South Sudanese soldiers secure a road near the Juba airport on August
26, 2014. The UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) on December 1, 2016
warned that "ethnic cleansing" is taking place in South Sudan. PHOTO |
AFP
JUBA
UN
human rights experts on Thursday said "ethnic cleansing" was under way
in South Sudan after visiting the country where violence has soared
since a peace deal collapsed in July.
"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 Yasmin
Sooka of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.
"Many told us it's already reached a point of no return."
Sooka
was part of a three-member team which travelled to battleground towns
including Bentiu, Malakal and Wau to gather facts about the situation in
the world's youngest country.
Jarring
testimony gathered by the team during their 10-day visit shows a nation
on the brink of "catastrophe", said a statement issued by the
commission.
"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 Sooka.
At
a press conference in Juba on Wednesday, Sooka warned of "unprecedented
levels of violence and ethnic tension" without using the term ethnic
cleansing, a war crime closely related to genocide which refers more to
groups being forcibly removed from a particular area.
South
Sudan's current conflict began nearly three years ago when President
Salva Kiir accused his former deputy and political rival, Riek Machar,
of plotting a coup.
Hopes that an
August 2015 peace deal would bring peace to the young nation were dashed
when fighting erupted in Juba in July, leading to a surge of violence
around the country characterised by divisions between the country's 64
tribes.
STILL TIME TO PREVENT IT
Sooka
said on Wednesday that government and rebel armies were both forcibly
recruiting soldiers — including children — and warned that "renewed
recruitment is an indicator that all the parties are preparing for the
next conflict".
She said fighting was expected to get worse as the dry season settles in.
Keith
Harper, the US ambassador to the UN rights council warned that the
government appeared to be preparing for large scale attacks, and had in
the past two weeks mobilised at least 4,000 militia fighters to the
southern Equatoria region.
Among the
atrocities reported to the commission was widespread gang rape, with
some women unable to receive medical treatment for the complications
suffered after sexual attacks.
"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
Sooka.
"Aid workers describe gang rape as so prevalent that it's become 'normal' in this warped environment."
After decades of civil war South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in July 2011.
However
hopes of a fresh start for the oil-rich nation were quickly dashed as
internal political divisions burst to the surface, fracturing the
government and people along ethnic lines with devastating consequences.
Sooka said that many of the warning signals of impending genocide are already there.
"An
existing conflict, resort to polarised ethnic identities,
dehumanisation, 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," she said.
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