Stories of ordeal from the unvaccinated in Rwanda

I have learnt of families that were locked inside their houses on conditions that they would go out only after they have accepted vaccination.

Others are in custody for not accepting vaccination and many who, after being overcome by the inhuman treatment by authorities, have accepted to have the substance they feared into their bodies to buy their freedom from custody.

I have learnt about many squatting in bushes and thickets while others have crossed crocodile-infested rivers into the jungles in the neighbouring countries.

Some have been intercepted in any way by Rwandan authorities as they try to cross the borders, a country that has a long history of its people finding refuge in the neighbouring countries.

The stories

Last week, the government of Rwanda in Central Africa started implementing measures that restrict the unvaccinated from accessing essential services including public transport.

As a Kigali City dweller, little did I know that the hunting of the unvaccinated in the rural areas had been hailing at least for the last one month.

The new government directives made me try to share with people in rural areas my experience of the restrictions against the unvaccinated in the capital Kigali but instead found that some rural areas in Rwanda had the worst stories of the ordeal.

For the past week, I have not stepped in a tax park, bus stop, or bus because I’m forbidden from them due to being unvaccinated, considered to be a threat to the health of those who were vaccinated with the immunity to resist the disease.

Let me reserve my story and share with you the worst stories I collected from the rural areas as I get ready for the infliction to reach me as well.

I learnt that during the Thursday night, authorities rounded up households of the unvaccinated in Kabarore, a town in north-Eastern Rwanda and took scores of household heads to custody.

I have not heard of such operations in Kigali but it might be a nationwide crackdown because I have heard of a similar operation in Karongi in Western Rwanda.

Stories are told of an agenda to order all landlords in Kigali to send away all tenants who do not have proof of vaccination in the city where there is a steadily developing loath for the unvaccinated.

A group succeeded in crossing the crocodile-infested R. Akagera into Tanzania to hide from the run against them in Rwanda but one of them, a teacher, was arrested while his wife who was also a teacher and their children made it across.

Tanzania is Rwanda’s neighbour in the East nearly forty times bigger than Rwanda where, like other immediate neighbours of Rwanda, there is no run or segregation against the unvaccinated.

In the northeast, households are being rounded up with authorities and put strong locks on the house doors, telling the families that they can only get out after accepting vaccination.

Due to impossible monitoring of each family locked up in the house, households break their houses and flee into the darkness of the night never to be seen again or arrested hiding.

A deserted home in Rwanda rural area

Enforcement capacity

The tiny country has a long history of effective monitoring of its people developed from the fear that its children in neighbouring countries can attack using relatives within the country.

This makes it important for authorities to develop a system that monitors its people effectively and the system improves with every new government that topples the other.

The country administration is very effective in monitoring its citizens using local authorities just like Communist China’s public monitoring technology works.

There is a local authority representative among every 10 or fewer households who monitors and reports about each household under their jurisdiction, leaving no room for the escape of any government programme.

By Kelly Rwamapera

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