NUER WOMEN, GIRLS RAPED AS UN PEACEKEEPERS LOOK ON

South Sudanese government soldiers raped dozens of ethnic Nuer women and girls last week just outside a United Nations camp where they had sought protection from renewed fighting, and at least two died from their injuries, witnesses and civilian leaders said.

The rapes in the capital of Juba highlighted two problems in the chaotic country engulfed by civil war: targeted ethnic violence and the reluctance by UN peacekeepers to protect civilians.

On July 17, two armed soldiers in uniform dragged away a woman who was less than a few hundred metres from the UN camp’s western gate while armed peacekeepers on foot, in an armoured vehicle and in a watchtower looked on. One witness estimated that 30 peacekeepers saw the incident.

“They were seeing it. Everyone was seeing it,” he said. “The woman was seriously screaming, quarrelling and crying also, but there was no help.”

A spokeswoman for the UN mission, Shantal Persaud, did not dispute that rapes took place close to the camp, which houses more than 30,000 civilians who are nearly all ethnic Nuer.