Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias, at war with the army, of committing widespread sexual violence in southern Sudan.
It is the latest such report by international monitors alleging sexual violence during Sudan’s 20-month war which has led to what the US has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
In its new report, HRW said it had documented dozens of cases since September last year involving women and girls aged between 7 and 50 who were subjected to sexual violence, including gang rape and sexual slavery, in South Kordofan state.
Photo: Khartoum State Government via Reuters
The latest details follow a separate report last week from the New York-based watchdog which more broadly accused the RSF and allied Arab militias of carrying out numerous abuses, mainly against ethnic Nuba civilians, in South Kordofan state from December last year to March.
The attacks “had not been widely reported” and constituted “war crimes,” it said.
Parts of South Kordofan and parts of Blue Nile state are controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a rebel group.
The SPLM-N led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu refused to join other Sudanese rebels in signing a 2020 peace deal with the government, as al-Hilu sought a secular state as a prerequisite.
Many South Kordofan residents are members of Sudan’s Christian minority.
Al-Hilu also at that time refused talks with RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, linking him with atrocities.
The SPLM-N has clashed with both the army and RSF in parts of South Kordofan since April last year when the war between the paramilitaries and Sudanese Armed Forces began, HRW said.
The conflict has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, internally displaced more than 8 million and forced more than 3 million others to seek safety in neighboring nations, according to the UN.
According to the HRW report, many of the victims were gang-raped at their or their neighbors’ homes, often in front of families, while some were abducted and held in conditions of enslavement.
One survivor, a 35-year-old Nuba woman, described being gang-raped by six RSF fighters who stormed her family compound, and killed her husband and son when they tried to intervene.
“They kept raping me, all six of them,” she said.
Another survivor, aged 18, recounted being taken in February with 17 others to a base where they joined 33 detained women and girls.
“On a daily basis for three months, the fighters raped and beat the women and girls, including the 18-year-old survivor, crimes that also constitute sexual slavery,” HRW said.
At times, the captives were even chained together, it said.
“These acts of sexual violence, which constitute war crimes ... underscore the urgent need for meaningful international action to protect civilians and deliver justice,” HRW said.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher raised the alarm late last month over an “epidemic of sexual violence” against women in Sudan, saying that the world “must do better.”
In its initial report last week, HRW urged the UN and African Union to “urgently deploy a mission to protect civilians in Sudan.”
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS