“Serious human rights abuses, including torture, are commonplace in many of Rwanda’s detention centers,” writes Human Rights Watch. According to witnesses, several people died after torture sessions.
The NGO spoke with several former detainees from Kwa Gacinya, an unofficial detention center based in Kigali. In this first center where they are sent after their arrest, the prisoners are forced, writes the report, to confess to crimes.
Mock executions, beatings and torture are then used by those in charge of the center to force them to confess.
Former detainees claim to have been locked in cells measuring approximately one meter by two, cells which, according to them, resembled coffins.
In January 2020, opponent Venant Abayisenga recounted the mistreatment suffered in this center and claimed that people had been killed there. The man disappeared five months later under unclear circumstances.
The report also documents cases of ill-treatment at Nyarugenge prison. Prisoners have testified in various trials that they were forcibly placed in a container filled with water where they were beaten by prison officers and inmates who were acting under orders from staff.
Another torture practiced in this prison: sleep deprivation by the permanent diffusion of light and loud music.
At Rubavu prison, former prisoners reported beatings often perpetrated by Innocent Kayumba, the prison director at the time, acts which led, according to several testimonies, to the death of eleven prisoners including the NGO obtained the names.
In this report, Human Rights Watch denounces “serious failings not only within Rwanda’s correctional services, but also within the judicial system and the national institution for the protection of human rights.” The NGO calls on the Rwandan government to “put an end to all acts of torture and ill-treatment inflicted on detainees”.
