South Sudan: Rights Group Reports 'Horrific Atrocities'

A new investigation into the conflict in South Sudan has revealed horrific atrocities committed by both parties to the conflict, with ethnically motivated attacks on civilians constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said in a report released today.

Nowhere Safe: Civilians Under Attack in South Sudan documents first-hand accounts from survivors of massacres, victims of sexual abuse, and witnesses to a conflict that has forced over one million people to flee their homes and driven the world's youngest country to the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

The report catalogues human rights abuses committed by the rival forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and former Vice-President Riek Machar and their respective allied militias, since the conflict erupted in mid-December 2013. Civilians have been systematically targeted in towns and villages, in their homes, as well as in churches, mosques, hospitals and even UN compounds where they had sought refuge.

In some of these places Amnesty International researchers found skeletons, and decomposing bodies being eaten by dogs. Elsewhere they discovered dozens of mass graves, including five in Bor containing 530 bodies. Everywhere they saw looted and burned down homes, destroyed medical facilities, and ransacked food humanitarian aid stores.

"This research reveals the unimaginable suffering of so many defenceless civilians unable to escape the growing spiral of violence in South Sudan. Civilians have been massacred in the very places where they sought refuge. Children and pregnant women have been raped, and old and infirm people shot dead in their hospital beds," said Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Africa.

"Forces on both sides have shown total disregard for the most fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. Those up and down the chain of command on both sides of the conflict who are responsible for perpetrating, ordering or acquiescing to such grave abuses, some which constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, must be held accountable."

Though triggered by a political dispute, the conflict has taken on a markedly ethnic dimension, with mainly Dinka members of government forces loyal to President Kiir, and mainly Nuer army defectors and their allied militias loyal to ex-Vice-President Machar. Both sides systematically target members of the other's community. Amnesty International's report, based on field research undertaken in March 2014, documents cases in which Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk civilians have been targeted on the basis of their ethnicity.