“Jeanne” (all survivors’ names have been changed), 30, said that about 20 Seleka fighters caught her and nine other women and girls – some as young as 16 – as they fled an attack in Bambari in June 2014. Many were taken as fighters’ “wives” and forced to cook, clean, and collect food or water. Women and girls were held as sexual slaves for up to 18 months, often subjected to repeated rape by multiple men. ![]() In May 2017, fighters forced one survivor to watch as they raped and killed her husband before raping her. They were also forced to watch armed men rape their daughters, mothers, or other women and girls, or kill and mutilate their husbands and other relatives. © 2017 Smita Sharma for Human Rights Watchįighters often raped women and girls in front of their children or other family members. Josephine said she suffers constant headaches, and is haunted by memories of the violence. ![]() “After, they went in the neighborhood and said, ‘We stopped a wife of Muslims.’” Following the rape, her husband called her “a wife of the anti-balaka” and eventually they separated. “When they pushed it in, blood flowed out and I lost consciousness,” she said. When she returned to her neighborhood to collect clothes and dishes for the family, three anti-balaka stopped her and took her to a compound, where they raped her with a broken beer bottle. Josephine, 28, said she fled her home in Bangui with her husband and five young children due to fighting in the city in October 2014. Thirteen survivors, three of whom were children at the time of the attacks, said they became pregnant from the rapes. Survivors reported injuries ranging from broken bones and smashed teeth to internal injuries and head trauma. During attacks, fighters whipped women and girls, tied them up for long periods, burned them, and threatened them with death. Survivors were raped by up to 10 or more men during a single incident. The documented cases of sexual violence by fighters in this report constitute torture, and in many cases the torture was not limited to the sexual violence itself, but was accompanied by other forms of abuse also amounting to torture. But to date not a single member of any armed group is known to have been arrested or tried for committing sexual violence. In some cases, they may constitute crimes against humanity. Most of the abuses documented are not only crimes under Central African law, but also constitute war crimes. Human Rights Watch interviewed 296 survivors of rape and sexual slavery, 52 of them girls at the time of the attacks, as well as government officials, police, medical personnel, United Nations officials, and others.ĭue to stigma, under-reporting by survivors, and security-related restrictions on research, the full number of sexual violence incidents by armed groups during the conflict is undoubtedly higher, Human Rights Watch said. “Every day, survivors live with the devastating aftermath of rape, and the knowledge that their attackers are walking free, perhaps holding positions of power, and to date facing no consequences whatsoever.” ![]() “Armed groups are using rape in a brutal, calculated way to punish and terrorize women and girls,” said Hillary Margolis, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
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