Christian News Service
July 16, 2002
Rape of Abducted Boys Widespread in Sudan, Rights Observer Says
By Lawrence Morahan
The abduction and rape of boys from Dinka communities in Southern Sudan by Arab-backed forces from the north is widespread, reported a human rights observer who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the north African country.
"A lot of these boys are being brutally raped by their Arab abductors," reported Maria Sliwa, an editor with Freedom Now World News and an expert on Sudan. "This is something very foreign to the Dinkas. It's a major stigma for a male to have sex with another male, so these boys are quite shocked when they're dragged into this."
Boys who tried to escape their Arab masters were hunted down. Some had their Achilles tendons cut to prevent them from running again and many had scars on their legs from where they were beaten with bamboos or sticks, Sliwa said.
She collected nine hours of testimony on tape during interviews with more than a dozen redeemed slaves, all in their early teens, whose stories were corroborated by local chiefs, a senior justice official in southern Sudan and a Sudanese Anglican minister who oversees 42 churches.
"Nobody denied it. They all knew about it," Sliwa said.
One boy she spoke to said he was often beaten as a slave because he would not convert to Islam. Boys who are able to return to their communities are traumatized, Sliwa said, citing testimony by local chiefs.
"They have fits of crying, many of them can't get married and go on to normal lives," she said.
Gang rapes of women have been well documented and reported by human rights and other groups, but "no one has said anything about the boys," Sliwa said.
The Muslim government of Khartoum has been widely accused of condoning slavery in that country. But some international human rights observers and journalists have reported that the total picture regarding abductions and slavery is complex.
Government-backed militias regularly attack villages of the Dinka tribe in southern Sudan, where more than 2 million Christian and animist people have been killed or died from starvation in a civil war that has dragged on for two decades.
However, because of the civil war, tribal animosities in the south have also been aggravated and rival tribes abduct many women and children, observers say.
July 16, 2002
Rape of Abducted Boys Widespread in Sudan, Rights Observer Says
By Lawrence Morahan
The abduction and rape of boys from Dinka communities in Southern Sudan by Arab-backed forces from the north is widespread, reported a human rights observer who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the north African country.
"A lot of these boys are being brutally raped by their Arab abductors," reported Maria Sliwa, an editor with Freedom Now World News and an expert on Sudan. "This is something very foreign to the Dinkas. It's a major stigma for a male to have sex with another male, so these boys are quite shocked when they're dragged into this."
Boys who tried to escape their Arab masters were hunted down. Some had their Achilles tendons cut to prevent them from running again and many had scars on their legs from where they were beaten with bamboos or sticks, Sliwa said.
She collected nine hours of testimony on tape during interviews with more than a dozen redeemed slaves, all in their early teens, whose stories were corroborated by local chiefs, a senior justice official in southern Sudan and a Sudanese Anglican minister who oversees 42 churches.
"Nobody denied it. They all knew about it," Sliwa said.
One boy she spoke to said he was often beaten as a slave because he would not convert to Islam. Boys who are able to return to their communities are traumatized, Sliwa said, citing testimony by local chiefs.
"They have fits of crying, many of them can't get married and go on to normal lives," she said.
Gang rapes of women have been well documented and reported by human rights and other groups, but "no one has said anything about the boys," Sliwa said.
The Muslim government of Khartoum has been widely accused of condoning slavery in that country. But some international human rights observers and journalists have reported that the total picture regarding abductions and slavery is complex.
Government-backed militias regularly attack villages of the Dinka tribe in southern Sudan, where more than 2 million Christian and animist people have been killed or died from starvation in a civil war that has dragged on for two decades.
However, because of the civil war, tribal animosities in the south have also been aggravated and rival tribes abduct many women and children, observers say.
