Babies crushed to death, kids swung against trees and gang rapes on an ‘industrial scale’… the full horrors of South Sudan war crimes revealed
The horrific allegations carried out by South Sudan government forces and militia groups have been detailed in a shocking Amnesty International report
BABIES being crushed to death and “industrial scale” gang rape are among the horrific South Sudan war crimes exposed in a shocking new report today.
Government and militia forces also deliberately ran over civilians with armoured vehicles, hanged people from trees as well as large-scale looting in a “staggeringly brutal” campaign, Amnesty International has said.
The human rights organisation interviewed about 100 civilians who fled the offensive by government forces and allied youth militias in Leer and Mayendit counties in Unity State which took place between April and July this year.
Joanne Mariner, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser who conducted numerous interviews in the country, told The Sun Online "widespread atrocities" took place leading to more than 10,000 civilians forced to flee their homes.
Mariner said: "The recent offensive involved attacks on dozens of villages in Leer and Mayendit counties, in southern Unity state.
"Many villages were attacked multiple times in what appeared to be an effort to depopulate them, and make them uninhabitable - by burning homes, destroying food stocks and cutting down fruit trees."
The offensive was aimed at “cleaning opposition-held areas,” according to the United Nations.
Nyaweke, a 20-year-old woman, said she saw soldiers shooting her father and then brutally murdering several children in the village of Thonyoor.
She said: “There were seven men [soldiers] who collected the children and put them into a tukul [a mud hut] and they set the tukul on fire.
“I could hear the screaming. They were four boys.
"One boy tried to come out and the soldiers closed the door on him.
“There were also five boys whom they hit against the tree, swinging them. They were two [or] three years old.
“They don’t want especially boys to live because they know they will grow up to become soldiers.”
Another survivor from Rukway village in Leer claimed an elderly man and woman and their two young grandsons were burnt to death in a house.
When their daughter ran out, carrying a small baby, a soldier shot her and crushed the baby to death with his foot.
Amnesty International was also told numerous civilians were abducted, usually women and girls, who were then held for several weeks and subjected to sexual assaults.
Many were said to be gang-raped, with some being seriously injured.
A 60-year-old man said his 13-year-old niece had been gang-raped by five men: “My brother’s daughter was raped and she was going to die.
"When they raped her, we came and found her and she was crying and bleeding… she couldn’t hide… she told me she was raped by five men. We could not carry her and she could not walk.”
Joan Nyanyuki, Regional Director for East Africa at Amnesty International said: “Leer and Mayendit counties have been hard hit in the past, and yet the South Sudanese government continues to give suspected perpetrators free rein to commit fresh atrocities.
"The result has been catastrophic for civilians.”
The report comes shortly after South Sudan's latest attempt at peace, which was signed last week but has been met with scepticism by the United States and Britain.
For the first time the US, Britain and Norway, the countries 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.
South Sudan's government, which often dismisses such reports as "rubbish," has said the new peace deal means an end to the war. Any doubt will only fuel the government's resolve "to consolidate peace," President Salva Kiir has said.
Days after the signing, however, fighting broke out between government and opposition forces in Lainya and Kajo Keji counties in Central Equatoria and a Nepalese peacekeeper was shot and wounded in what the UN condemned as a "direct attack" on its mission in the town of Yei.
Amnesty is trying to exert pressure on the South Sudanese government to create a hybrid international and South Sudanese court so war criminals can be brought to justice.