Sudan women forced to have sex with soldiers to secure food

Poor women in warn-torn Sudan are forced to have sex with soldiers in a desperate bid to get food or goods they can sell to raise money to feed their families, media reports say.

Over two dozen women who fled the Sudanese city of Omdurman said there was no other way to get food stored in factories, The Guardian reported.

One woman said the assaults took place in factories across the city.

Systematic sexual assault

“I went to the soldiers and that was the only way to get food – they were everywhere in the factories area," said one woman, who was forced to have sex with some soldiers at a meat-processing factory.

The assaults are said to have begun soon after civil war broke out in the country where the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces are locked in a bloody conflict for supremacy.

Sex as weapon

The war in Sudan has killed an estimated 150,000 people and pushed more than 11 million to the brink of famine.

Most women have blamed the RSF fighters of sexually abusing them in areas under their control.

The soldiers also sought sex in exchange for access to abandoned houses where one can loot items to sell in local markets, the women told the Guardian.

Women allege torture

One woman said: “What I went through is indescribable, I would not wish it on an enemy … I only did it because I wanted to feed my children."

Residents of the city claimed they had seen soldiers bringing women to abandoned houses where they were made to queue up as soldiers picked the ones they liked.

A 21-year-old woman who refused to have sex with a solider was tortured and her legs were burnt.

Den of sin

A soldier who denied ever assaulting any woman, however, admitted that his colleagues had committed the crime.

“It's awful. The amount of sins in this city can never been be forgiven," he was quoted as saying.