UN “Deeply Troubled” by Reports of Abuses in S. Sudan

[sudan]

The United Nations mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said it is “deeply troubled” by reports of violations of human rights during recent military clashes in Unity and Upper Nile states.
Speaking on Saturday at the end of a visit to the Unity state capital, Bentiu, the head of UNMISS, Ellen Margrethe Loj, said the peace keeping body is facing numerous challenges in protecting displaced civilians.
“We face a great challenge in ensuring the protection of the hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians throughout South Sudan,” said Loj in a statement.
She was accompanied to Bentiu by the director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), William Lacy Swing.
The duo inspected the protection of civilians sites (PoCs) in Bentiu.
The delegation visited the extension of the UNMISS PoC site, that includes works to improve drainage before the rainy season, and the establishment of humanitarian services and shelter. Civilians will reportedly be relocated in the expanded site in the coming weeks.
“UNMISS is deeply troubled by reports of grave violations and abuses of human rights perpetrated during the fighting”, said Loj.
“We must be able to document these crimes by being given unimpeded access to areas where violence has occurred. I want to reiterate how important it is to hold accountable all those who committed atrocities against civilians during fighting,” she added.
IOM is reportedly overseeing the renovation and expansion of the 1.5 million square meters PoC. Renovation, it said, will mitigate the deplorable flooding conditions suffered by those internally displaced during the last rainy season and enhance protection.
UNMISS is currently protecting over 60,000 civilians at its PoCs in Bentiu, and 130,000 civilians all over the POCs in the world’s youngest nation.

 

[waltky]

Dey's eatin' people...

AU report cites cannibalism, atrocities in South Sudan
Oct 28,`15 -- Investigators discovered atrocities by all sides in South Sudan's civil war, including testimony of forced cannibalism and the discovery of mass graves, according to a long-awaited report by the African Union.

The report, released late Tuesday, also accused the forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, of recruiting an irregular tribal force before the outbreak of civil war in December 2013. It also disputes a claim by the government that there was a coup attempt at that time by former Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. The report alleged that government troops carried out organized killings of ethnic Nuer in Juba, the capital. When the violence began, Machar became a rebel leader. Tens of thousands of people have died and over 2 million more are displaced by warfare in South Sudan, according to the United Nations, which blamed the violence and the subsequent threat of famine on the young country's feuding leaders.

A man walks in a ward of mainly soldiers with gunshot wounds inside the Juba Military Hospital in Juba, South Sudan. A report by African Union investigators, released lated Tuesday, Oct. 27th, 2015 says mass graves have been discovered in South Sudan and cites horrific crimes against civilians, including forced cannibalism. The report also disputes that there was a coup attempt in December 2013 by former Vice President Riek Machar.

The African Union investigators, led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, found that the conflict began Dec. 15, 2013, when a skirmish broke out between Dinka and Nuer soldiers in the presidential guard following political tension between Kiir and Machar, his onetime deputy who had been fired the previous July. Hundreds of Nuer men were rounded up and shot, and their mass graves were discovered, according to the report. Perpetrators - described as government forces or their allies - allegedly tortured their victims, sometimes forcing them to jump into bonfires or eat human flesh, witnesses told investigators.

The killings were "an organized military operation that could not have been successful without concerted efforts from various actors in the military and government circles," the report said. "Roadblocks or checkpoints were established all around Juba and house-to-house searches were undertaken by security forces. During this operation male Nuers were targeted, identified, killed on the spot or gathered in one place and killed."

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[waltky]

So. Sudan army 'killed 50 by suffocation'...

South Sudan troops killed 50 civilians by suffocation - report
Mon, 01 Feb 2016 - South Sudan's government troops killed about 50 civilians last October by stuffing them into a shipping container in baking heat, a report has said.

The document by the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), which oversees the country's ceasefire, said the incident took place in Unity State. The government has not commented on the claim - the latest reported atrocities in more than two years of war.

The JMEC report also accused both government troops and rebel forces of rape and looting​

Thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced since then. "About 50 people suffocated in a container on about 22 October. The investigation was protracted. Attribution of responsibility: Government Forces," the JMEC report said. The document by the monitoring group, which is backed by the African Union, was made public late on Sunday.

Metal containers are often used as makeshift prison cells in the country. South Sudan's government has repeatedly denied carrying out atrocities in the conflict. The JMEC report also accused both government troops and rebel forces of rape, murder and looting. The civil war began in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup. The two sides blame each other for violating the terms of a peace deal agreement reached in August.

South Sudan troops killed 50 civilians by suffocation - report - BBC News

See also:

South Sudan Forces Accused of Leaving 50 People to Suffocate in a Shipping Container
February 1, 2016 | A ceasefire-monitoring group has blamed South Sudanese government forces for the deaths of some 50 people who suffocated in a shipping container last October — the latest gruesome incident to emerge from the country's two-year conflict.

The account, which the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) reported at an African Union (AU) summit on Sunday, allegedly took place in oil-rich Unity State around October 22. Though JMEC offered little detail on the deaths, groups including Human Rights Watch have previously documented the use of metal containers as informal detention sites in South Sudan. The container incident was among five violations of an August ceasefire that JMEC documented in their submission to the AU. Opposition forces were also accused of killing or injuring an estimated 12 people in an attack on a civilian vehicle in Unity on December 18 and raiding and looting United Nations barges in Upper Nile state on October 21.

War broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 between government forces led by President Salva Kiir and rebels allied with Riek Machar, Kiir's former vice president. The two men, who were part of a tenuous regional alliance against Sudan before the South Sudan attained independence in 2011, are from different ethnic groups — Kiir is a Dinka, Machar a Nuer — and much of the initial violence in South Sudan's civil war fell along ethnic lines. According to the International Crisis Group, a conflict-monitoring organization, more than 50,000 people are believed to have died in the fighting, though the true number is unknown.

Under intense pressure from the international community, Kiir and Machar signed a peace deal last August. But, as JMEC noted on Sunday, that agreement and efforts to establish a transitional government have fallen by the wayside amid bickering and intermittent clashes. While some of the war's worst bloodshed occurred in Unity State and other parts of the northeast, new hostilities, often involving smaller local groups with varying grievances against the national government, have been recorded in recent months in other regions.

The JMEC submission comes on the heels of a separate January report issued by a Security Council-appointed panel of experts charged with tracking sanctions in South Sudan. Among the heinous crimes outlined in its findings, the panel cited humanitarian workers who estimated that more than 1,300 women and girls were raped in the country between April and September of last year.

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Related:

African Union Says Crisis in South Sudan Is Worsening
FEB. 1, 2016 — A new report written for the African Union and made public on Monday presented an especially grim picture of South Sudan’s civil war, blaming government forces and rebels for the declining humanitarian situation in the world’s newest country.

The nine-page report, written by an evaluation commission for the African Union and dated Jan. 29, listed five violations of a cease-fire agreement, including an episode in October in which government forces were responsible for the deaths of 50 people who died from suffocation inside a shipping container. Investigators said the rebels had looted United Nations barges and ambushed civilians, killing or wounding about a dozen people in an attack in December. “There is limited consolidation of peace, a worrying economic decline and violence ongoing,” the report said. “The economy is in particularly dire straits, with foreign reserves rapidly diminishing, growing inflation and rapid depreciation of the national currency.”

Soldiers in the South Sudanese Army in Eastern Equatoria State last year. The report form the African Union has blamed the rebels and government forces for human atrocities.​

South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, has been steeped in ethnic conflict since violence broke out in 2013. Thousands of people have died, thousands more are on the brink of starvation, and there have been repeated allegations of mass rape, massacres of civilians and forced cannibalism. According to another report, prepared by a United Nations panel of experts on South Sudan, both sides in the conflict are trying to build up their arsenals. The government recently bought three military helicopters that have led to “the expansion of the war, and have emboldened those in the government who are seeking a military solution to the conflict at the expense of the peace process,” the United Nations report said. The rebels were also trying to get more arms from “numerous sources, though with comparatively limited success,” that report added.

Western powers and the African Union have tried to broker a lasting agreement between the government, which is dominated by the Dinka ethnic group, and the rebels, who are mostly Nuer, but so far the leaders from both sides appear to be opposed to any immediate reconciliation. A veteran American official who has followed the conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan closely for more than two decades said the violence in South Sudan was the worse it has ever been. “I have never seen such brutality and pain,” said the former official, who did not want to be named for fear of disrupting already tenuous negotiations between the warring parties in South Sudan. “There are people on both sides who are reckless and obstructionists,” he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/w...ing-report-on-crisis-in-south-sudan.html?_r=0

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Stay inna camp - don't go outside where soldiers'll rape ya...

Hunger, fear plague South Sudan camps
Sat, Aug 06, 2016 - DEVASTATING SCALE: The civil war that ended on paper months ago is not over for thousands of women who risk sexual assault by soldiers if they leave UN camps

At a sprawling displacement camp on the outskirts of the South Sudanese capital, women have faced a wrenching choice: risk starvation or sexual assault. When her family ran out of food last month, Angelina Nhokmar, a 20-year-old mother of two, ventured outside the camp’s gates. She said she was lucky to have made it to the market and back unharmed, because dozens of women were raped by government soldiers in recent weeks as they made the same journey. “It’s not safe,” she said, tossing handfuls of sorghum into a pot of boiling water. “Our enemies are outside.” The civil war that ripped apart South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, ended on paper months ago, but an eruption of clashes between the nation’s rival factions last month put a chokehold on regular food distribution for the tens of thousands of people stranded in UN-run displacement camps. As families struggled to find sustenance, they endured an increase in healthcare crises, ethnic tensions and sexual violence.

Nearly 30,000 people have been sheltering at UN sites around the capital, Juba, since South Sudan erupted into civil war in 2013. For more than two years, soldiers loyal to South Sudanese President Salva Kiir — who belongs to the Dinka ethnic group, South Sudan’s largest — battled troops led by Riek Machar of the Nuer ethnic group, which is believed to be the second largest. Tens of thousands of people lost their lives in the war, and troops on both sides committed human rights abuses against civilians on a devastating scale. A peace deal officially ended the fighting last year. Machar, who had served as vice president before being fired in 2013, agreed to become Kiir’s deputy again and moved back to Juba in April.

Fighting broke out again between the two sides on July 7, killing hundreds. Machar’s residence was destroyed and he fled the capital. He has refused to return to Juba unless more international troops are deployed. Kiir opposes this, arguing that the 12,000 UN peacekeeping troops already stationed there are enough. For years, the displacement camps have been worlds unto themselves: communities complete with churches, shops and schools. They are also plagued by overcrowding, recurring shortages of basic goods and the uncertainty faced by residents, who have no idea when, if ever, they will feel safe enough to leave. So they stay, cloistered inside barbed-wire fences guarded by UN troops who have failed to keep peace in the capital or even to prevent assaults just outside the camps’ perimeters.

Sexual assaults in Juba surged last month to at least 217 reported cases, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement on Thursday. Members of South Sudan’s national army seemed to be responsible for most of the assaults, he said, adding that most of those attacked were displaced Nuer women and girls. Many were women living in the camps who ventured out to the markets when food ran out. Others were fleeing the clashes and making their way to the displacement sites for the first time. The civilians who came to these camps in 2013 were overwhelmingly Nuer. Last week, thousands of them demonstrated against Kiir for recognizing a new vice president to take Machar’s place, calling it a violation of the peace deal. Such a gathering would be unimaginable now in central Juba.

MORE Hunger, fear plague South Sudan camps - Taipei Times