Rumonge : trafficking of young girls in Kigwena

At least five girls have been victims of this “trafficking” since the beginning of this year in the Kigwena zone of the Rumonge district and province (southwest Burundi). The parents of the victims are calling for the dismantling of the network of traffickers of young girls which, according to them, operate in Burundi and Tanzania. Local police say they have arrested a suspect. INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The most recent case is of Chanella Uwiteka, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who attended Nyakuguma basic school in Kigwena zone.
According to residents of Kigwena, she has been bedridden in a hospital in the town center of Rumonge province since the beginning of April.

“She suffered inhumane treatment in Tanzania, she has injuries on her head, buttocks and feet. She was kidnapped in Kigwena last January and then taken to Tanzania where she was the victim of all forms of violence,” they indicated.

According to the same sources, it was at the beginning of April that she was abandoned on the road in the locality of Kigwena where her family picked her up.

Administration sources in Kigwena revealed to us that since the beginning of this year, five young girls have been recruited by illegal traffickers.

These teenagers are mostly schoolgirls at Nyakuguma and Cabara basic schools in the Kigwena zone.

Local police say they have arrested a suspect. This is Sabine Irankunda who has just been arrested for the second time for the same accusations.

The parents of these children deplore the negligence in the handling of this case, already in the hands of a judicial police officer.

A children’s rights defender who requested anonymity speaks of a highly organized network of traffickers of young girls.

He pleads for the collaboration of the judicial authorities with the district and provincial administration to dismantle this network, affirming that there are those who recruit these children in Kigwena, those who provide transport and take them across the Burundi-Tanzania border, those who welcome them in Tanzania and who resell them to those who exploit them there.

Parents of some victims also ask that the Burundian authorities work with those of Tanzania so that this network of traffickers is destroyed and that all the children who were sold on the Tanzanian territory are identified to be brought back to Burundi.