Pnma: Women for children, and a man for pleasure

As he began speaking, Majok lowered his small cocoa-colored eyes and stared intensely at the ground. It was the summer of 2002 and I had just flown thousands of miles deep into the war zone of Sudan, the largest country in Africa, to interview former slaves.

Majok, then 12, tightly hugged his long, bony legs, as we sat on the parched termite-infested earth. His ragged black shorts and ripped oversized T-shirt hung loosely on his spindly, dust-covered body. A continuous flow of tears poured down his precious adolescent face, as he spoke of the way he was repeatedly raped and sodomized by gangs of government soldiers.

"They raped me," Majok cried. "And when I tried to refuse, they beat me."

After taking care of his master's cattle all day, Majok said he was often raped at night. He told me that his rapes were very painful and he would rarely get a full night's sleep.

He also spoke about the other slave boys he saw who suffered his same fate. "I saw with my eyes other boys get raped," Majok said. "He [the master] went to collect the other boys and took them to that special place. I saw them get raped."

Yal, another adolescent, had multiple scars on his arms and legs that he said came from the numerous bamboo beatings he received while in captivity. He told me he saw three slaves killed and one whose arm was hacked off at the elbow because he tried to run away. Yal also said he saw other boys raped by his master at his master's house.

"At the time they were raped they were crying the whole day," Yal said. He then told me that he, too, was raped.

Since 1989, Sudan's extremist government, which is seated in the North, has been waging war against its diverse populace. The battle is over land, oil, power and religion, by a government that is made up of some of Africa's most aggressive Arab Islamists, says Jesper Strudsholm, Africa correspondent for Politiken.

Animist and Christian black Africans in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, have paid a price for refusing to submit to the North. Over 2 million have died as a result of this war, according to the US Committee for Refugees. Often trapped in the fray, are surviving victims the government soldiers capture as slaves. Human rights and local tribal groups estimate the number enslaved ranges from 14,000 to 200,000.

Read the rest of what is happening to the Sudanese who are victims of the jihadist war of the Muslims in the north of the country.