“As Long as We Live on the Streets, They Will Beat Us”

Summary At Gikondo they beat us with clubs on our heads and the backs of our feet. They said that as long as we live on the streets, they will beat us. – Former 15-year-old male Gikondo detainee, May 2019. For over a decade, Gikondo Transit Center in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city, has served as an unofficial detention facility where street children, street vendors, sex workers, homeless people, and beggars are arbitrarily locked away. Since 2017, the government has introduced a new legal framework and policies ostensibly designed to reintegrate people accused of exhibiting “deviant behaviors,”…

© Human Rights Watch - lundi 27 janvier 2020