Witness Reports

Darfur-Sudan

Darfur

Rape victims must withstand threats of violence from their own families, as seen in this testimony from a May 2009 Physicians for Human Rights report called "Nowhere to Turn”:

When I got back to my brother’s house, I told him what had happened. My brother said to me, "If you stay in my house, I’m going to shoot you (to kill you)." After that, I was afraid and I came to Farchana. My mother doesn’t speak to me.

The violence of rape can force a pregnant woman’s body to abort her baby. At the time of an attack on one woman, which was reported by Physicians for Human Rights, the woman was eight months pregnant. From the same report:

I was raped vaginally by three men in front of my children. The children were forced to witness the rape.… One of the Janjaweed pushed me to the ground. He forced my clothes off and raped me. When they shot my father, they saw I was a little girl. I did not have any energy or force against them. They used me. I started bleeding. It was so painful. I could not stand up.

I was really suffering. The next day I gave birth to a dead baby.

This testimony of a Sudanese man in Darfur was recounted in a 2006 United Nations Population Fund briefing paper:

In February 2004, I abandoned my house because of the conflict. I met six Arabs in the bush. I wanted to take my spear and defend my family, but they threatened me with a weapon and I had to stop. The six men raped my daughter, who is 25 years old, in front of me, my wife, and young children.

One woman from Darfur told Amnesty International in 2004:

I was with another woman, Aziza, aged 18, who had her stomach slit on the night we were abducted. She was pregnant and was killed and they said, "It is the child of an enemy."