Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights chief who earlier served as President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, said she recognizes many precursors of genocide in the massive human rights violations underway in South Sudan.
“I recognize in this account many of the precursors of genocide: hate media including calls to rape women of a particular ethnic group; attacks on civilians in hospitals, churches and mosques; even attacks on people sheltering in UN compounds – all on the basis of the victims’ ethnicity,” she said today referring to yesterday’s United Nations report on South Sudan. She visited that region a fortnight ago and came to similar conclusions.
The report’s detailed accounts of ethnic-based mass killings and revenge attacks, including direct and deliberate murder of civilians, and a litany of other serious violations such as summary executions, rape and other forms of sexual violence are further proof of how extraordinarily dangerous the situation in South Sudan has become over the past five months.
There can no longer be any excuse for either President Salva Kiir or his chief opponent Riek Machar continuing to avoid identifying and arresting their force commanders and other individuals implicated in the serious violations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, she insisted.
The mass violence began last December and about five million people are in need of aid, the UN says. The International Crisis Group said earlier more than 10,000 people may have been killed so far.
American pressure succeeded in persuading Kiir and Machar to announce a 30-day truce and hold their first face-to-face meeting today in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, since mass violence began last December. Nothing has yet filtered from the talks but no early end to the killings is expected. The best outcome could be agreement on a broad roadmap on how to resolve the conflict, provided it ends the fighting in the interim.
However for that, Kiir and. Machar would have to publicly and unequivocally denounce mass killings by their fighters and other followers, and make it clear that anyone committing them will be arrested and prosecuted. That is most unlikely for the moment.
There are some indications that the two men are starting to realize the outside world is watching South Sudan closely and should take immediate actions to stop the killing “before the fire they have ignited makes the entire country go down in flames,” Pillay said.
It is simply not credible that the Government is unaware who, among their commanders, was responsible for organizing the slaughter of more than 300 Nuer men herded into a government building in the Gudele neighborhood of Juba on December 16, 2013.
Similarly, it is not credible that Dr. Machar does not know which of his commanders instigated and led the mass killing of several hundred civilians in the mosque, hospital, market and other locations in Bentiu on April 15, she noted. “And unfortunately these are only two of the many examples of the killing of civilians and other grave violations described in this report.”