Comment on South Sudan’s Troops Raped and Killed Civilians While the Government Pursued a Peace Deal, a Report Says

South Sudan’s Troops Raped and Killed Civilians While the Government Pursued a Peace Deal, a Report Says

(JUBA) — With “staggering brutality,” South Sudan government soldiers and allied militia targeted civilians by raping them, burning them alive, running them over with armored vehicles and hanging them in trees even as the government pursued a new peace deal to end a civil war, a new Amnesty International report says. The report released Wednesday, based on interviews with 100 displaced people from Leer and Mayendit counties in Unity State, describes attacks between April and July in what the United Nations has described as an offensive aimed at “clearing opposition-held areas.” The report comes shortly after South Sudan’s latest attempt at peace, which was signed last week but has been met with skepticism by the United States and others. For the first time the United States, Britain and Norway, the troika that helped to achieve South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011, decided not to sign the peace deal, saying it remained “concerned about the parties’ level of commitment.” Leer and Mayendit have been among the hardest hit regions during South Sudan’s five-year civil war, which has killed tens of thousands and made over 2 million people flee the country, creating Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Those unable to flee the government offensive in Leer and Mayendit were often killed, with elderly and disabled people burnt alive in their homes, the new report says. “They raped women, killed old people and took young boys,” Nyabieli Gai told The Associated Press during a visit last month to the opposition-held town of Nyal where hundreds of people sought refuge from the offensive.

 

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