Trajan
Veteran
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A UN commission on human rights in South Sudan has said a steady process of ethnic cleansing is underway in the country, involving massacres, starvation, gang rape and the destruction of villages.
On Wednesday, three commission members who had travelled around South Sudan for 10 days said they observed deepening divisions in a country with 64 ethnic groups.
"There is already a steady process of ethnic cleansing underway in several areas of South Sudan using starvation, gang rape and the burning of villages," commission chairwoman Yasmin Sooka told a news conference.
"The stage is being set for a repeat of what happened in Rwanda and the international community is under an obligation to prevent it."
The alleged ethnic cleansing comes after almost three years of fighting between government forces, rebel troops and allied militias. A political split between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar escalated into a military conflict in December 2013.
The conflict - which has killed tens of thousands, caused widespread hunger and forced three million people from their homes - has pitted Kiir's Dinka ethnic group against Machar's Nuer ethnic group and other groups suspected of supporting the rebels.
"You have so many different groups of armed actors, including the military who are talking about dealing with a rebellion and putting it down," Sooka told Al Jazeera in a separate interview.
"You have ethnic tensions because people have been displaced from their land based on ethnicity. Everybody believes that a military conflict is almost inevitable in different parts of the country."

UN: 'Ethnic cleansing under way' in South Sudan
I guess all countries go through a civil war when forming. This is pretty disappointing though. Oil wealth and great fertile land (the breadbasket of Africa) between 8m ppl and still on the brink of starvation.
All that fighting to break away from the North.