UN human rights experts says international community has
an obligation to prevent ethnic cleansing in South Sudan
GENEVA/JUBA (1 December 2016) - The world’s youngest
country, South Sudan, is on the brink of catastrophe, said the three-member* UN
Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan at the end of a ten-day visit. “The
stage is being set for a repeat of what happened in Rwanda and the
international community is under an obligation to prevent it,” said the
chairperson of the Commission, Yasmin Sooka, citing disturbing indicators such
as an increase in hate speech, a crackdown on the media and civil society,
deepening divisions between the country’s 64 tribes, renewed recruitment in a
country already awash with guns and the proliferation of armed groups aligned
to both sides engaging in armed conflict.
“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; everywhere we went across this country we heard villagers
saying they are ready to shed blood to get their land back,” said Ms. Sooka.
“Many told us it’s already reached a point of no return.”
It’s widely believed that fighting will intensify during
the dry season, which runs until the end of February. The Commission enumerated
a number of steps that the international community should take immediately to
avert mass bloodshed: expedite the immediate arrival of the 4,000 strong
Regional Protection Force in South Sudan, ensure that the force is not restricted
only to the capital, freeze assets, enact targeted sanctions and implement an
arms embargo.
“It is also urgent to set up the hybrid court promised
for South Sudan,” said Commissioner, Ken Scott. “Large parts of the country
literally have no functioning courts and even the traditional reconciliation
methods are now breaking down with the result that it’s a free for all.”
The Commission, which is due to report to the Human
Rights Council in March, visited Bentiu in Unity State where more than a
hundred thousand people are sheltering in a UN protected camp. They met one
woman who described being gangraped by soldiers just three days earlier when
her village was attacked and heard reports of three women raped that very day
by soldiers just outside the camp while going to collect firewood. In Malakal
in Upper Nile State, though government officials said it was not in their
culture to rape women, it was apparent the practice was condoned and widespread
but still vastly underreported. The Commission met several displaced women in
the Juba camp who were gang raped in July and four months later have yet to
receive adequate medical treatment for resulting complications.
“The scale of rape of women and girls perpetrated by all
armed groups in South Sudan is utterly unacceptable and is frankly mind
boggling,” said the Commission chairperson. “Aid workers describe gang rape as
so prevalent that it’s become ‘normal’ in this warped environment but what does
that say about us that we accept this and thereby condemn these women to this
unspeakable fate?”
In Wau in Western Bahr el Ghazal State, where ethnic
tension remains high, civilians gave graphic accounts of how their husbands and
children were robbed and murdered by soldiers from the army during violence in
June in which at least 53 people were killed. Here and elsewhere victims urged
the Commission to push the international community to act, not just produce
more reports.
Worryingly an area of the country that was relatively
unaffected by the conflict, like the Equatorias, have now become the epicentre
of the conflict. “The impact of this spreading violence is much more widespread
and serious than earlier thought,” said Commissioner Godfrey Musila who visited
the area. The picture emerging is one of the presence of armed groups,
displacement based on ethnicity, torching of houses, food insecurity and denial
of freedom of movement. The Commission heard numerous accounts of corpses being
found along main roads, looming starvation and people fleeing to neighbouring countries
on a daily basis.
The Commission is pleased that it was able to meet the
First Vice President, the Chief of General Staff of the Sudan People’s
Liberation Army, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Justice,
senior officials in the states and traditional leaders, the head of the SPLA
military justice system, representatives of the African Union, the Joint
Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), the South Sudan Human Rights
Commission, as well as human rights defenders, UN and humanitarian agencies.
“As the UN Special Representative for the Prevention of
Genocide said, many of the warning signals of impending genocide are already
there – an existing conflict, resort to polarized ethnic identities,
dehumanization, a culture of denial, displacement based on ethnicity and in
some places indications of systematic violations and planning – but the
important thing is there is still time to prevent it,” said Ms Sooka.
ENDS
*The Commissioners are: Yasmin Sooka (Chairperson),
Kenneth Scott and Godfrey Musila.
For more information, please contact Joseph Bonsu on
jbonsu@ohchr.org and +41 79 109 6870 and Frances Harrison on
francescsharrison@gmail.com and +44 794 648 8089.
For more information about the UN Commission on Human
Rights in South Sudan, please see:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoHSouthSudan/Pages/Index.aspx
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