A/HRC/40/69
Wau Triangle, attacking at least 10 towns and villages. The attacks extended past the
signing of the Revitalized Agreement into at least early November 2018.
87.
In many instances, attacks were launched on villages where no opposition forces
were present and followed a pattern. SPLA soldiers would attack in the morning, arriving in
military vehicles and firing into the village as inhabitants fled, killing civilians including
children and older persons. One witness from Tagoti Vimoi, which was attacked on 5
November, told the Commission, “they just shot at everyone”.
88.
The soldiers then systematically looted people’s possessions and loaded them onto
lorries; some of the possessions were then sold in the Wau market. After looting, they set
fire to people’s tukuls. In Mboro, which was attacked on 28 June, satellite imagery
established that approximately 200 structures were damaged or destroyed. As the attacks
progressed, people started hiding their crops in the bush in attempts to save them from
being looted; however, soldiers also set fire to the surrounding bush areas.
89.
The attacks on the civilian population resulted in significant population
displacement, and many people were displaced multiple times as the places to which they
had fled for refuge also came under attack. When the village of Ngo Pere came under attack
in September, it was sheltering 2,000 people already displaced from Mboro in addition to
its 1,000 inhabitants. The impact of the displacement on the population was magnified by
the fact that humanitarian actors had been denied access to the Wau Triangle for more than
two months from mid-June.
90.
A similar attack was launched on the village of Wadhalelo, located to the south-east
of Wau town. The origins of the conflict in Wadhalelo are somewhat different from those in
the Wau Triangle as it is a Luo village, which traditionally had good relationships with the
Dinka cattle-herders in the area. However, when those relationships soured, the village
came under SPLA-IO control in early 2017 and thereafter a number of clashes erupted
between SPLA and SPLA-IO. Multiple inhabitants of Wadhalelo complained that “we are
stuck there in the middle between the SPLA and the IO; both mistreat us”.
91.
On 11 June 2018, just over a week after the arrival of the new SPLA Fifth Division
Commander in Wau, SPLA launched an attack on SPLA-IO positions in Wadhalelo,
ostensibly under instruction to conduct disarmament in the area. The attack started in the
early morning with heavy shooting and the burning of tukuls. The houses of those suspected
of being SPLA-IO members were deliberately targeted, resulting in the males in the house
fleeing and women, children and family members remaining being beaten. People’s
possessions were looted.
92.
Multiple women reported being raped and gang-raped by SPLA soldiers in
Wadhalelo, including one woman who told the Commission: “[The soldier] raped me while
my children were watching; they didn’t understand and thought he was killing me and were
crying. … After he left I took the children and sat under a tree and cried.”
93.
By September, Wadhalelo was largely deserted, except for SPLA stationed there,
with civilians living in the bush or displaced to surrounding towns. SPLA occupied the
primary school, which had previously already been occupied by SPLA-IO forces such that
it was not operational.
Violations and alleged crimes: findings
94.
The Commission finds reasonable grounds to believe that SPLA soldiers committed
killings, rape, beatings, arbitrary detention, looting and the destruction of private property
in the Wau Triangle from mid-June until at least early November 2018 and in Wadhalelo on
11 June 2018. These acts amount to serious violations of human rights and humanitarian
law, and should be investigated and prosecuted as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
95.
The Commission also received information that SPLA-IO engaged in incidents of
looting and forced recruitment over the period when it had occupied Wadhalelo, from early
2017.
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