Guinean soldiers raped at least 100 women during a crackdown on protesters in September, a human rights group said on Thursday. The findings were released as United Nations experts began to investigate the repression, in which about 160 people were killed. The crackdown has drawn widespread condemnation and brought sanctions against the ruling military junta.
"We have recorded 100 cases of rape against women committed Sept. 28 and the two days that followed," said Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of the Guinean Organisation of Human Rights, which is working with the UN investigators.
"Most were schoolchildren, students, businesswomen, teachers, even journalists." The organisation had found evidence that 20 victims were taken from a medical clinic to secret locations where they were drugged and raped repeatedly. Three UN experts arrived in the West African nation, the world's top supplier of aluminium ore bauxite, on Wednesday to investigate the crackdown in which security forces used guns, steel pipes and knives on unarmed demonstrators gathered in a Conakry stadium.
Witnesses have said some soldiers violated women using gun barrels and bayonets. The demonstrators were protesting against the junta, whose leader Captain Musa Dadis Camara stepped back from a promise to opt out of elections intended to restore civilian rule.
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