Sudan is at breaking point
Several women have taken their lives in Sudan’s central Gezira state after being raped by paramilitary fighters in the brutal civil war raging in the country, rights groups and activists have said.
The reports come after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was accused by the UN of “atrocious crimes”, including mass killings, in the state last week. With RSF fighters continuing to advance, one rights group has told the BBC it is in contact with six women who are contemplating taking their own lives as they fear being sexually assaulted.
But the RSF has dismissed a recent UN report blaming a rise in sexual violence on its combatants, telling the BBC the accusations “were not based on evidence”.
After 17 months of a brutal civil war which has devastated the country, there are still places where people can, and do, cross between the two sides.
Women in this area walk four hours to a market in army controlled territory edge of Omdurman, where food is cheaper. They come from the area called Dar es Salaam, which is held by the RSF.
They had to go to feed their children because their husbands were no longer leaving the house, because RSF fighters beat them and take any money they earned, or detained them and demanded payment for their release.
But on the other hand women are suffering because rape is used as “a weapon of war”.
“We endure this hardship because we want to feed our children. We’re hungry, we need food,” reasons told by one of the women. “There are so many women here who’ve been violated, but they don’t talk about it. What difference would it make anyway?”
“Some girls, the RSF make them lie in the streets at night,” she went on. “If they come back late from this market, the RSF keeps them for five or six days.”
As she spoke her mother sat with her head in her hand, sobbing. Other women around her also started crying. “You in your world, if your child went out, would you leave her?” she demanded. “Wouldn’t you go look for her? But tell us, what can we do? Nothing is in our hands, no one cares for us. Where is the world? Why don’t you help us!”
Mariam, told us her story. She had fled her home in Sudan’s Dar es Salaam to take refuge with her brother. She now works in a tea stall. But at the beginning of the war she tells us that, two armed men entered her house and tried to rape her daughters, one is 17 years old and the other one is 10. “I told the girls to stay behind me and I said to the RSF: ‘If you want to rape anyone it has to be me,’” she said.
I said to the RSF: ‘If you want to rape anyone it has to be me.’ They hit me and ordered me to take off my clothes. Before I took them off, I told my girls to leave
Miriam
Rape survivor
The RSF has told international investigators that it has taken all the necessary measures to prevent sexual violence and other forms of violence that constitute human rights violations. But the accounts of sexual assault are numerous and consistent, and the damage has a lasting impact. With RSF fighters continuing to advance, one rights group has told the BBC it is in contact with six women who are contemplating taking their own lives as they fear being sexually assaulted.
But the RSF has dismissed a recent UN report blaming a rise in sexual violence on its combatants, telling the BBC the accusations “were not based on evidence”.
“The RSF started a revenge campaign in areas under the control of Abu Kayka. They looted, killed civilians who were resisting and raped women and little girls,” Hala al-Karib, head of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (Siha), Siha, which has been documenting gender-based violence in Sudan during the war, had confirmed three cases of suicide by women over the last week in Gezira state, she said.
Ms Karib said that two were in the village of Al Seriha and a third in the town of Ruffa.
The sister of a woman who took her own life in the village told Siha it happened after she was raped by RSF soldiers in front of her father and brother. The two men were later killed.
A series of videos have been shared online over the last week that appear to show dozens of bodies wrapped in blankets from an alleged RSF massacre in Al Seriha.
It has been verified that the location of this footage to the courtyard of a mosque in Al Seriha.
The evidence of suicides came from only two areas out of the 50 or so villages that have recently come under attack, Ms Karib said, adding that the figure could be higher as mobile communications were patchy.
A female activist from Gezira, who asked to remain anonymous as she feared for her life, told that she had confirmed accounts of women taking their lives after their husbands had been killed by the RSF.
She had seen WhatsApp messages from one woman who described how her sister had taken her own life after being raped by RSF militiamen, who had also killed five of her brothers and some of her uncles also in Al Seriha.
But like Siha, she said it was impossible to verify accounts on social media of reported mass suicides of women fearing rape given the communication problems.
“The sheer scale of sexual violence we have documented in Sudan is staggering,” said Mohamed Chande Othman, the UN chair of the panel that compiled the report.
Victims it documented have ranged from between eight and 75 years – with many of them needing medical treatment, but most hospitals and clinics have been destroyed in the fighting, the UN said.
Siha was also trying to help a 13-year-old girl who had been gang-raped by RSF fighters in Gezira and was in urgent need of medical care.The girl was currently on the road from her home village north of Ruffa to the town of New Halfa, and was bleeding profusely, she said.
