Students have been cautioned against people masquerading as well-wishers, yet have ill intentions of trafficking targeted youth.

Burera District Police Commander, Supt Dieudonné Rwangombwa issued the warning while addressing over 400 students of GS Kagogo on Saturday.

The meeting was part of the series of campaigns conducted by Rwanda National Police in line with the force’s anti-crime awareness policy.

The campaign intended to widen the students’ understanding of how human trafficking is conducted and the consequences involved as means to prevent them from falling prey.

"Normally, traffickers pose as well-wishers who have a lot to offer; at times they take advantage of one’s vulnerability and play around one’s desires to make them believe that they have a lot to offer them,” Supt. Rwangombwa told the students.

”Students are sometimes promised scholarships while graduates are sometimes made to believe that they would get good jobs abroad.”

He urged students to stand against human trafficking, saying the vice can manifest in different forms depending on the tricks the traffickers apply.

The end result, he said, victims end up being exploited and subjected to varied forms of abuse.

"Besides the fact that traffickers can lure their victims basing on their vulnerabilities, they can sometimes use violence, threats, blackmail, false promises, deception and manipulation to trap the victim into several ugly exploitations,” he explained.

He told students to be on alert at all times and report strangers and even other people who are close, who tend to make them keep such empty promises to themselves, as one way of ensuring that their target remains blinded from knowing the truth if they shared the information with anyone else.

Supt. Rwangombwa urged students to spread the awareness among their peers and communities to prevent the likely act of trafficking in human beings.

The director of GS Kagogo, Juliette Mukantaganda thanked the police for the message delivered to the students and pledged continued partnership in sensitising the youth against human trafficking and drug abuse, among others.

Meanwhile, the students, at the end of the meeting, formed an anti-crime club and vowed to use it as a forum to discuss issues through which they can contribute to crime prevention.

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