NAIROBI – A new investigation into the conflict in South Sudan has revealed horrific atrocities committed by both parties to the conflict, with ethnically-motivated attacks on civilians.
This constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday.
“Nowhere Safe: Civilians under attack in South Sudan’’, documents first-hand accounts from survivors of massacres, victims of sexual abuse.
Witnesses to a conflict has forced over one million people to flee their homes and driven the world’s youngest country to the brink of a humanitarian disaster.
The report catalogues human rights abuses committed by the rival forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and former Vice-President Riek Machar and their respective allied militias, since the conflict erupted in mid-Dec. 2013.
Civilians have been systematically targeted in towns and villages, in their homes, as well as in churches, mosques, hospitals and even UN compounds where they had sought refuge.
In some of these places, Amnesty International researchers found skeletons and decomposing bodies being eaten by dogs.
Elsewhere, they discovered dozens of mass graves, including five in Bor containing 530 bodies.
Everywhere they saw looted and burnt down homes, destroyed medical facilities, and ransacked food humanitarian aid stores.
“This research reveals the unimaginable suffering of so many defenceless civilians unable to escape the growing spiral of violence in South Sudan.
Civilians have been massacred in the very places where they sought refuge.
Children and pregnant women have been raped, and old and infirm people shot dead in their hospital beds,” said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Africa.
“Forces on both sides have shown total disregard for the most fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law.
“Those up and down the chain of command on both sides of the conflict who are responsible for perpetrating, ordering or acquiescing to such grave abuses, some which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, must be held accountable.”
Though triggered by a political dispute, the conflict has taken on a markedly ethnic dimension, with mainly Dinka members of government forces loyal to President Kiir and mainly Nuer army defectors and their allied militias loyal to ex-Vice-President Machar.
Both sides systematically target members of the other’s community.
Amnesty International’s report; based on field research undertaken in March 2014, documents cases in which Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk civilians have been targeted on the basis of their ethnicity.
One survivor of a massacre described how he was rounded up by soldiers in Juba and held with at least 300 other men in overcrowded rooms in an army barrack.
“It was so hot and we had no water. At about 7-8p.m., we opened the windows to get some air.
“When we did so, soldiers fired into our room from the windows.
“Many people were killed in my room. Survivors lay among the dead, pretending to be dead.
“The soldiers fired from the windows at anything that moved. We were 12 survivors.”
One woman described to Amnesty International researchers how her 10-yearold sister-in-law was raped by 10 men in Gandor, Leer County, and another recounted how she was among 18 women raped by government soldiers in Palop.
“I was three months pregnant, but because I was raped by so many men, the baby came out.
“If I had refused those people, they would have killed me. Nine men raped me.”
She said soldiers forced large sticks inside the vaginas of seven women who refused to be raped. All seven died.
Because of the conflict, the humanitarian situation in South Sudan is becoming increasingly precarious.
The ongoing violence has prevented displaced people from returning to their lands at this crucial time of the planting season.
Unless crops are planted by June 2014, famine will be nearly inevitable.
Amnesty International therefore made several key recommendations:
The UN should amend UNMISS’s mandate to focus on the protection of civilians, human rights investigations, and the facilitation of humanitarian access.
The parties to the conflict must immediately cease all violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and allow unfettered access for humanitarian assistance to those in need.
Both sides must cooperate fully with independent and impartial investigations into violations, including the AU Commission of Inquiry.
The sides must take steps to bring those responsible for human rights abuses and humanitarian law violations to justice. (PANA/NAN)
