Rwanda National Police

Teta Uwineza and Salima Gihozo (both not their real names), residents of Kimironko and Nyamirambo, respectively, in the City of Kigali once boarded a plane, separately, for their very first time to separate foreign lands with a smile and with hope this would be a life changing journey.

What started with a smile and laughter ended up in a dark-side of the world… a life of begging to be dead rather than facing the unbearable suffering. 

The two women had one thing in common; they were lured into this death bondage by their so called long time friends under the guise of getting them well-off jobs abroad. 

Uwineza endured three years of sexual harassment in China while Gihozo had to bear a year-long torments and beatings in a country she later came to know as Lebanon although she knew she was in Dubai as she had agreed with the people who later turned out to be her traffickers.

On June 28, 2011, Uwineza boarded a China-bound plane from Entebbe Airport in Uganda to take on the so called lucrative job, as her so called friend she identified as Judith Uwicyeza, who was there before, had assured her.

“She knew I was out of job and I needed it badly to take care of my five children as a single mother. Even when I tried to tell her that it would be impossible to afford an air ticket and other expenses involved, she assured me she would take care of that and that I can refund later,” says a 43-year old Uwicyeza. 

Although she received friendly reception, from Judith and her colleagues including other Rwandan and Ugandan girls, things changed two hours later.

“She took me to a hotel where she told me she had paid for my stay for two days. This sounded weird. When I asked the kind of job she had for me, she told me to get ready in two hours to start it.”

“She came back later with her colleagues almost naked and told me to wear sexy clothes. I thought, maybe, this was the dressing code in the developed world. But as we walked down the streets, men kept coming asking me how worth I was for an hour or the whole night, but I kept blasting them; little did I know that the so called job that awaited me was to sell my body. Even Judith found me in my room and almost slapped me accusing me of throwing away opportunities when men approached.”

Two days later, it was a cat and mouse between Judith and Uwineza as the former confiscated the latter’s passport and demanded to be refunded $4000 she had spent on her.

This was the beginning of the worst the awaited Uwineza.

She was kicked out of the hotel, had no money and knew no one that could come to her rescue.

“Luckily while on street, I met a Rwandan whom I told my ordeal. He seemed surprised on seeing me and asked me what I had come to do. He told me the only job there is commercial sex and advised me to go to another city called Yiwu, (18 hours drive) and look for a woman called Jeanne, another Rwandans, who would help me.”

But Jeanne, the would-be savior turned out to be another predator with links to the Judith group that was this time hunting her.

The only thing she managed to get from Jeanne was to help her get the passport from Judith.

“Jeanne insisted that other girls were living a better life on earnings from prostitution and that I was no different from them.”

With no money to buy food and what to drink and rent a house, Uwineza had no other choice but to give in to commercial sex for survival.

“I even spent a year as a sexual slave to a Nigerian drug dealer. Among the terms to remain under his rented roof was also to vend and deliver cocaine pellets to his customers and look for new ones. This was a risky act owing to the fact that China gives no mercy to drug dealers. Once you are caught the penalty is a death sentence.”

Considering that Uwineza’s whole idea was to raise money to foot her air ticket back home to reunite with her children, she decided to run away from the Nigerian enslaver.

“I stole $300 from him and left Yiwu to Shanghai (about 24 hour drive) where I also met a Russian old woman, whom I narrated my ordeal and she took me in as his maid. She was a teacher of French but in the due course, she also secured me a job as a teacher, but this was short-lived because I had to remain indoor after I learnt that the Judith group was hunting for me and had hired some Nigerian men to kill me over the alleged $4000 debt. In fact, at one point, I escaped from my would be killers in a club where they had taken me under the guise as my friends, less knowing that they had been hired to befriend me to make their evil plan easier.”

She was sheltered by the Russian woman for about two years.

Uwineza arrested 

It is at this time that one Sharon Karenzi, another Rwandan, who claimed she had parted ways with the Judith group, came to her for help. She had nowhere to go, and she was pregnant.

“She was a young girl in her early 20s that I later came to learnt that she had lied her family that she was studying in China. I convinced my host (Russian woman) to let her stay so that I take care of her. Although she was pregnant, it didn’t stop her from doing prostitution, although I tried to counsel her to at least stop it until she has given birth, in vain. She was a drug addict too.”

But it is this Karenzi that betrayed Uwineza to the extent that she survived a death penalty in Chine by an inch.

“The sad movie started when we returned home from the hospital. One day, I took her child for immunization and when I returned home, few minutes later, Police came and arrested me. When we reached at the station they charged me with drug dealing. I was terrified. I started thinking about my children back home that I had not seen in years… imagining how they were expecting me to be with them anytime, which at this point seemed impossible because I knew my death was nearing considering that there’s no mercy to drug dealers in China, which is a death sentence.”

Good enough, although Uwineza was once selling cocaine, she never for once tasted it. So when the medical results came back, she was negative. She braved two months in a Chinese jail.

“I later came to learn from another Rwandan girl called Ange, who was also in the Judith group, that Karenzi, who was working on behalf of Judith, was behind all this and had filed a case that I was a drug dealer who wanted to kill her child. I was heartbroken considering all I had done for her.”

“When she (Karenzi) came, I welcomed her as my daughter since I was planning to bring her along with me back home. I even signed as her everything at the hospital where she was supposed to be operated, although, by God’s grace, she ended up giving a normal birth. It never, for once, came into my mind that she was Judith’s in-plant to study all my moves and inform her.”

Dream to reunite with children knocks

Although Uwineza braved two months behind bars and having lost hope since she had no one to come to her rescue and the only Rwandans she knew there were her best enemy, something good came out of it.

On September 1, 2014, she was released from jail after Police failed to get any evidence against her, and was deported back to Rwanda, the only dream she had had in the entire three years of suffering. She arrived at Kigali International Airport the following day on September 2.

According to Uwineza, she met more than ten Rwandan girls in the cities of Yiwu and Guangzhou, whom she said were trafficked there under similar scenarios.

“They are now spoilt girls and drug addicts who have lost the way. They have also become enemies to each other, plotting to kill colleagues. I pray that one day the lord sees their suffering and rescues them. Police or our embassy should do something because if they are not killed they will commit suicide because life is unbearable.”

Gihozo’s ordeal

After being lured by two Rwandan she only identified as Hussein, who guised as a student in Oman and one Issah, Gihozo went to Uganda on June 27, last year, where she was apparently supposed to secure a visa and meet her would-be employer in Dubai, who was at the time in Uganda.

“Hussein, whom I later came to learn that he was at the time living in Tanzania, claimed they had a company that gets people jobs abroad. He introduced me to Issah, who in-turn introduced me to another man identified as Ahmed Makumbi in Uganda.”

After about two months of ups and downs in Kampala, Gihozo finally boarded a plane with her boss she identified as Jawadu Muhamed, to the Promised Land.

“Our understanding was that the job was in Dubai and that I would be paid $600 monthly. Astonishingly, I came to know that I was in Beirut (Lebanon) after two weeks. On top of that, when I reached there, my boss’ wife told me that I will be earning only $200 monthly. When I told them that I won’t work for that money and that I want to go back home, they threatened me and informed me that I will have to first refund all the money they spent on me.”

Nature of work

Gihozo was required to sleep at 2:00 am and wake up at 5:00am to prepare two children for school, breakfast, lunch and supper for all the seven family members; mop all the eleven bedrooms, wash utensils and clothes. On top of that, she was also required to go to the houses of two of their daughters, who were married, to do the same domestic chores on Monday and Thursday, and at their grandmother’s house on Friday.

This means she would first finish the use hectic work at her boss’ house before going to any of the other families.

“I was also required to be at any of these four homes, if they had visitors, which was a common phenomenon, to cook for them and do other domestic chores. It was much work that you can’t bear. The only reward would be torture including being beaten by anyone including their 15-year old daughter. They treated me like trash.”

At one time, Gihozo fell sick to the extent that she couldn’t wake up, but this didn’t stop her boss’ wife to beat her to go and work.

Gihozo recalls a neighbour’s maid, who was a Bangladeshi, who decided to commit suicide by falling from a fourth flow to save herself from the year-long endless suffering.

She also remembers an Ethiopian girl they found on the street being raped by three Lebanese on day light with people passing and no one to care.

“If I wanted to rest, I would only excuse myself to go to the toilet and then sit there for like 10 minutes. That was the only time to rest in 23 three hours of working from Monday to Sunday,” says Gihozo.

Husband comes to rescue

Gihozo tricked her boss that she needed a phone, luckily enough he bought it for her. It is at this moment that she would at night send messages to her husband back in Nyamirambo, at night.

“My husband contacted Rwanda National Police and one night, he sent me contacts which he said were for a Police officer called Afande Tony (ACP Tony

Kuramba, Commissioner for Interpol at RNP) and that I should send him all the details about me so that he helps me.”

Gihozo was brave enough to confront her traffickers to ask them some particulars including the specific name of the place where she was being held.

“I told them that they were looking for me back home and that it’s a norm for our government to know where every Rwandan is and what they do. They ignored me saying that it was a trick of a slave to escape.”

However, she managed to know that her enslaver was to return to Uganda, an information she passed on to ACP Kuramba.

Interpol Kigali informed Interpol Kampala and he was arrested on arrival at Entebbe International Airport. He was forced to contact his family back in Lebanon to send Gihozo.

“I felt like I was dreaming when Afande Tony called and told me that everything had been sorted, sent me a copy of my itinerary which indicated that I would be on a Kampala-bound plane the next day.”

She arrived in Rwanda on January 25.

The two women believe Rwanda girls are being tricked and lured into this slavery under the guise of getting them jobs that doesn’t exists.

Gihozo says she even saved five other Rwandan girls, while Lebanon. “They were still in Rwanda and we also used to chat at night, so I told them about my suffering and informed them that they were headed to hell.”

“I want to share my ordeal with others so that they understand that the threat of human trafficking is real and life is agonizing,” says Uwineza.

Victims of human traffickers are said to be ending up in sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery as well as organ removal and sale.

Globally, 27 million people are said to be in modern-day slavery while about 800, 000 people are trafficked across international borders annually. About one million children are exploited by the commercial sex industry every year, 80 per cent of victims being women and girls while 70 per cent of female victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation.

According to ACP Kuramba, such vital information from victims informs the next form of action in the ongoing campaigns against the modern-day slavery and locating where other victims could be.

“Until 2008, the threat of human trafficking in Rwanda had not been realized. The threat is real however small the numbers. The gravity of the scourge and its dehumanizing effects cannot be underestimated,” ACP Kuramba said.

“Last year, we recorded 19 cases of human trafficking involving 25 victims including foreigners intercepted in Rwanda en route to either Europe or Asia. 23 of the victims were females. But about 26 suspected traffickers were also apprehended in partnership with other regional police forces” he added.

Since 2009, RNP has handled over 36 cases involving 153 victims, including 51 Bangladeshis intercepted in Kigali while on transit to Mozambique in 2009; 90 per cent of the victims are also females with 82 per cent of them aged between 18 and 35, according to Police reports.

“Prevention of human trafficking calls for bringing on board both national and international approaches. Nationally, RNP in collaboration with stakeholders embarked on community outreach sensitization to make sure public is aware of what awaits those who succumb to the tricks of human traffickers. Internationally, meetings are organized bringing on board regional and other countries beyond Africa to discuss its effects, how it should be prevented and joint response in terms of conducting joint investigations, putting in place strategies devising means of timely sharing of information that helps in apprehending suspects involved.”

 RNP also extended the international Police organisation – Interpol’s – communication system called I-24/7 to all border posts, which Kuramba believes will help gather information on victims and culprits.

The tool connects all law enforcement agencies in Interpol member countries and allows investigators access to Interpol’s criminal database to search and cross check data on suspected criminals or wanted persons, stolen and lost travel documents, stolen motor vehicles, fingerprints, DNA profiles, stolen administrative documents and stolen works of art.