Kids detained illegally - HRW
15/05/2006 21:31  - (SA)  

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Kigali - Rwanda must free hundreds of beggars, prostitutes and street children who have been held in an illegal detention centre for months without trial, said the Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday.

The HRW said that since 2005, city officials in Kigali had been rounding up children and youths living on the street and holding them - as "vagrants" under colonial-era laws - in a former warehouse.

Detainees spend weeks or months there with inadequate food, water and medical care, and are forced to sleep on the floor, reported HRW in a paper entitled "Swept away: street children illegally detained in Kigali".

Those held are rarely charged.

Senior adviser to the Africa division of HRW, Alison Des Forges, said: "Detaining children just because they are poor, dirty and have no one to care for them violates their rights.

"Under international and Rwandan law, the state must protect these children, not just sweep them out of sight."

Rwanda's minister for social affairs, Christine Nyatanyi, declined to comment on the report.

City authorities could not be reached.

HRW said that while city officials recognised the centre should be closed, they said it was used as a "transit centre" and detainees were not held for more than three days.

Thousands of children and young adults live on the streets of Rwandan towns.

They were orphaned in the 1994 massacre of 800 000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a 100 day state-sponsored killing spree.

The HIV/Aids pandemic has also left thousands of children to fend for themselves.

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