deportation plan can be withheld from the public.

It’s also emerged in court that in February 2021, the UK high commissioner to Rwanda said the UK shouldn’t do any deal with the nation as it has been accused of recruiting refugees to carry out armed operations in neighbouring nations.

It’s clear that the UK government knows full well that sending refugees to such a regime is dangerous. Yet Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, went into full gaslighting conspiracy theory mode when she claimed that those condemning the moves were racist. “If it was France, if we were sending people to Sweden, New York, or Sydney, would [critics] change their minds? That speaks of inbuilt prejudice - and I would even go so far as to say, racism.”

She made her absurd claims after the European Court of Human Rights granted last minute injunctions delaying the first deportations to Rwanda. Meanwhile, Truss has been accused of holding up the publication of the Foreign Office’s annual human rights report because it’s likely to contain criticism of Rwanda. The report should have been issued before the Commons’ summer recess.

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The last edition of the report said of Rwanda that “critical voices continued to face heavy restrictions”, and condemned the death in police custody of an activist.

Claims by ministers like Patel that Rwanda is “a safe country” are clearly deliberate and knowing lies meant to mislead parliament and the people.

So here we are: journalists denied access to find out what’s going on in Rwanda; Foreign Office officials issuing private warnings; government lies and gaslighting; documents hidden from public scrutiny; reports delayed; a record of violence against refugees and widespread human rights concerns.

Deception, secrecy and cover-up shows the policy is unquestionably dangerous and duplicitous. Quite simply, it should be stopped.