Presidency rejects Amnesty’s report on increasing executions in South Sudan

December 9, 2018 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s presidency sternly denied a recent report by Amnesty International saying that Juba government executed seven people including a child in 2018.

In a report released on 7 December, the human rights group said alarmed by the increase of executions in South Sudan for the first time since the impendence in 2011.

“Amnesty International has established that at least 342 people are currently under the sentence of death in South Sudan, more than double the number recorded in 2011,” further said the report.

In response, South Sudanese Presidential Spokesperson Ateny Wek Ateny, rejected the report, saying no one had been executed in South Sudan since 2011 pointing that his country is a signatory to the Charters that prohibit the death penalty.

“I don’t know where Amnesty International got this information,” Ateny said. “There is no execution because we have put a moratorium on the death penalty since 2013.”

The presidential spokesperson further commented on the reported execution of a child saying that a child cannot be executed in South Sudan if the capital punishment was implemented in the county.

“The culture of South Sudan cannot accept it,” he stressed.

The report said that South Sudan executed four people in 2017 including two who were children at the time of the crimes for which they were convicted.

Amnesty International, also, said it interviewed a 16-year-old boy, who is languishing on death row at Juba Central Prison, after being convicted of murder.

The human rights group, in addition, said concerned for the lives of 135 people on death row, who have this year been rounded up from other prisons across the country to” two prisons notorious for executions”.

But the presidential media official minimized the move saying the transfer of prisoners is a normal administrative measure when a prison has reached its full capacity.

“It is a routine transfer because the prison-like Juba is full. It was meant for only 1,500 inmates, it now has more than 15,000. You cannot put them in packed prison like that and you cannot release those who have committed crimes,” said Ateny.

(ST)