Inside Africa: Sudanese Teenager Raped By Three Soldiers

Isaac's mother (L) was distraught when she came to view her teenage son's body

Pathetic story by source revealed the South Sudanese teenager's body was laid out on a bed, under a tree, beneath a mosquito net.
On one bedpost hung the metal ligature which had cut into his neck when he was strangled. Another piece of wire had been tied around his ankles.

One of the children who had been fishing in the river saw Isaac's body.

Those who had not fled the village knew him well, and now they were waiting for his mother to arrive.

People in Yei are afraid - afraid to speak out, and afraid they might be the next ones to be pulled from their homes in the middle of the night and to turn up dead in the river.

The government faction of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) controls the town of Yei, 150km (93 miles) south-west of the capital, Juba, but not too much around it.
A few miles out along any of the roads - to the Juba or to Uganda, they only travel in large convoys as military vehicles are prone to guerrilla attack.

"There's no raping, there's no killing. We use capital punishment against soldiers who commit rapes"

The rebels are known as the SPLA In Opposition, or "IO", but when civil war spread to this previously peaceful part of South Sudan everything became even more complicated.

What began in December 2013 as a political crisis, almost immediately became ethnic, as the two largest tribes turned on each other - the Dinka and the Nuer - the ethnic groups of the president, and the former vice-president - now the rebel leader.

There were massacres, the army split broadly along ethnic lines, and civil war has now driven millions from their homes, brought famine to parts of the country and created an impunity which has allowed rape, killing and war crimes to run wild.

The SPLA is not a terribly disciplined army, and although both sides have been accused of atrocities here they are blamed for most of them.

We joined their patrols - on foot and by car - as they showed us abandoned villages and some burned huts which they blamed on wild fires.

But they wouldn't take us to some of the places where we'd heard atrocities had been carried out - it was "too far," or the "roads were too bad."

There are different layers to the government security forces in Yei - the regular army, the national security officers, the police, and another group known as the Matiang Anyoor.

People are afraid of the Matiang Anyoor.

"They are just another battalion," said Brigadier General Chol Deng Chol who is in overall charge - and has been since the violence started in Yei.

But as a unit of mainly Dinka soldiers, said to have been established by the head of the army, they are the ones suspected of perpetrating some of the worst atrocities in Yei.

"There's no raping, there's no killing. We use capital punishment against soldiers who commit rapes," said Gen Chol.

Thousands of people are fleeing South Sudan every day

"The only people we fight are the rebels. This is when the killing occurs. We don't kill our own civilians in our own country," he said.

"They pretend civilians were killed, when the people killed were rebels."

But the testimony we collected in our short time in Yei directly contradicted his assurances.