UN Peacekeepers ‘Abandoned Posts’ as S. Sudan Rebels Raped Aid Workers

Peacekeepers not taken seriously by either side in

South Sudan. If they are not prepared to fight,

they might as well go home

Peacekeeping troops from China, deployed by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), patrol outside the premises of the UN Protection of Civilians (PoC) site in Juba on October 4, 2016. © Albert Gonzalez Farran / AFP

Some UN peacekeepers “abandoned their posts entirely,” failing to “live up to the protection mandate” and care for civilians in South Sudan in July, a rights group says. It adds that peacekeepers refused to help as rebels raped at least five aid workers.

On July 11, up to 100 rebel soldiers attacked the Terrain compound in Juba, where they “proceeded to rape and gang rape at least five international aid workers, physically or sexually assault at least a dozen others, and execute a South Sudanese journalist—apparently because of his Nuer ethnicity,” the report by Washington-based Center for Civilians in Conflict (Civic) said.

Although several departments within UNMISS received information about the attack shortly after it broke out, and a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) was ordered to respond, “no QRF ever tried to leave the UN House gates, however, with at least the Chinese and Ethiopian battalions refusing to go,” the report said.

The group added that although UNMISS secured assistance from South Sudanese authorities to help the QRF navigate the Sudan People’s Liberation Army positions on the road, “the contingents still were unwilling to try to intervene.”

At one civilian protection site in Juba, Chinese peacekeepers “abandoned their posts entirely withdrawing into the core UN House base,” the report revealed.

“With nowhere inside civilian protection site to shelter from gunfire and no protection from the peacekeepers, approximately 5,000 civilians fled over fences and barbed wire into the core UN House base. There, UNMISS forces struggled to manage the situation.

According to seven independent witness accounts, on the morning of July 12, UNMISS fired tear gas on the civilians with little or no warning.”

While the performance of peacekeepers in protecting civilians inside the civilian protection sites varied, “UNMISS’s ability to protect outside was nonexistent,” the report pointed out.

After fighting started on July 8, the UN Mission was “almost wholly confined to its bases—rendering nonexistent its ability to offer protection to anyone outside. In addition, poor contingency planning as well as inadequate dissemination of and practical training on the Mission’s rules of engagement prior to the crisis meant UNMISS was ill prepared to respond to threats against civilians.”

“The UN peacekeeping mission faced a challenging environment during the July violence in Juba, but it underperformed in protecting civilians inside and outside its bases,” Executive Director at Civic Federico Borello noted in a press release.

“To ensure that such problems are not repeated, it is critical that the UN be transparent about what went wrong and hold accountable any individuals or units that failed to live up to the protection mandate,” he added.

Civic said it interviewed some 27 South Sudanese civilian women and 32 South Sudanese civilian men who were directly affected by the violence; 21 civilian and military officials from UNMISS; 22 representatives of the humanitarian community in South Sudan; four people who were at the Terrain compound attacked on July 11; as well as local civil society representatives, government officials, and diplomats in South Sudan.

The rights group noted that the failings in July didn’t come as a surprise, however. The group previously investigated another incident in February, when peacekeepers from Ethiopia, India and Rwanda stood by as government soldiers attacked a civilian protection site in the northern town of Malakal, killing at least 30 civilians and injuring 100 others.

“The peacekeepers’ response, from preparation through performance as the violence unfolded, was plagued by major problems,” Civic said. The UN also later admitted to peacekeeper “inaction, abandonment of post and refusal to engage” during the attack.

South Sudan Pro-Govt Forces Offered Women to Rape in Lieu of Wages – UN Report

Evil on a spectacular scale in South Sudan

Read with caution

© Andreea Campeanu / Reuters

Pro-government militias fighting in South Sudan’s civil war have been offered women to rape in lieu of wages, according to a UN report. The document also includes harrowing accounts of opposition supporters being killed.

“Credible sources indicate groups allied to the government are being allowed to rape women in lieu of wages but opposition groups and criminal gangs have also been preying on women and girls,” said the UN human rights office, which published the report on Friday.

Over a five-month period last year, more than 1,300 rapes were reported in South Sudan’s Unity State – just one of the country’s 10.

One woman described being stripped naked and raped by five soldiers on the side of a road in front of her children. She said she was then raped by more men in the bushes, only to return to find her children missing.

Another victim said after her husband was killed she was tied to a tree and forced to watch her 15-year-old daughter being raped by 10 soldiers.

Others said they were attacked after leaving UN-protected camps in search of food, while some were abducted as sex slaves or “wives” for soldiers living in government barracks.

“If you looked young or good looking, about ten men would rape the woman; the older women were raped by about seven to nine men,” a witness said.

In one incident, soldiers argued whether or not to rape a 

six-year-old girl, and ended up shooting her, the report claims.

According to the report, the prevalence of rape “suggests its use in the conflict has become an acceptable practice by (government) SPLA soldiers and affiliated armed militias.”

Acknowledging the figures disclosed in the report, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said those rapes must amount to only a “snapshot of the real total” taking place in the country.

“The scale and types of sexual violence – primarily by Government SPLA forces and affiliated militia – are described in searing, devastating detail, as is the almost casual, yet calculated, attitude of those slaughtering civilians and destroying property and livelihoods,” he said in a statement.

In addition to the disturbing rape figures, the report also “contains harrowing accounts of civilians suspected of supporting the opposition, including children and the disabled, killed by being burned alive, suffocated in containers, shot, hanged from trees, or cut to pieces,” the UN human rights office said.

In a 12-month period ending November 2015, there were an estimated 10,553 deaths in Unity State – 7,165 of which were due to violence. A total of 829 were caused by drowning. The report noted that the killings appeared to be deliberate, systematic, and based on ethnicity.

In one instance, forces from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) reportedly rounded up 60 cattle-keepers and locked them in a container in the compound of a Catholic Church. All but one suffocated within two days.

Although all sides in South Sudan’s civil war have committed atrocities that may amount to crimes against humanity, government forces were responsible for the most in 2015, according to the report.

The South Sudanese government has denied those accusations, however, maintaining that its soldiers do not target civilians.

“We condemn in the strongest terms possible any crimes committed against civilians,” Ateny Wek Ateny, a spokesman for President Salva Kiir, told the Guardian.

He said the atrocities may have been carried out by militias wearing SPLA uniforms, but stressed that government troops operate under “strict rules of engagement” that prohibit the targeting of civilians.

“The government takes it very seriously and we are investigating to find who has committed these heinous crimes and as soon as we get those who are responsible for committing human rights violations, we will bring them to book,” Ateny said.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s senior crisis adviser, Lama Fakih, said on Friday that the UN’s results aligned with her agency’s recent findings in Unity State.

“It’s clear that South Sudan has a problem with its army and allied militias – who have been raping women and girls and leaving men and boys to suffocate to death in a shipping container,” she told the Guardian.

The war in South Sudan began in 2013, when President Kiir accused his former vice president, Riek Machar, of plotting a coup. Fighting quickly broke out between those supporting Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and those backing Machar, an ethnic Nuer. The conflict has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people and displaced more than two million. At least 40,000 people have been plunged into famine, and 2.8 million are in need of aid, according to UN's February findings.

South Sudan Military Worse Than ISIS or Boko Haram for Girls

Women held as sex slaves in South Sudan ‘rape camps’

Plight of thousands of South Sudanese women and girls abducted and subjected
to repeated brutal rape and slave-like working conditions has remained hidden
until now Image Credit: AFP

Women and men walk through the United Nations base outside Bentiu, which hosts around 118,000 people uprooted during the country 21-month old civil war.

Gulf News
AFP
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 characterised 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 Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State) militants 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.

Systematic abduction and rape
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 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 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,” said the rights investigator. “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 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, 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.

Victims as young as 12
Nyamai, a 38-year old mother of five, was taken from her village in Koch County. She was guarded constantly and tied up frequently. 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,” said Nyatuach.

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.”

Girls Raped, Boys Abducted as South Sudan Violence Rages

Simmering civil war has forced thousands from their homes

Humanitarian crisis looming

Residents displaced due to the recent fighting between government and rebel
forces in the Upper Nile capital Malakal wait at a World Food Program
 (WFP) outpost where thousands have taken shelter in Kuernyang Payam,
South Sudan, May 2, 2015   Reuters

Gulf News
AFP
Gunmen in South Sudan have raped girls, seized boys to become soldiers and torched towns in some of the heaviest fighting seen in the 17-month-long civil war, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Over 300,000 civilians have been left without “life-saving aid” in the northern battleground state of Unity, after the UN and aid agencies pulled out due to a surge in fighting, with over 100,000 forced to flee their homes.

The UN peacekeeping mission said it was “increasingly concerned” about reports from Guit and Koch counties in Unity state of “towns and villages being burnt, killings, abductions of males as young as 10 years of age, rape and abduction of girls and women, and the forced displacement of civilians.”

The violence is some of the worst in months, as government forces push south from the state capital Bentiu into an opposition zone around the town of Leer, home to some of the country’s once lucrative oil fields.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has also withdrawn staff from Leer and warned that escalating fighting between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar was forcing thousands of civilians to flee for their lives yet again.

Unity state governor Joseph Monytuil told reporters late Monday that government troops aimed to take Leer from opposition forces within days. “Our forces ... are now pursuing them to where they came from,” said Monytuil.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Saturday it was forced to evacuate its foreign staff from Leer and halt all medical services amid fears the rebel-held town was about to come under “imminent attack” from government forces.

Leer, the birthplace of Machar, was ransacked by government forces in January 2014. Gunmen looted the MSF hospital and burnt some of the buildings.

MSF has since rebuilt the hospital, the only referral facility in opposition areas.

South Sudan’s civil war began in December 2013 and has been characterised by ethnically-driven massacres, rape and attacks on civilians and medical facilities.

In other words, absolutely no moral compass involved!

Refugee camp

Peace talks in neighbouring Ethiopia have so far failed to reach any lasting agreement, or even an effective ceasefire.

The violence, which has escalated into an ethnic conflict involving multiple armed groups, has killed tens of thousands of people in the world’s youngest nation, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

It has also left over half of the country’s 12 million people in need of aid, with 2.5 million people facing severe food insecurity, according to the UN.

The European Union late Monday condemned the fighting, saying that “South Sudan’s man-made crisis has caused one of the worst humanitarian disasters of recent years.”

EU aid chief Christos Stylianides said there “can be no military solution to this conflict” and that responsibility for striking a peace deal rests on the shoulders of the leaders.

“If they fail to make the necessary effort for peace, they will inevitably be held responsible also for the consequences,” he said in a statement.

Inevitably they will, but will it be in this life or later? If it's later, we may all have to answer for it.