South Sudan says Amnesty International report “not objective”

May 23, 2013 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s justice minister on Thursday expressed disappointment with Amnesty International’s annual human rights report, arguing that it does not reflect the correct picture of governance in the world’s youngest country. Describing critical reports as lacking objectivity has been a common response from the SPLM-led government since South Sudan’s independence in 2011. The main finding of Amnesty’s 2013 report was that the “Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA, South Sudan’s armed forces) and the South Sudan Police Service (SSPS) continued to commit human rights violations with relative impunity.” In terms of press freedom Amnesty said that the “environment for national and international media workers remained challenging. Security forces harassed national and international media workers, arbitrarily detained journalists and radio presenters, and confiscated equipment.” Amnesty also said that abuses “during the Jonglei state-wide civilian disarmament campaign Operation Restore Peace, launched in March [2012], remained largely unaddressed by the government.” The army, police and security service were accused of harassing, arresting and torturing United Nations and NGO staff. However, minister John Luk Jok said the report was fraught with “factual errors and inaccuracies”. “Looking at the report you could see clearly that a number of allegations are either unsubstantiated or not supported by any empirical evidence at all. The sources are only known to the authors of the report and hence unverifiable in respect of their authenticity and or reliability,” Jok told reporters on Thursday. The report says there were several reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. But minister Jok said that the report provided details of only two such incidents and failed to provide the source of its information. “Out of population of more than 8 million, how can few isolated incidents based on unsubstantiated facts constitute the assertion that there were several reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings?” he asked. On the report’s reference to the killing of protestors in December 2012 in Wau, Jok observed that the report conveniently omitted to mention the fact that 26 innocent civilians who had not connection with the dispute over the administrative transfer of Wau country headquarters were killed in Farrajallah. “This report is packed with allegations, rumours, oral narrations which are always made to draw attention and sympathies. You find that it has only cited the protest but failed to mention the killing of the 26 civilians in Farrajallah. These were civilians who had no connection with the dispute over the transfer of the administrative headquarters of the county”, he said. He said while it was true that there were no politically motivated disappearances in South Sudan, the report contradicted itself later by alleging that in some places were people disappeared carried with the government’s knowledge. On torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, he observed that the report only cited unverified examples, devoid of any other details of the alleged victims beyond their names or the officers involved in such alleged acts of their respective police stations. On the report’s reference to the Judiciary as being inefficient and hence contributing to the prison congestion as a result of holding a large number of pretrial detainees for long periods of time, he observed that this was the same judiciary that the many foreign governments had from time to time paid glowing tribute as being functional and independent. (ST) Amnesty International’s annual review of South Sudan’s human rights

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