Rwanda Rescues 150 Victims from International Human Traffickers

KIGALI, Rwanda, Oct. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Up to 153 Rwandan nationals and foreigners have been saved from people smugglers inside Rwanda as part of efforts to curtail human trafficking, the government announced on 8th October.

At a joint press conference of an inter-governmental delegation, the police criminal investigation department (CID) said that since 2009, it had foiled 36 cases of human trafficking - totaling 153 victims.

"The largest single case involved 54 victims of Bangladeshi nationality who were rounded up in a Kigali suburb back in December 2010," said CID deputy chief Tony Kuramba. "The victims were all males housed in two separate buildings as they awaited transfer to Mozambique. The trafficker arrested in the police operation had smuggled them into Rwanda, headed for Europe via Southern Africa."

The latest announcement comes after Rwanda's President Paul Kagame in August raised an alarm over human trafficking. "How is it possible that our children - particularly girls – have become a commodity?" he said in parliament at a cabinet swearing-in ceremony. "The selling of our children must stop as matter of priority," he added.

The red flag has been followed up by an inter-governmental effort to galvanize a national response that is expected to go regional. At the press briefing on 8^th October, speaker of the lower house of parliament Donatille Mukabalisa was flanked by several members of cabinet to announce a major conference on Friday, October 10.

Among victims rescued from traffickers were Rwandan girls who would have been taken to places as far as Dubai, Thailand and China, according to records.

Police say some girls have been trafficked to Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi where they are sold off for marriage. As for those taken to the Middle East and Asia, police says the girls are lured with promises of well-paid jobs, only to end up as prostitutes.

However, compared to regional neighbours, Rwanda's law enforcement structures have made it impossible for traffickers to survive, as suggested by the German-based Alfred Weber Institute of Economics annual 3P Index based on UN and US State Department data.

The most recent index said human trafficking was less serious in Rwanda compared to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and other neighbors.

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