A visit to the prisoners of conscience in Rwanda

On Saturday 16th December 2023, three of us visited a group of Seventh-day Adventist believers in prison in Rwanda.

I am writing for Seventh-day Adventist believers especially those who have not seen Rome’s modern-day persecution against people of faith and conscience.

I am not writing to invoke your sympathy for believers in Rwanda but to remind you to prepare for times of trouble that must come to you also.

Let me first make it plain: persecution for God’s faithful people has started and we all should be already prepared to meet our Lord in peace.

Background for the current persecution

In Rwanda, prisons are called correction facilities. Sounds like a good place to be adored but I will call it prison in my story because it’s what the Bible can call a place with prison wardens, watch towers, and high walls to keep criminals away from people.

Sabbath is the prison visitation day in Rwanda, just like the mandatory community work on the last Saturday of every month.

Much of the "common good" work in this Central African country takes place on Saturdays apart from the Car-free Sundays.

Seventh-day Adventists who can get confirmation from the Church institution authorities can be given an exception.

It means that civil authorities in Rwanda cannot recognize freedom of conscience unless someone's beliefs have been justified by the authorized church authorities.

It was a trap the SDA institution fell into when they accepted to assume the authority to justify a believer's convictions from the Holy Spirit working with the conscience.

Not once or twice when Elder Ted Wilson and other General Conference officials thank civil authorities in Rwanda for allowing the church institution to work with the state to decide the fate of the conscience of men.

The result is taking many believers to prison when their actions are not justified by the church.

The group of people I am visiting was arrested in late September 2023 in East Rwanda.

Like many similar groups, they were arrested on Friday evening praying at the beginning of Sabbath in a believers' home.

There were more than a dozen men and women who were taken to several places of custody before a first-instance court in their area remanded them for thirty days.

Since the colonial Roman Catholic Belgians took over Rwanda after World War I, the number of prisons and sizes has always been greater than that of higher education institutes.

Today, there are about a dozen higher education institutes in a country with 13 prisons and 28 transit centers.

A transit center is harsher than a prison and police cell. One can spend any span of time in a transit center without appearing before courts of law or being beaten.

Some believers have died in transit centers.

To my knowledge, Ntinda Prison or Rwamagana Correction Facility has received about 20 Seventh-day Adventists on remand.

All of them were arrested while praying on Sabbath in families and the church authorities have always explained that they don’t support such congregations.

Authorities rarely publicly confirm that people are arrested for not going to authorized Seventh-day Adventist church structures to pray but the place where arrests take place confirms it.

Due to the church authorities’ collaboration with the civil authorities to enforce Deception-19 directives, many SDAs fled and lost interest in church structures.

The civil authorities use the church pulpits to advertise programs including road traffic campaigns.

Group gatherings are freer than in authorized church structures to deep Bible studies, especially on current events and preparation for Jesus’ Second Advent.

At the Prison

At around 10am, we arrived at Ntinda Prison (called Rwamagana Correction Facility) in East Central Rwanda, an hour's drive from the capital Kigali (at less than 60km/hr).

At the first entrance into the barbed-wire fence, the Deception-19 religion is highly reverenced and one has to buy a face mask and show a vaxsin card.

God helped that the guard did not ask us to show the Deception-19 vaxsin card.

We knew our brethren obey temperance, that they could not take animal products, processed sugars, oils, etc so we looked at the fruits available in the prison canteen courtyard.

There were damaged finger-size yellow bananas, fist-size pineapples, and sugarcanes the size of broom handles, all laid down on trampled dirty grass.

At the meeting site

After about an hour, we were through with registrations, and waiting for our visitors.

We stood in a vast waiting tent with about 1000 people waiting.

On our left was that high perimeter wall surrounding the unknown prison houses and on the right was an administration bloc that joined the prison perimeter wall in about the length of a football pitch to form a triangle with the tent we were in on its base of that triangle.

The prison wall chocolate door was at the far end of the triangle on the left near the tip such that one could not easily identify someone at the entrance.

The prisoners came in groups about a dozen each group, appearing tiny at the gate in comparison to the high wall that stood behind them.

Every visitor had to look keenly to identify the prisoner he/she came to visit, considering pink for those on remand and orange for the sentenced.

At around 4pm, we met only three of them.

It took some minutes before we sat down with them, going through processes.

 “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:” Proverbs 6:6

We sat on a bench face to face with a red wire mesh between us, three of us with our three prisoners.

They were happy people.

It was emotional praying with them and of course, we could not hold back our tears.

They first thanked us for not buying food for them on Sabbath, telling us that it would be heartbreaking to refuse it.

“We know we’re not criminals here. We’re here because we did not take the authorized description of God and beliefs” they said.

As we sat with these prisoners, we contemplated the coming danger, certain that someday we too will be in prison for our conscience.

They told us they ate only in the evenings, once in 24 hours.

“But we don’t eat on Sabbaths because we can’t eat food that was prepared though violating the Sabbath with labor,” the said boldly.

This means, these brothers of ours last eat on Friday and eat again on Sunday evening.

Everything at the prison is three times more expensive than the prices outside and no one is allowed to bring something from outside.

We promised to send some money to the prison authorities to help them buy some fruits on Fridays to eat on Sabbath.

We were expecting to share a word of strength with them but they rather strengthened us.

They told us to be strong and that there is always a way of remaining faithful to God in prison, giving us an example of how they don’t take unboiled water and food with cooking oil in prison as a way of maintaining their temperance.

“We were first caned to accept taking food with cooking oil. There are other prisoners with medical reports who don’t take food with cooking oil. The prison authorities allowed us as well to eat the food for the group that doesn’t take cooking oil”

Most cooking oils contain animal fats mostly pork and are refined poorly most Adventists buy sun seed cooking oil which is more expensive or take avocadoes to balance the amount of fats in the body.

It was a great summon for me, to see people who are not free being able to stand still in the Word of God which some of us who are free outside prison may not be able to.

We don’t know how short we were with them but it seems it was 3-5 minutes when a command was given for them to leave.

They told us to buy them Bibles, hymnbooks, and spirit of prophesy books which we promised we would deliver the following time we would visit.

We left endlessly waving bye-bye.

The writer is Kelly Rwamapera

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