Rwanda: Unlawful Detention, Ill-treatment in Gikondo Transit Center

(Nairobi, September 24, 2015) – The Rwandan authorities are arbitrarily arresting and unlawfully holding some of the country’s most vulnerable people in an unofficial detention center, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 48-page report, “‘Why Not Call This Place a Prison?’: Unlawful Detention and Ill Treatment in Rwanda’s Gikondo Transit Center,” documents prolonged and unlawful detention in the center, in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, between 2011 and 2015. The arbitrary detention of people such as street vendors, sex workers, beggars, homeless people, and suspected petty criminals at Gikondo (known colloquially as Kwa Kabuga) reflects an unofficial policy of keeping people the authorities consider “undesirable” away from the public eye. Until 2014, many street children were also detained there.