Anxious by this development, global mediators have suggested the deployment of regional peacekeepers to stave off a second civil war.
Advertisement
Fighting has been going on in Juba between the supporters of President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, who has since fled the capital and has been replaced with Taban Deng Gai. “The security guards and the peacekeepers at the gate saw me being captured”, she recalled.
He said one man had been reported with serious injuries in the body after the local police in the camp discovered their activities and beat him.
He said most of those seeking protection at civilians’ site in Juba and other states are very desperate about the life in the camp. That war killed tens of thousands and took on ethnic undertones – many Dinka supported Kiir, and many Nuer supported Machar. Before the latest round of violence, around 170,000 people were living in these sites.
Separately, Farhan Haq, the United Nation’s spokesperson says, “I’ve been informed that the Government of South Sudan denies these memos and have said that they are fake”. “We are happy to go as South Sudanese, all our tribes, all our ethnic groups”. Tanks, helicopters and other heavy weapons were used in the dispute over several days.
The UNHCR said that 831,582 South Sudanese were now refugees, sheltering in Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda.
Every woman that The Daily Beast interviewed said that the lack of food in the camp continues to force them to make the unsafe trek to the market and risk being raped. Most men refuse to travel, saying it’s not their role to collect food. In a country that has only 200km of paved road, ongoing fighting and restrictions on internal flights have meant that agencies can not travel freely to deliver help, and can not restock their bases across the country with basic supplies needed to support operations and materials needed for humanitarian projects. They later spoke of having to lie flat while government and rebel soldiers shot at each other. Warehouses of food, water and life-saving materials have been looted even after the ceasefire declaration. As a cease-fire took hold, women and girls began venturing outside the United Nations camp for food.
Most of the rapes happen along a stretch of road that is roughly one mile long, which leads to the United Nations compound. SPLA soldiers zip back and forth in pickup trucks or sit lazily under trees.
Despite the current conflict, “when it comes to the sports, we see ourselves as one family”, Tong tells Quartz.
As lawlessness descended on some parts of the capital in the aftermath of the most recent clashes, soldiers preyed on women driven out of the POC by hunger, exploiting the vacuum left by an global community whose focus had shifted to evacuating its own staff.
“I saw the men taking their pants off and the ladies crying inside, ” said a middle-aged woman.
The report concluded that government forces use rape as “part of an intentional strategy to terrorize and punish civilians”. If not they have to kill you.
Advertisement
Yet, speaking also to Al Jazeera, South Sudan’s presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said that Machar’s own SPLM-IO group had backed Taban’s appointment, adding that Machar should “address this issue within his party”. Then they raped her – in broad daylight, right there on the side of the road.
