South Sudan: The World's Newest Country

“Either you have sex with me, or we make every man here rape you and then we shoot you in the head,” recalls a foreign aid worker who was raped by 15 South Sudanese soldiers in July 2016.

According to multiple sources including The Guardian, Human Rights Watch, NBC, the AP, and many other sources this is not a new thing in South Sudan.

Mainly due to disagreements over oil revenues with Sudan, South Sudan gained its independence in 2011. Since 2013, it has been terrorized by civil war. Sadly, soldiers of South Sudan have a habit of looting, raping and killing civilians in their new country as the behavior is condoned and encouraged by President Salva Kiir. According to Human Rights Watch, fighting began during a cabinet meeting at the presidential compound when forces loyal to President Kiir, a Dinka, and those of his first vice-president, Riek Machar, a Nuer, began. Tensions between the forces in the capital had been heightened amidst a lingering in implementing the peace agreement, which ultimately never happened.

While reports of human rights violations are nothing new to Sudan or South Sudan, the situation was escalating and in July foreign aid workers, some of them US citizens, became entangled in these abuses in a most gruesome fashion first hand. After killing John Gatluak, a South Sudanese journalist with tribal scars on his forehead which made it obvious he was Nuer, the same ethnic group as opposition leader Machar, soldiers separated the men and women and took the women into separate rooms.

Jesse Bunch, an American contractor who was shot in the leg, explains how the soldiers then sexually assaulted the women and shot through the door of a bathroom where several people were hiding. The attack allegedly went on for four to five hours. From the very beginning of the attack, when drunk and rowdy soldiers broke through the gate to the foreign aid complex, workers were texting, emailing and Facebook messaging embassies and the UN which was less than a mile away, pleading for help.

The UN is an intergovernmental organization, whose mission is to promote international co-operation. The organization says that it is investigating the incidents. What is there to investigate? The attack lasted for five hours and resulted in numerous rapes and murder.

As the Associated Press reports:

The American who was released requested help from three different UN battalions.

“Everyone refused to go. Ethiopia, China and Nepal. All refused to go,” he said.

“The peacekeepers did not venture out of the bases to protect civilians under imminent threat,” Human Rights Watch said Monday in a report on abuses throughout Juba.

Eventually, South Sudanese security forces entered the Terrain and rescued all but three western women and around 16 Terrain staff. A private security firm rescued the rest the next morning.

This is embarrassing and unacceptable. There must be accountability for these vile and disgusting acts of violence and abuse. If not, what little credibility the UN has left will soon evaporate.

For a timeline of South Sudan, please see here.

links and resources:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/15/south-sudan-aid-worker-rape-attack-united-nations-un

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/15/south-sudan-killings-rapes-looting-juba

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-sudan-troops-raped-beat-foreigners-u-n-force-ignored-n630876

https://news.vice.com/article/in-south-sudan-gang-rape-is-a-weapon-of-war