{{Somalia’s government vowed Wednesday to deliver justice in the case of a local woman who alleged she was gang raped by African Union troops and Somali soldiers.}}<\/p>\n
“My team and I are committed to getting to the bottom of this case, and all other allegations of sexual violence,” Somalia’s minster for human development, Maryan Qasim, said in a statement Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“We want perpetrators of crimes to be brought to justice and to build a society where the rights of every citizen are protected.”<\/p>\n
Qasim, the head of a government team probing the case, distanced herself from an audio recording in Somali media in which she appeared to angrily criticise rape victims for publicising their cases in the press.<\/p>\n
Instead, she said she had been “misquoted and misrepresented”, and that she had instead been stressing the need to “protect each and every rape victim’s identity”.<\/p>\n
“Rape in all its forms is totally unacceptable,” Qasim added. “The government cannot tolerate such incidents, no one should be allowed to violate the rights of Somali women.”<\/p>\n
Late last week a Somali woman alleged she was kidnapped by three soldiers from the national army, blindfolded and forced into a car, before being handed over to African Union troops to be repeatedly raped.<\/p>\n
The unnamed woman, in her late 20s with a young baby, told Somali media that she was unconscious during the attack and says she does not know how many men raped her.<\/p>\n
AMISOM, the 17,700-strong United Nations-mandated force that supports the government in its fight against Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents, said it has launched an investigation together with the Somali army.<\/p>\n
AMISOM, fighting since 2007 in Somalia and funded by the UN and European Union, insists it “strongly condemns … sexual abuse or exploitation”.<\/p>\n
The force is mainly made up of troops from Uganda, Burundi and Kenya, with smaller numbers from Djibouti and Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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