South Sudan ‘rape camps’ revealed

One woman was abducted by soldiers and taken to a military camp, tied up and raped repeatedly for two months. Another was kidnapped with her 15-year-old sister and raped every night for five nights. A third was taken to a forest with her 12-year-old daughter where both were raped.

The abduction of women and girls for use as sex slaves — some of them held indefinitely, tied up with hundreds of others in secret rape camps — is a disturbing new aspect of South Sudan’s 21-month conflict, already characterised by well-documented war crimes and human-rights ­abuses. Nigeria’s “Chibok girls”, abducted by Boko Haram in April last year, and Iraq’s Yazidi women taken as sex slaves by ­Islamic State are well known. But the plight of perhaps thousands of South Sudanese women and girls from just a single state, abducted and subjected to repeated, brutal rape and slave-like working conditions has remained hidden until now.

Dozens of interviews conducted in the northern Unity state reveal a pattern of abduction and rape perpetrated by government soldiers and their allied militia during a recent offensive. The investigation focused on attacks by government forces but both sides have perpetrated ethnic massacres, recruited and killed children and carried out widespread rape, torture and forced displacement of populations.

Nyabena’s experience is typical. The 30-year-old mother was seized when soldiers attacked her village in Rubkona county in April. Men and boys were shot. Women and girls were rounded up. She was among 40 taken from two neighbouring settlements and wells up with tears when she talks about being torn away from her five children.

They were marched to Mayom county. Nyabena was held in Kotong, a stronghold of Major-General Matthew Puljang, commander of a tribal Bul Nuer militia aligned with South Sudan’s army, the SPLA, which has been battling rebels since December 2013.

From April to July this year the SPLA and Puljang’s militia carried out an offensive UN investigators have described as a “scorched earth policy”.

Fighting and flooding limits access to large parts of South Sudan, leading aid workers to refer to southern Unity state as “an information black hole”. A human-rights investigator said: “Nobody knows what’s happening in Mayom county”, where many of the women were taken. One military expert estimated “thousands of women” were abducted during the offensive.

“In all the southern Unity counties it’s been the same: those women who escape are lucky. Those who don’t are raped and abducted or killed,” said the human-rights investigator.

Those who escaped recount their stories with numb, quiet voices. Nightmares plague some who wake up terrorised, thinking they are still captive.

After her abduction Nyabena was put to work during the day, carrying looted goods and food, collecting water and hoeing farms. She was guarded constantly during the day and tied up at night with other women.

“When one of the soldiers wanted to have sex he would come, untie us and take us away. When they were finished they would bring you back and tie you to the post again,” she said.

Being raped by four men a night was common, she said.

AFP