South Sudan’s military forces systematically raped women, murdered civilians and carried out large-scale looting, Amnesty International has alleged.
Civilians were burnt alive, hanged in trees and run over with armoured vehicles in opposition-held areas in Unity State, the group said, while children were swung into tree trunks to kill them.
South Sudanese authorities have failed to respond to the warnings and recent UN reports suggest some of those identified by Amnesty may have also been involved in atrocities committed during the offensive this year.
Joan Nyanyuki, Amnesty International’s regional director for East Africa, said: “A key factor in this brutal offensive was the failure to bring to justice those responsible for previous waves of violence targeting civilians in the region. 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.”
Unity State has been the site of the most ruthless violence since South Sudan’s civil war erupted five years ago. At least 50,000 people have been killed during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to UN figures, and an estimated quarter of South Sudan’s population has been displaced. Amnesty’s report also detailed how government and allied forces abducted primarily women and girls and held them for up to several weeks, with many women and girls gang-raped. Those who attempted to resist were killed.
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