This Tuesday, August 28, 2012, three prostitutes were strangled by two “clients” during the day in Gatsata, an underprivileged neighborhood of the Rwandan capital Kigali.
Since the beginning of August at least 15 prostitutes were murdered but the police didn’t identify the perpetrators.
Violence across the country
There is not a day that goes without that the Rwandan newspapers publish articles about killings between people across the country. In some cases, perpetrators are unknown but a large part is attributed to domestic or family violences.
The authorities do not seem to be willing to find the solution. For some observers, the violence is caused by increasing poverty, injustice, frustration.. The indifference of the authorities is due to the desire of some leaders of achieving goals set by the government without thinking about the population.
The machete attacks
Recently especially in the Muhanga area former Gitarama, there were widespread attacks with machetes. The Authority could not identify the perpetrators except some street boys presented to the press as scapegoats.
For the Authorities, perpetrators are thefts but in many cases nothing had been taken by the attackers who had the deliberate intent to kill or injure. Another hypothesis is that victims are genocide survivors, but Ibuka and the government didn’t report any case which a genocide survivor was involved.
Prostitutes
The case of prostitutes do not seem to be a priority for authorities who are busy persecuting and spying on the opponents and the population.
We only lament the inaction of the authorities. Everybody knows the ability of the intelligence services who have agents everywhere. Some even blame the intelligence services in these actions because these murders seem organized and planned. Neither the police nor the authorities seem to have taken exceptional measures.
Some speculations indicate a plan of intelligence to clean up eventual bases of opponents and scare people to prevent any claim or possible uprising in the current situation in which the government seems to be in bad shape after the suspension of  external aid and increasing pressure from the opposition.
If the authorities are not behind these acts, they should start investigations and arrest the real culprits without trying to find scapegoats among innocent people.
Marc Matabaro
