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UN Should Speak Out on Security Service Abuses in South Sudan

Demand Investigations, Accountability and Reforms to the Service

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Carine Kaneza Nantulya

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

 

When South Sudan became an independent nation in 2011 it established the National Security Service to gather and analyze intelligence and advise other state authorities.

 

However, today the security service operates far beyond this mandate. It has routinely used violence, intimidation, arrests, and torture to target suspected opponents of the government.

 

Anonymous Man 1

They opened the car and they pulled me inside. Some were actually tying my hands at my back, some were tying my feet. I was actually in the car for almost 48 hours. That's what happened to me, and I can say they are members of [the] security apparatus.

 

Carine Kaneza Nantulya

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

 

Our research identified three main detention sites used by the security service in Juba – Blue House, Riverside and Hai Jalaba, although none is authorized by law for detention purposes.

 

The National Security Service have even used residential houses for detentions. Detainees are sometimes held for months or years centers without charge or trial or access to their families and lawyers.

 

Those who’ve been detained in these facilities include suspected rebels, students, human rights defenders, journalists, activists, political dissidents, and aid workers.

 

Anonymous Man 1

People who are active, reporting things that are affecting the community, are the ones targeted.

 

Anonymous Man 2

They said, you are criticizing the president, you are criticizing the entire system of the country.

 

Carine Kaneza Nantulya

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

 

People we interviewed told us of beatings, being hung upside down from a rope, shocked with electricity, pierced with needles, burned with melted plastic, and even raped. Most were released without ever being interrogated, charged, or presented in court.

 

Anonymous Man 2

It's completely [outside] the law. The interrogation, and the way how they interrogate people during the investigation. // Individual detainees are always tortured. // The suffering inside the detention facility was very, very serious. You don’t have food. We don’t have water. We don’t have medication, treatment. Many detainees they used to die inside.

 

Carine Kaneza Nantulya

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

 

South Sudan cannot develop into a country that respects human rights and the rule of law with a security service that operates without accountability and egregiously abuses its citizens. To this end, the NSS must be changed.

 

TEXT

 

South Sudan’s new unity government should reform the National Security Service Law to restrict their mandate to intelligence gathering.

 

South Sudan’s regional and international partners should support NSS reform and insist on credible and independent investigations into their abuses.

The United Nations Security Council should signal clearly when it meets today that it will maintain an arms embargo on South Sudan as well as individual travel bans and asset freezes on government officials as long as widespread abuses continue. South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) spreads fear and terror throughout the country and serves as the government’s tool to suppress critics. But authorities have failed to reform the secretive agency or hold those responsible for abuses to account.

In a new report, Human Rights Watch documents serious NSS abuses committed from 2014 to 2020, including extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and other inhumane treatment of detainees at the Blue House and two other detention sites in Juba. The stories we documented are horrific.

Created in 2011 to “collect information, conduct analysis, and advise relevant authorities,” the NSS has instead evolved into a super agency with policing and combat functions that operates with unchecked power and impunity.

Moreover, the UN Panel of experts recently found the NSS has repeatedly violated the UN’s 2018 arms embargo on South Sudan and obstructed humanitarian access to the country. The Panel found that top officials at the agency were involved in provoking long-standing hostilities between the Murle, Gawaar Nuer, and Lou Nuer and Dinka Bor communities of Jonglei state by providing them with weapons and other military support. The consequences were devastating. Thousands were displaced and hundreds killed and maimed between February and August this year. Civilian, including humanitarian, property such as health centers and schools were also attacked and destroyed.

Other organizations, including the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, have found the NSS responsible for enforced disappearances and torture.

These abuses are not only in violation of international human rights law and South Sudan’s constitution, but threaten communities and long-term stability in South Sudan. In war time abuse of detainees, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings could constitute war crimes and given how widespread and normalized NSS abuses are, they could amount to crimes against humanity.

As the South Sudanese government has not shown the political will to rein in the NSS, strong action is needed from the UN Security Council to put pressure on authorities to take meaningful steps to end abuse.

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