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Quote: http://web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webafrcountries/SUDAN?OpenDocument ------ Children continued to be forcibly recruited by the SPLA, despite the fact that the SPLA had informed UNICEF that it would demobilize all child soldiers in its forces and end the recruitment of children. ----- Rape and other violence against women Violence against women by combatants on all sides, long a feature of the conflict in Sudan, intensified during the year. There were widespread reports of sexual abuse, including sexual slavery, rape and forced pregnancies. Rape was used as a tactic of war by both government and opposition forces to dehumanize and humiliate civilians in the conflict zone. However, because of the taboos and stigma attached to rape, reports were rare and impunity for the rapist was the rule. There were frequent reports of women being abducted while collecting firewood or water and being forced to carry heavy loads of goods looted from ransacked villages. They were also used as bonded labour and forced to clean, cook and provide domestic services to soldiers in barracks and camps. تقرير من نهيال بول = جنوب السودان المصدر موقع العالم الواحد http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/apr/sudan.html ========= SUDAN-HUMAN RIGHTS: Women Ex-Rebels Speak of Neglect and Abuse By Nhial Bol KHARTOUM, Apr 3 (IPS) -- Until recently, Aroghu Radolfa was a lieutenant in Sudan's main rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), but she was unable to move further. The reason, she said, was that she was a woman. Aroghu was one of five female ex-rebels who recounted their experiences to the press here last week after defecting from the rebel movement. They are part of a group of 27 women who have decided to leave the main faction of the SPLA and one of its splinter groups, the Southern Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM). The five women recounted their life in the bush which was characterised by discrimination and abuse. ''During fighting, we fight side by side, on equal footing with men, but when it comes to promotions, women are less considered. We really faced difficulties to get promotions,'' Aroghu said. ''Some of my (male) colleagues have little education, but still they become commanders.'' The SPLA main faction is estimated at 800,000, and according to Aroghu there are some 354 women officers below the rank of commander. But lack of promotion was not the only problem faced by women rebels, said Aroghu. They were also forced to put up with human rights abuses. ''I remember during our training in 1986 in the bushes of the Equatoria region (in the south), some of us were sexually abused not only by Sudanese trainers, but also by Ugandan soldiers who were training us,'' recalled Aroghu who has come home to help her family, find work and go back to school. She joined the SPLA in 1986. Some women were married to male rebels without prior knowledge, she charged, adding that compulsory marriages were common in rebel territory. ''You were told to sleep with a man you had never talked to and if you disobeyed, you violated the orders of the movement and you were punished for it,'' she added. ''(SPLA leader John) Garang himself told us during (one of) his lectures near Chukudum in Equatoria State that he favoured marriages among fighters, because the movement needs children for this war,'' Aroghu said. ''Garang wants us to produce more children in order to support his forces in the future.'' According to Aroghu, the international community has made no effort to investigate the serious human rights violations perpetrated against women behind rebel lines. Women and young boys were also given the most distasteful tasks, such as burying people who died in fights between the SPLA and the regular army, the former rebel complained. On one occasion, she said, ''I was given some women and young boys to bury people killed on both sides. The dead bodies were allowed to remain in the open air for some days so the birds had been consuming them and later we were told to bury them. That particular job was very unsanitary and made us sick.'' Another former fighter, who gave only her first name as Aliza, said she too had been a lieutenant, but her rank meant little to her male fighters. Aliza, who has lost her hair and carries the scars of war on her legs and in the face, said she had been detained and tortured in the town of Wau (Southern Sudan), when she refused to go to bed with her local commander. ''I tell you, women in the eyes of the rebels, are nothing...,'' she said. According to Aliza, because women fighters were poorly trained, they often constituted a high number of the fatalities on the battlefield. More than 200 women and girls died last year in factional fighting between the SPLA and the SSIM's army in the Southern Sudanese towns of Watt, Aiod and Bor, and some 25 women died during the siege of Jekau in the Upper Nile region this year, she added. Aliza said that women must begin to fight their oppressor on all fronts. ''Women should prepare the ground for demanding equality and justice even through the use of armed struggle,'' she said. ''For how long are we going to face this oppression?'' (end/ips/nb/pm97