January 16, 2003
A year after Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war was declared over, no one has been brought to justice for the thousands of women and girls raped in a systematic campaign of terror, a New York-based human rights group said Thursday. ``The war in Sierra Leone became infamous for the amputation of hands and arms,'' Peter Takirambudde, head of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. ``Rape may not be visible in the same way, but it is every bit as devastating.''
The group interviewed hundreds of victims of sexual violence for a 75-page report released Thursday. The report primarily details crimes committed by various rebel forces - including the Revolutionary United Front, which made the hacking off of limbs its signature atrocity. But it says all sides are implicated, including members of a West African intervention force and U.N. peacekeepers. Victims were subjected to systematic sexual violence, including individual and gang rape, the report says.
The rebels abducted many women and girls for sex, as well as to perform domestic work, farm labor and to act as military porters. Human Rights Watch says the crimes were part of efforts to undermine communities and destroy the ties that hold families together. Child fighters were forced to rape women old enough to be their grandmothers; rebels raped pregnant and breast-feeding mothers, and fathers were forced to watch their daughters being raped.
The RUF rebels launched their brutal campaign to seize control of Sierra Leone's government and diamond fields in 1991. In the decade that followed, they killed tens of thousands of people and raped, maimed and abducted many more.
``To date there has been no accountability for the thousands of crimes of sexual violence or other appalling human rights abuses committed during the war in Sierra Leone,'' Human Rights Watch said in the statement.
The United Nations has established a war crimes tribunal which is expected to start trying those responsible for some of the worst abuses later this year. Sierra Leone has also established a separate truth and reconciliation commission - modeled on that of South Africa - designed to act as a balm for the country's riven society. Human Rights Watch urged both bodies to make sexual violence a top priority.
Sierra Leone has returned to an uneasy peace since forces of the United Nations, former colonial master Britain and neighboring Guinea helped crush the rebels. The war was officially declared over last year.
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