WUNRN
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2997/59/
South
Sudan – Women & Girls Held as Sex Slaves in “Rape Camps”
Tristan McConnell| Agence France Presse
29 September 2015-BENTIU, South Sudan: 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
characterized by well-documented war crimes and human rights abuses.
Nigeria’s “Chibok girls,” abducted by Boko Haram in
April 2014, and Iraq’s Yazidi women taken as sex slaves by ISIS 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 by AFP in the northern
Unity State reveal a systematic 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
to “cleanse” areas of their opponents.
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. Homes were looted and burned to
the ground. Women and girls were rounded up. She was among 40 taken from two
neighboring 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 Maj. Gen. 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 that United Nations investigators described as
a “scorched earth policy” in an August report.
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 that “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,” the rights investigator said. “The abduction of women seems to be
systematic. It might be for a day, or longer, or forever.” Those who escaped
recount their stories with numb, quiet voices. Nightmares plague some who wake
up terrorized, 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, stretching her elbows behind her back to show how she was
bound. She said being raped by four men a night was common.
Women who refused to work or fought against their rape
would disappear. “In the morning we discover they are missing,” she said. Of
the 40 she arrived with in April, 10 disappeared this way.
Nyamai, a 38-year-old mother of five, was taken from her
village in Koch County. She was guarded constantly and tied up. As many as 10
soldiers would queue up at night for their turn raping her. “Please, let one
guy deal with me, don’t come all of you,” she pleaded, and was beaten with a
stick in response.
In another case, three of Nyatuach’s unmarried, teenaged
daughters were abducted in May during an attack on their village in Rubkona
County. Two are still missing, but her 17-year-old daughter escaped with three
of her nieces. They returned “very sick, very thin.”
“Their bodies were weak and they were leaking fluids
from so many men having intercourse with them,” Nyatuach said, a common symptom
of fistula, an incontinence-causing tear in the wall between the vagina and
bladder or rectum, that can be caused by particularly violent rape.
Others were raped repeatedly until, bleeding and unable
to take any more, they were set free, or killed. “When the girls were broken
they would dispose of them,” Nyatuach said.
Rebecca found her 12-year-old daughter again the day
after their village in Koch County was attacked. “When they took me, those
people used me,” the girl told her mother. Rebecca boiled some water and washed
her daughter with hot cloths.
“We can do nothing,” she told her. “It’s like that."