Mass killings, rape, torture, abductions and forced cannibalism have led to an increase in mental illness in South Sudan, with patients routinely housed in prisons due to an “almost total” absence of mental healthcare, a rights group said yesterday.
There are only two practicing psychiatrists for South Sudan’s 11 million people, Amnesty International said in a report ahead of the nation’s fifth anniversary of independence on Saturday.
“My mind is not good,” the report quoted one man, Phillip, as saying as he described being forced to eat the flesh of dead men rounded up and shot in a security forces building in the capital, Juba, when conflict broke out in December 2013.
Photo: AFP
“They found me, tied my arms behind my back and forced me at gunpoint to drink blood and eat flesh... At night when I sleep, those who were killed come back in my nightmares,” he said.
More than 10,000 people have been killed and 2 million displaced since fighting erupted between forces loyal to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar.
Clashes have continued even though warring factions signed a peace deal in August last year, with 200,000 people still sheltering in UN military bases across the country.
There are no official statistics on mental health in the country, but the director of the department of mental health told Amnesty that the number of patients with mental health problems has risen since 2013.
Most of the 82 inmates categorized as mentally ill in Juba Central Prison in May did not have a criminal file, the report said.
The majority of displaced people surveyed in a UN base in the northern town of Malakal exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a study last year found.
PTSD is a severely debilitating condition in which patients re-
experience horrific traumas from the past in forms of intrusive memories, flashbacks and nightmares.
Lual, another man quoted in the report, said he felt suicidal after security officers forced him to disembowel corpses in detention in Juba in 2014.
“Whenever they would kill people, we would be taken to dissect the stomachs of those who were killed, so they could be thrown into the river and wouldn’t float,” he was quoted as saying.
“I dream that I am still in jail. I am haunted by the cutting of the stomachs... I hate myself,” he said.
Of the 161 displaced people interviewed by Amnesty, several knew of others who had attempted or committed suicide.
One mother in a displaced camp, Nyayang, whose soldier husband had disappeared, used to beat her children and tried to kill herself three times by drinking poison, the report said. She eventually disappeared, leaving her children behind.
Poor mental health can contribute to violent behaviour in the home, community and nationally, experts say.
Many interviewees said they could not eat or sleep and felt angry, anxious or irritable. They also struggled to concentrate or remember things, making it difficult to carry out every day tasks like cooking.
“Doing more to address mental health needs is not only essential for individuals’ wellbeing, it is also critical for South Sudanese to effectively rebuild their communities and country,” Amnesty International regional director Muthoni Wanyeki said in a statement.
Healthcare services in South Sudan have been predominantly funded by charities since independence in 2011.
Humanitarians have received just more than one quarter of the US$1.29 billion requested for this year, the UN says.
Hunger is at its highest level since the conflict began, with up to 4.8 million people facing severe food shortages in coming months, the UN says.
Many people have been uprooted by fighting multiple times, most recently in the northwestern town of Wau on June 24, when tens of thousands were forced to flee and 43 killed.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
RSS