RIGHTS: Rwanda Seeks to Close Overpopulated Prisons by Year-end

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Jean Ruremesha

KIGALI , Apr 24 2003 (IPS) - Rwanda is seeking to close four of its 18 prisons by December to solve the problems of overcrowding. The Central Prison at Kibuye, in the northwest of the tiny central African country – which was the first to be targeted – closed on Feb 25. Two others, one in the western province of Kibungo and the other in the capital, Kigali, are expected to follow suit.

Rwanda’s Minister of Internal Security, Jean De Dieu Ntiruhungwa, who is in-charge of prison operations, says the overcrowded jails pose ”environment and health” problems to inmates. Both local and international rights groups have been making similar points since 1994. ”As early as Aug 1994, we were already telling the government that with a rate of 800 arrests a day, there was going to be a serious overcrowding problem,” recalls Emmanuel Gashabizi, a Rwandan human rights activist. Since then, the prison conditions have been condemned by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission and other non-governmental organisations. By Jan 2003, Rwanda’s 18 central prisons had 120,000 inmates – five times the capacity they were built for. Eighty percent of the inmates were incarcerated for involvement in the 1994 genocide. The poor sanitary conditions and the overcrowding – four or five prisoners per square metre – in those buildings, built mostly in the 1930s and 1940s, made life inside unbearable. ”In my cell, there were so many of us that we could not all sit down at the same time, and when we did by taking turns, there was not even enough room to stretch our legs,” recalls Cyprien N., who was released from the Central Prison at Gitarama, central Rwanda, in February, after serving five years for petty crime.

The consequences of the overcrowding have been "dozens of deaths due to suffocation". In Sep 1994, two months after the present Rwanda government seized power, following a four-year guerrilla war, Kigali failed to secure enough aid to build prisons needed to deal with the increasing number of people charged with genocide. Up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by hard-line Hutu militia, known as Interahamwe – those who fight together in Kinyarwanda – between April and July 1994. That year, the country’s 14 existing central prisons and 230 small jails were filled with genocide suspects. In order to hold more prisoners, old warehouses and commercial buildings were turned into dungeons. ”Only The Netherlands agreed to donate towards efforts to build new prisons,” according to a top official at the Ministry of Justice in Kigali. Of the seven new prisons planned, only four were built. Three older prisons were enlarged with one or two new wings. Ever since, prisons have remained overcrowded. Rwanda appealed to humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross for help. At the end of 1994, the Red Cross provided aid for the purchase of water, food, dispensary equipment, the repair of sewer systems, and the installations of septic ditches. These assistance, although insufficient, were instrumental in preventing an outbreak of epidemic and, thus, limited deaths. ”In certain prisons, particularly Gitarama and Kibungo, the overcrowding was so bad that 350 people were sharing one latrine,” said a Red Cross official in Kigali. The prisons have also created unbearable conditions for their surrounding communities. The city of Kibuye, for example, was saturated with the stench of malfunctioning drains from the prison, initially designed for 600 but which held 2,400 inmates on the day it closed.

In the central prison in Kigali, built for 2,000 but which now holds 6,000 inmates, a huge trench that carries waste water into the Nyabugogo River cuts right through a densely populated neighbourhood. Environmental activists have criticised the scope of the damage that the Kibuye and Gisenyi prisons have caused to Lake Kivu. The demand for firewood has also meant that the forests surrounding the prisons have been decimated. Analysts believe that the only way to solve the congestion in prison is to speed up the hearing of cases of those accused of genocide. Some 40,000 prisoners will be released by Jan 2003. The remaining will wait until the gacacas (local people’s courts) decide their fate. The gacacas were established in 2001 to clear the backlog of genocide cases. Those sentenced will spend part of their time in detention and the other half in community service, outside the prison.

The first gacaca trials kicked off in June 2002. But clearing all the cases of the genocide suspects will take a minimum of five years, according to human rights groups in Kigali.