Kigali - Rwanda, often lauded
internationally for its economic progress and reintegration
after the 1994 genocide, is detaining and abusing street
children at a holding centre in the capital, an international
rights group said Monday.
Two homeless boys who had been held at the holding centre,
known as the Gikondo Transit Centre, confirmed to Reuters that
they had been abused there, giving accounts that were similar to
those compiled from 30 children in the report by by the New
York-based group Human Rights Watch.
Rwanda’s justice minister, Johnston Busingye, said the
centre trains young people in skills including carpentry and
welding and rehabilitates them from life on the streets.
"These centres are run in full compliance with law," he said
in a text message to Reuters.
Rwanda adopted a law in 2017 that defines Gikondo, open
since 2005, as a rehabilitation centre for people including
minors exhibiting "deviant" behaviour. Human Rights Watch said
the government is arbitrarily arresting and holding people
there, and subjecting them to ill treatment.
Human Rights Watch said it had interviewed 30 children aged
11 to 17 between January and October 2019 who had previously
been detained at Gikondo. All but two of them had said officials
at the centre beat them. Children said they had to share
lice-infested mattresses with other children, access to medical
care was sporadic and there was no support for rehabilitation.
President Paul Kagame, who won a third term in office in
2017, is praised abroad for steering a peaceful recovery in
Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, when extremists from the Hutu
ethnic majority killed an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis and
moderate Hutus.
But he has also been criticised for what rights groups say
are widespread abuses, a muzzling of independent media, and
suppression of political opposition.
Nelly Nshutinamagara, 12, who lives on the streets of
Kigali, told Reuters he was arrested by police at night, taken
to Gikondo, and beaten with batons.
"They treat us badly by using batons…when one child makes a
mistake, they beat us all," he told Reuters in an interview
after he was released earlier this month.
Another child, nine-year-old Francois Muhizi, told Reuters:
"They lock us inside a big hall and refuse to let us out to
urinate."
Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations Committee on the
Rights of the Child, which begins a review of Rwanda's policies
on Monday, to call for the immediate closure of the centre.
Rwanda ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child
in 1991.
“Rwandan authorities claim they are rehabilitating street
children,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human
Rights Watch. “But instead, they are locking them up in inhuman
and degrading conditions, without due process, and exposing them
to beatings and abuse.”