|2016

WORLD REPORT 2016
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
At least three men were victims of enforced disappearances, including two members
of Lakes state parliament who were forcibly disappeared for many months
after being detained in police custody before eventually being released in August
2015.
Freedom of Expression and Association
The NSS continued to intimidate and detain journalists, further tightening an already
restrictive media environment. In early August 2015, NSS officers shut
down two newspapers, Al Rai and The Citizen, and an organization producing
radio programs. The print run of another newspaper, the Daily Nation, was
seized in December 2014 and shut down in January 2015. President Kiir and Information
Minister Michael Makuei threatened journalists publicly, and the minister
threatened to shut down the UN radio Miraya FM.
In August 2014, journalist Peter Julius Moi was assassinated days after President
Kiir publicly threatened journalists. Another journalist, Clement Lochio, last seen
in military detention, has been forcibly disappeared. Two more journalists were
arrested by MI officers and held in military detention in 2015, one for a month
because he interviewed, on the government South Sudan TV, a politician at odds
with with the army’s chief of staff.
In February, NSS officials shut down the elections for the South Sudan Bar Association
in Wau and Juba, allegedly because the organization had not received advance
permission from the NSS. A journalist who took photographs at the Juba
venue was arrested and detained for about 20 hours in a NSS detention site.
Legislative Developments
NSS officers were given sweeping powers of arrest, search and seizure, and detention
without any clear judicial oversight in a National Security Service Act
passed by South Sudan’s parliament in mid-2014, amid much controversy and
procedural confusion.
President Kiir said he would not sign the bill, but in February 2015 the justice
minister declared that the bill had become law because the president had not returned
it to parliament or provided reasons for withholding his signature for
more than 30 days.
In 2015, the government of South Sudan acceded to the Convention Against Torture
and its Optional Protocol, the Convention on the Elimination on all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol, and the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC).
In 2013, South Sudan’s parliament passed a bill to ratify both Optional Protocols
to the CRC on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of
children, child prostitution, and child pornography. However, neither instrument
had been deposited with the UN at time of writing.
South Sudan has neither signed nor ratified the African Charter on Human and
Peoples’ Rights or the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.
Accountability and Justice
The government and opposition leadership have not made any serious effort to
hold abusive forces to account. Machar promised to investigate a massacre in
Bentiu town, Unity state, by his rebel forces in April 2014, but no findings had
been made public at time of writing. Two government reports, one by the police
and one by the army, about the involvement of security forces in widespread
killings of Nuer men in Juba in December 2013 had also not been made public.
President Kiir also initiated a national investigation into human rights abuses in
early 2014; that report had also not been made public at time of writing.
In December 2013, the African Union (AU) authorized a commission of inquiry to
document abuses and offer recommendations on justice and reconciliation. The
report, made public in October 2015, highlighted the ethnic nature of abuse in
the conflict, which it said included war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
The August 2015 peace deal promises a hybrid court to be established by the AU
Commission to investigate and prosecute international crimes committed in the
conflict. Details about the court, including where it will be located and how it will
be set up, have yet to be decided. The peace deal also mandates a Commission
for Truth, Reconciliation and Healing and a Compensation and Reparation Authority.
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