South Sudan lets fighters rape women as payment, the UN
rights office said Friday, describing the country as "one of the most
horrendous human rights situations in the world."
"The assessment team received information that the armed militias... who carry out attacks together with the SPLA (South Sudanese army) commit violations under an agreement of 'do what you can and take what you can,'" the rights office said in a new report.
"Most of the youth therefore also raided cattle, stole
personal property, raped and abducted women and girls as a form of
payment," the report added.
In a report, the UN human rights office painted a harrowing
picture of civilians suspected of supporting the opposition, including
children, being burned alive, suffocated in shipping containers, hanged from
trees and cut to pieces.
UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein meanwhile warned
that brutal rapes had been used systematically as "an instrument of terror
and weapon of war."
"This is one of the most horrendous human rights
situations in the world," he said in a statement.
After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan
erupted into civil war in December 2013, setting off a cycle of retaliatory
killings that have split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic
lines.
