Soldiers Who Rape Should Be Shot Summary

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These two articles, “Military Investigates After South Sudan Villagers Claim Gang Rape by Soldiers-Bishop” and “South Sudan President Says Soldiers Who Rape Should Be Shot”, both written by Reuters, analyze the ongoing tribal conflicts between two Sudanese people groups, the Dinka and Nuer. Starting in 2013 as a civil war, ethnic killings and raping of minority village women have occurred more frequently, and Sudanese government officials have begun to look into what atrocities the soldiers may be committing in the name of ethnic superiority. The ability to rape and incite fear as the soldiers have demonstrated can be likened to the Nazi ideals of power and control as forwarded by Hannah Arendt in “Total Domination”, and the response from the Sudanese government illustrates the responsibility of those in power to take action and defend minorities who are persecuted by …show more content…
Dinka soldiers are harming Nuer people, the minority group addressed in these articles. Dinka officers have not faced repercussions for the “rampant brutal human rights abuses by the military and ethnic favoritism” that has been acted upon against Nuer (“Villagers Claim Gang Rape”). The village under attack, Kubi, saw women raped and “men locked in a…shed without food for two days” – the soldier treated the villagers “like rebels” (“Villagers Claim Gang Rape”). Reaching out to the South Sudanese government, however, as the system in place to deal with these breaches of human rights, is proving to be difficult. A major source to the ethnic issues themselves, the government’s role to protect the people appears to be different than the role that it is playing. While the president claims to show “zero tolerance” towards such incidents, as of yet this so proclaimed “military weeding” of abusive soldiers has not been proven (Mastracci; “Villagers Claim Gang