Source: Globalpost.com
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 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 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 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 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.
Source: Women and girls in South Sudan are being held as sex slaves in ‘rape camps’
