'Lost girl' returns to South Sudan to find hundreds slaughtered

A South Sudanese woman who fled to Winnipeg a decade ago says she's in shock after returning home to find hundreds of people slaughtered.

"I thought my country would be in peace. I thought nothing would happen again," Rebecca Deng told CBC when reached by phone in Juba, South Sudan.

Deng arrived in South Sudan, on July 6 to help start a women's resource centre in the city.

But a clash between rebel forces and the country's military, which has left hundreds dead, including women and children, has stalled her plan to empower women.

When Deng arrived, bodies lay outside the compound where she's staying, and heavy fighting continued until Sunday.

"You don't even know who's fighting with who. People are wearing the same uniform and carrying the same gun," she said.

During the violence, soldiers were drinking and then raping women, Deng said.

"It's so, so painful seeing a pregnant woman being raped and you can't talk. If you talk, you got shot," Deng said.

Troops took Deng's cellphone away and detained her for over an hour for taking a photo of women crossing the road.

"Not even take a picture of the body," she said, speaking of the many bodies that have littered the ground.

"It's easy to get shot, so you have to be careful,"

The mood has calmed in Juba, but people are now searching for food because thieves looted homes and markets during the violence, said Deng. 

"For the children and women, there is no food," she said.

Deng is leaving Juba Wednesday but is to return to South Sudan in a few weeks to start work on a women's centre in Bor, where 33 women were killed in 2013.

"I'm not giving up. I'm still carrying on my vision with other women.… I want to support the women. I want to show them that we share the same pain."

In 1987, when she was 13, Deng and thousands of other South Sudanese children fled for an Ethiopian refugee camp.

The children became known as the lost boys and girls of South Sudan.

Deng has lived in Winnipeg since 2005 and is a human rights student at the University of Winnipeg.

South Sudanese rebel soldiers raise their weapons at a military camp in the capital Juba, South Sudan, on April 7. (Jason Patinkin/Associated Press)