South Sudan: Justice Needed To Stem Violence
South Sudan should urgently ensure an effective and independent investigation into the violent, ethnic-driven attacks in Jonglei state, and arrest and prosecute those identified as responsible, Human Rights Watch said today. To assist this task, it should promptly ask the United Nations and regional organizations to establish a commission of inquiry.
“To stem this horrific cycle of violence, the organizers have to be held to account,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “For speed and credibility’s sake, the government should ask the UN and African bodies for help.”
Since early January, 2012, the government has repeatedly promised to investigate the attacks and hold those responsible to account, but it has not made any apparent progress in investigations or arrests. There have been new attacks and counter-attacks in January and February, and threats of more to come in March. To help South Sudan move forward with investigations, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon could appoint a commission of inquiry consisting of experts, including South Sudanese, and request support from the African Union, Human Rights Watch said.
On December 23, 2011, according to UN estimates, 8,000 armed men, largely from ethnic Lou Nuer villages in central Jonglei state, attacked ethnic Murle villages in the eastern part of the state, starting with the town of Likwongole. The attackers burned and looted homes; killed and injured people using machetes, sticks, knives, and guns; abducted women and children; seized hundreds of thousands of cattle; and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes to hide in the bush.
Intelligence gathered by government forces and the United Nations peacekeepers had indicated some time in advance that such attacks were imminent, and both the UN and the government warned residents of local communities to flee. However, because of unsuccessful government efforts to mediate with the communities and an inability to move extra forces into the area swiftly, the government and UN forces in the area were too greatly outnumbered to intervene. A witness who was at the scene several days after the attack told Human Rights Watch he saw 12 dead bodies, including three women who appeared to have been raped with blunt objects.
A week after the attack, despite a visit by Vice President Riek Machar to the area to speak to the leaders of the armed group in an effort to stop the violence, the attackers pushed south to the town of Pibor. The presence of United Nations peacekeepers and South Sudanese forces in Pibor may have averted wholesale destruction of the town. However, it did not prevent the attackers from burning down parts of it nor from proceeding further south into more remote villages where initial testimony gathered by the South Sudan Human Rights Commission indicates that the attackers killed, wounded, and abducted many more people.
The death toll and full impact on communities is still being determined. Murle leaders reported that more than 3,000 had been killed, while UN monitors have been able to confirm just a fraction of that figure and have not released an estimate of total casualties.
Scores of people from both Murle and Nuer communities are being treated for machete and gunshot wounds at clinics in Pibor, Juba, and Malakal, and international aid groups are struggling to provide assistance to more than 140,000 people affected by the attacks and counter-attacks.