Police should let people know that their relatives are detained- LDGL

Justice

By Elias Hakizimana

League of Human Rights in the Great Lakes Region (LDGL) has said that Rwanda made a tremendous step towards handling problems of people who are said to disappear.

LDGL representatives in Rwanda were addressing local journalists in a press conference held in Kigali on Friday December 15, 2017.

The discussions were based on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on the human rights respect in Rwanda where LDGL presented cases of some people who are reported to disappear and later found detained by the police.

LDGL asserts that considering that this information is not communicated to the relatives of detained people as soon as they are detained is a threat to the human rights in the country.

Innocent Sibomana, the deputy representative of National Council of Free Trade Union Organizations in Rwanda (COSYLI) and the vice president of LDGL said Rwandan human rights organizations, in some of their surveys, used to find people in prisons after being reported to disappear.

He said that it should be better to report early that such people are detained instead of creating rumors that they have disappeared.

“It can be good news to hear that such people are detained than hearing they have disappeared, it is a good step Rwanda has made so far, but it is not fair at all,” said Sibomana.

Innocent Sibomana

Together with Non-Governmental Organizations operating in Rwanda, Government Departments, Civil Society Organizations, international and national partners, the NCHR contributed to the establishment of a roadmap for the implementation of 2011 UPR recommendations.

In November 2015, Rwanda was given  83  new recommendations during the  2^ndreview and agreed to implement  only 50 while the remaining 33 recommendations were not agreed upon  due to the fact that some of them were already implemented, others  being implemented  and others not totally agreed upon as they are not  in the context of Rwanda.

Minister Busingye Johnston told media that various institutions to which these new recommendations are addressed will soon start to work together in order to implement 50 recommendations issued to Rwanda and agreed upon.

Among these recommendations some were preventing (illegal detention), which the case is giving way to the citizens to say their people were disappeared while they are in prisons.

Commenting on the alleged human rights report “He also gave information to Journalists regarding recently alleged Human right watch report regarding illegal detention in Rwanda, Busingye said “There are many transit centers in Rwanda, one of Human rights organization working in Rwanda recently said that there is a transit centre in Gikondo which has turned into a prison where we illegally detain people as if they are in prison.

We provided enough explanations and showed that Gikondo is one of many transit centers through which people are given second chance through education and counseling instead of facing court charges.” Busingye explained.