The latest allegations of United Nations failings came in a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published Monday which said peacekeepers did nothing as women were raped, civilians murdered and foreign aid workers targeted during the most recent deadly flare up that killed hundreds in Juba last month.
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Henry from Human Rights Watch says the entire ordeal lasted about five hours and some victims were stranded at the hotel all night, despite their appeals for help from the nearby United Nations base.
Several witnesses told The Associated Press, a local journalist was shot dead while the foreigners were forced to watch. ‘Either you have sex with me, or we make every man here rape you and then we shoot you in the head, ‘ she remembers him saying. One told her she was raped by at least 15 men.
In one incident government soldiers rampaged through a hotel compound, “where they killed a prominent journalist, raped or gang raped several global and national staff of (aid) organisations, and destroyed, and extensively looted property”, said HRW.
A spokesman for the South Sudanese army, Lul Ruai Koang, called on HRW to prove its claims. “Why, after two years of documenting these kind of incidents, would we be surprised that they would do it to Americans, to Westerners, to aid workers?” she says.
“He definitely had pronounced hatred against America”, Gian Libot, a Philippine witness, said, referring to one of the troops.
“We kill you! We kill you!” the soldiers shouted, according to a Western woman in the bathroom.
Towns have been razed in fighting characterised by rape, murder and the deployment of child soldiers.
The U.S. Embassy, which also received requests for help during the attack, “was not in a position to intervene”, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters Monday.
The U.N. made similar accusations against the military earlier this month.
According to NBC News, forces subservient to South Sudan President Salva Kiir have battled supporters of Vice President Riek Machar. In this case the civilians under attack were just a few minutes’ drive away.
But the spokesman for South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has told Al Jazeera on Sunday that it has not closed the door on a United Nations protection force.
“Everyone refused to go”.
The group Human Rights Watch also said in a report about the incident that “the peacekeepers did not venture out of the bases to protect civilians under imminent threat”.
Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, called on officials in South Sudan to investigate the incident and hold those responsible for what she called the “cowardly and brutal assaults” accountable.
The UN Security Council has recently approved the deployment of an additional 4,000-strong peacekeeping force in South Sudan, after recent fighting threatened to send the country back to all-out civil war.
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Remember Miamingi, a professor in the law department at the University of Pretoria, said the United Nations has a good track record of restoring law and order in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and it would behoove South Sudanese officials to cooperate with the U.N.to avoid a backlash from the worldwide community.
