AU report reveals cannibalism, gang rapes in South Sudan conflict

South Sudanese government forces and allied fighters carried out scores of killings, rapes, and widespread burning and pillage of civilian property in a military offensive in Unity State Photo: HRW

An African Union report has exposed disturbing findings through testimonies by victims of forced cannibalism, gang rapes, and the discovery of mass graves amongst other graphic alleged atrocities.

The African adage, when elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers couldn’t be more apt to describe the findings of an African Union (AU) report, which document the atrocities perpetrated by all sides on civilians in South Sudan’s ongoing civil war.

The report has exposed disturbing findings through testimonies of forced cannibalism, gang rapes, and the discovery of mass graves amongst other alleged atrocities, graphically described in the report.

According to the AU report, the commission found “cases of sexual and gender based violence committed by both parties against women,”

“It also documented extreme cruelty exercised through mutilation of bodies, burning of bodies, draining human blood from people who had just been killed and forcing others from one ethnic community to drink the blood or eat burnt human flesh”.

The report also reveals, “detailed killings, abductions, disappearances, rapes, beatings, stealings by forces and being forced to eat dead human flesh,” according to testimony from women in the Unity State.

The latest AU report corroborates the findings of a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which also revealed allegations of rape and violence on women and girls in South Sudan’s conflict zones.

The HRW report documented testimonies, which revealed that women and girls are being raped as ‘wages’ for government-allied fighters in Bentiu, in a conflict between government forces and rebels.

By Arthur Chatora

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Source: African Union Report