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“We all knew what had happened”: Stories of Somalis raped, beaten

by Katy Migiro | @katymigiro | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 29 May 2013 03:17 GMT

A girl covers her eyes as she stands with her mother in Kenya's Dadaab Refugee Camp, northeast of Nairobi near the Somali border, on August 19, 2011. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Lutheran World Relief/Handout

Image Caption and Rights Information

These testimonies are taken from a Human Rights Watch report released on May 29, about the abuse of refugees, asylum seekers and ethnic Somali Kenyans in Nairobi since late-2012. 

FOUR WOMEN, SILENT, DRESSES RIPPED

A 23-year-old Somali woman described how paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) officers raped her and three other women at night on wasteland near Eastleigh in early December:

“At around 8 p.m., lots of GSU came to the building where I was living on Jam Street and searched everyone’s apartment. Three of them came to my apartment and I showed them my refugee identity documents. But they took me to their truck nearby which was full of mostly Somali men and three women.

“They drove us to a place where they told all the men to get out and then drove us four women to a different area. They told us to get out and forced us to walk through a field to a small building with a few rooms.

“They took each of us to a different room. Only one GSU officer entered the room with me. It was very dirty inside.

“He told me to sit on the bed. Then he pulled me up by one wrist, slapped me, and ripped my dress. He took off his trousers and then he raped me.

“He held down one of my legs with his hand, pushing it to one side and against the wall. My leg still hurts, even now.

“I pleaded with him in Swahili to stop but he ignored me. I tried to struggle but he was too strong.

“While he raped me I could hear the other women shouting and then screaming and I knew they were also being raped.

“When it was over, he left and immediately other GSU officers came in and took me to the truck. I was bleeding from my groin area and I used my headscarf as a pad.

“Other GSU officers brought the other three women to the truck. Their dresses were ripped and they were totally silent. We didn’t have to say anything to each other because we all knew what had happened to all of us.”

EXTORTION AND BEATINGS

Another Somali woman with four children, aged 12 to 15, related how GSU attacked three of her children while she and her eldest son were detained:

“About 20 GSU officers came to our building and entered lots of apartments, including mine. I showed them my and my son’s refugee ID cards but they ignored them.

“They told my eldest son and me to leave the apartment and when I refused they hit me very hard on the back of the head with a truncheon. Then some of them forced us out and other officers stayed behind in the apartment.

“The GSU officers took us to their truck which was full of Somalis including many women, some of whom were breast feeding their infants and crying. The GSU asked for money and took those of us who couldn’t pay to Pangani police station where they kept my son and me for two hours in cells packed full of Somalis and Ethiopians.

“After a neighbor came and paid Ksh 10,000 ($120) to release us, my son and I went home and found my three children crying. They told me the GSU officers had beaten them with truncheons.

“My friend said she had tried to stop the beating but that the officers had slapped her and pushed her away. My children were in a lot of pain but I couldn’t take them to hospital because I didn’t even have enough money to pay my neighbor back the Ksh 10,000.”

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