‘They rape us before we can cross’: Women, girls fleeing violence in Mali
Al Jazeera
Women and girls fleeing armed groups in Mali claim sexual assault by Malian soldiers at border with Niger.
Ayourou, Niger – It was just a few minutes before 7 o’clock on a Friday evening in early June when Kani* and 10 others fleeing violence in northeastern Mali arrived at a checkpoint in Labbezanga, close to the border with Niger.
Six armed men, three of them wearing military fatigues, at the checkpoint stopped the men and women who had begun their journey from their village on foot the previous day.
“They [the gunmen] separated the men from the women,” Kani, 17, said. “Then three of them ordered all the four girls who made the journey to move into a small tent [the armed men had erected near the checkpoint].
“They took turns to rape us at gunpoint,” said Kani, who spoke to Al Jazeera from the home of a local legumes farmer in the Nigerien border town of Ayourou, a town on the border with Mali, where many Malian refugees have settled in recent years and where she has been living for the past several weeks since crossing into Niger.
Dressed in a brown headscarf and colourful dress, the teenager seemed frightened and depressed, her head bowed, as she spoke.
