A new report by Amnesty International has detailed the crimes committed with 'staggering brutality' by government soldiers and allied militia in South Sudan.
Children were killed by being swung against tree trunks and civilians were raped, burned alive, run over with armored vehicles and hanged from trees, even as the government pursued a new peace deal to end a civil war, it says.
The report, released Wednesday, is based on interviews with 100 displaced people from Leer and Mayendit counties in Unity State.
A refugee woman with a baby, who fled government attacks on her village in Leer county, South Sudan
A displaced man mourning the death of his son, who was killed by government forces. Those guilty were given 'free rein' to carry out more horrific murders after escaping prosecution for war crimes committed in 2016
It describes attacks that took place between April and July this year, during a targeted offensive aimed at 'clearing opposition-held areas.'
Leer and Mayendit have been among the hardest hit regions during South Sudan's five-year civil war, in which tens of thousands have died and over 2 million have fled the country, triggering Africa's worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
According to the report, those unable to flee the government offensive were often killed, with elderly and disabled people burned alive in their homes.
Women unloading cargo from a humanitarian flight in Nyal, South Sudan
Children in South Sudan were killed by being swung against tree trunks and civilians were raped, burned alive, run over with armored vehicles and hanged from trees
Civilians told Amnesty how soldiers and militias drove amphibious vehicles into swaps in search of people who had fled, while firing gunshots at random into the reeds hoping to hit them.
An elderly woman, Nyalony, described how she witnessed her husband and two other men killed by soldiers: 'When the attack started, early in the morning while we were sleeping, my husband and I ran to the swamp together.
The South Sudanese government has been blamed for its failure to bring to justice those responsible for previous waves of violence targeting civilians in the region
'Later in the morning, after the fighting was over, the soldiers came into the swamp looking for people, and sprayed the area where we were hiding with bullets.
'My husband was hit; he cried out in pain. He was still alive, though, and the soldiers caught him, and then they shot him again and killed him. He was unarmed and wasn't a fighter; just a farmer.'
Nyabieli Gai, a 50-year-old grandmother from Mayendit fled the region in May when government troops ambushed her village early one morning.
A young boy from a displaced family that escaped the recent violence in southern Unity state. Children, especially boys, were systematically murdered by government soldiers and militia, who feared they would become soldiers
In late April, South Sudanese government forces and their allied militias launched an offensive on Leer and Mayendit counties, in southern Unity state, which continued throughout May and June
Gai hid in the bushes while they raped her daughter-in-law.
'They raped women, killed old people and took young boys,' she told The Associated Press last month during a visit to the opposition-held town of Nyal where hundreds of people have sought refuge from the offensive.
Amnesty have laid the blame at the feet of the South Sudanese authorities.
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.'
Boys running on the main road in the late afternoon in Nyal, South Sudan. The town is now home to many hundreds of displaced people in what is Africa's largest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994
Nyaweke, a 20-year-old woman, told Amnesty she witnessed soldiers shooting her father and then murdering several children in the village of Thonyoor in Leer county:
'There were also five boys whom they hit against the tree, swinging them. They were two [or] three years old.
'They don't want especially boys to live because they know they will grow up to become soldiers.'
In a Rukway village in Leer, an elderly couple and their two young grandsons were burned to death in a house. When their daughter ran out, carrying a baby, a soldier shot her and crushed the baby to death with his foot.
According to UN figures, at least 50,000 people have been killed during the fighting, many of them civilians. Around a quarter of South Sudan's population have been forced to leave their homes.
This new report comes shortly after South Sudan's latest attempt to broker a peace deal, which was signed last week but has been met with skepticism by the United States and others.
Soldiers used underwater vehicles to search swamps for civilians who had fled, and fired bullets indiscriminately into the reeds
The US, Britain and Norway, the troika that helped to achieve South Sudan's independence from neighbouring Sudan in 2011, have for the first time decided not to sign the peace deal, saying they remained 'concerned about the parties' level of commitment.'
South Sudan's government, which dismisses such reports as 'rubbish', has claimed the new peace deal will bring an end to the war.
Any doubt will only fuel the government's resolve 'to consolidate peace,' President Salva Kiir has said.
Local man showing the water lily seeds that many displaced families have eaten to survive, after being forced to flee their villages
Days after the signing however, fighting broke out between government and opposition forces in Lainya and Kajo Keji counties in Central Equatoria and a Nepalese peacekeeper was shot and wounded in what the U.N. condemned as a 'direct attack' on its mission in the town of Yei.
An investigation into the latest fighting is underway by the Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring Mechanism, the body charged with monitoring the cease-fire.
At least one conflict expert said the current system for fostering peace in South Sudan is broken.
Small girl in the doorway of a school on an island inhabited by numerous displaced families
A Canoe driver who brought dozens of civilians to safety after government forces stormed their villages
Alan Boswell, a South Sudan analyst for the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey group that monitors armed violence, said: 'Even as South Sudan's leaders talk peace, they continue to wage war.
'The regional mediators broker cease-fire after cease-fire but show no willingness to enforce them.
'The parties to the conflict have concluded there is little cost to breaking the agreements and they are right,' Boswell added.
Link hienalouca.comhttps://hienalouca.com/2018/09/19/amnesty-says-civilians-were-raped-burned-alive-and-children-hit-against-tree-trunks-in-south-sudan/
Main photo article A new report by Amnesty International has detailed the crimes committed with ‘staggering brutality’ by government soldiers and allied militia in South Sudan.
Children were killed by being swung against tree trunks and civilians were raped, burned alive, run over with armored vehicles...
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Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1/2018/09/19/12/4391320-6184605-image-a-54_1537356038281.jpg
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