Liberian rebels and government soldiers, some aged 12 or even younger, are assaulting thousands of girls and women under the cover of war, aid workers said yesterday. More than 600 rapes have been documented in Monrovia since July, but that is thought to be a small fraction of the real figure.
The victims say that as President Charles Taylor’s regime has crumbled, fighters on both sides have treated the female civilian population as booty, thinking it may be their last chance to exploit the anarchy before the peacekeepers arrive.
Those attacked have been aged between eight and 65. But what some medical professionals have found more shocking is that many of the perpetrators have been soldiers aged 12 or younger.
Many of the assaults have been accompanied by the murder of male relatives.
Unlike the mass rapes in Sierra Leone and Rwanda, where armed groups used sexual assault as a strategy to terrorise and ethnically cleanse civilian populations, those in Libera seem to be opportunistic rather than systematic.
Nigerian peacekeepers were cheered and kissed when they patrolled the centre of Monrovia for the first time yesterday. But it will be weeks before the stabilisation force is at its planned strength of 3 250 and even then many civilians fear they will remain vulnerable.
Three years of civil war and two months of siege have left Monrovia a smoking ruin, the streets littered with shell casings and hundreds of thousands of homeless people crowded into disused warehouses and factories.
In theory government militias and rebel groups control various zones, but in reality the capital is lawless, at the mercy of the whims of those with rifles.
The fighting has tapered off this week as both sides respect a ceasefire, but uncertainty about what will happen after President Taylor steps down on Monday has encouraged a frenzy of rape, aid workers said.
”They are on the rampage, especially the government side, because they think this might be their last chance,” said Mariama Brown, director of the Concerned Christian Community, which counsels women.
Since 1994 — four years after conflict engulfed Liberia — CCC has counselled about 1 000 rape victims each year. But in the past few weeks 626 girls and women have come forward.
CCC, which is funded by the UN and by Dutch, German and US churches, suspects that thousands have been raped recently but have not sought help because mortars and stray bullets make it too dangerous to venture outdoors .
According to CCC, one of this week’s cases involved soldiers who raped a woman and then her 10-year-old daughter Nana, who died during the attack. It was the girl’s birthday.
Nana’s 12-year-old friend, who was forced to perform oral sex, survived but has not been able to stop crying.
In a separate incident a 16-year-old was shot in the foot when she tried to resist, and surgeons had to amputate the leg below the knee.
Hawa Foday (53) says she was attacked in June by two rebels and then in July by two government soldiers.
”They asked, did I want to die or did I want to have sex with them.”
Five men had raped her in 2001, she said. Those who carried out the more recent attack took her clothes, shoes and transistor radio.
Foday has kept the instruction booklet for the radio carefully wrapped in a plastic bag. ”It’s all I’ve got left,” she says.
Sitting next to her on a bamboo bench outside Monrovia’s football stadium, at present the home of more than 50 000 displaced people, was Jenneh Brown, 30.
Last month rebels from the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) raided the house where she and two other women were sheltering from shelling.
”They raped me eight times; the others I don’t know how many times,” she said. Her husband, Boima, has left her.
”He says I’m no use now,” she said. Given the stigma, she does not blame him.
Esther Macauley (40) was gang-raped by Lurd fighters in front of her four children after being captured in an ambush.
She lost count of the rapes after five, but remembers that the rapists were young: ”small baby men”.
They disembowelled her husband. ”They said they were looking inside for Charles Taylor.”
Civilians in the rebel-held areas of Monrovia say that the rapes and murders did taper off as Lurd attempted to show discipline recently.
Government troops, too, executed four comrades accused of rape last month — crowds cheered when the corpses were dumped on the streets — but it was a rare outbreak of discipline.
Many checkpoints are commanded by the likes of ”General” David Passane (22). ”We take good care of civilians, they are our citizens,” he says — but his voice is slurred from alcohol and his soldiers were using marijuana.
Over the course of the war each side was as bad as the other, according to CCC, but in this phase President Taylor’s forces have been worse.
”It’s not the regular army, it’s the militias,” said Brown, who has been subject to death threats for highlighting the problem.
Bindu Hagar (46) gang-raped twice in separate incidents by boys in their mid-teens, said they ordered her to laugh and say ”fine” when asked how it was.
What shook her most was that some of the same boys raped her 15-year-old daughter: to Liberians it is taboo for any man to have sex with both a mother and daughter.
”We are cursed,” Mrs Hagar said.
Alice Kpaku’s composure dissolved the moment she tried to explain how it felt to watch a husband have a cigarette popped in his mouth as he is disembowelled. Later they tied her ankles to stakes and stabbed her in the right thigh when she struggled.
”I have no hope in life,” she says. ”I have no one left. Oh comfort me, Jesus.” – Guardian Unlimited Â