Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Speechless after an assault
The aunt of the 14-year-old girl said the Africa Corps fighters marched everyone outside at gunpoint. The family couldn’t understand what they wanted. The men made them watch as they tied up the girl’s uncle and cut off his head.
Then two of the men took the 14-year-old into the tent as she tried to defend herself, and raped her. The family waited outside, unable to move.
“We were so scared that we were not even able to scream anymore,” the aunt recalled, as her mother sobbed quietly next to her. She, like other women, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, and the AP does not name victims of rape unless they agree to be named.
The girl emerged over a half-hour later, looking terrified. Then she saw her uncle’s body and screamed. She fainted. When she woke up, she had the eyes of someone “who was no longer there,” the aunt said.
The next morning, JNIM militants came and ordered the family to leave. They piled onto a donkey cart and set off toward the border. At any sound, they hid in the bushes, holding their breath.
The girl’s condition deteriorated during the three-day journey. When they arrived in Mauritania, she collapsed.
The AP came across her lying on the ground in the courtyard of a local family. Her family said they had not taken her to a clinic because they had no money.
“If you have nothing, how can you bring someone to a doctor?” the girl’s grandmother said between sobs. The AP took the family to a free clinic run by MSF. A doctor said the girl had signs of being raped.
The clinic had been functioning for barely a month and had seen three survivors of sexual violence, manager Elidje said.
“We are convinced that there are many cases like this,” she said.
“But so far, very few patients come forward to seek treatment because it’s still a taboo subject here. It really takes time and patience for these women to open up and confide in someone so they can receive care. They only come when things have already become complicated, like the case we saw today.”
As Elidje tried to save the girl’s life, she asked the family to describe the incident. She did not speak Arabic and asked the local nurse to find out how many men carried out the assault. But the nurse was too ashamed to ask.
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
