South Sudan Needs Trials, Convictions and Justice, in addition to “Truth”
10 min readBy Mac Akol Marialdit, Nairobi, Kenya
June 10, 2016 (SSB) —- I was horror-struck when I read the op-ed written by President Salva Kiir and his erstwhile rival and now Vice President Riek Machar titled ‘South Sudan Needs Truth, Not Trials’ in the June 7, 2016 issue of your esteemed newspaper. In their article they have, as the principals in the South Sudan peace agreement, announced their disapproval to the implementation of Chapter 5, Article 3 of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, which mandates the establishment of a Hybrid Court to try war criminals and instead prefer a truth and reconciliation approach.
Their editorial appealed to the international community and particularly the USA and United Kingdom to allow for alternative justice that is non punitive as compared to the formation of a hybrid court to try the culprits of war crimes in South Sudan. “That is why we call on the international community, and the United States and Britain in particular, to reconsider one element of the peace agreement to which they are cosignatories: support for a planned international tribunal, the Hybrid Court for South Sudan. We call on them instead to commit to global backing for a mediated peace, truth and reconciliation process.” They stress.
The two principals are both directly and indirectly culpable for killing tens of thousands of people and fuelling the war that has lasted over two years and is yet to come to a decisive end.
Their choice of medium to launch their disapproval of a hybrid court and appeal for a reconciliation process, an international newspaper of repute-The New York Times-is even uncanny. The South Sudanese government has a despicable human rights record and has in the past, and presently continues to harass the media and journalists, both foreign and domestic, in South Sudan. Capricious arrests and unlawful long detention of media practitioners, without due process, for airing divergent opinion is the order of the day. It is thus surprising that they can use the international (American) media (The New York Times) to launch an appeal to the international community to seek alternative forms of justice yet President Kiir’s government continues to hound the media, arbitrarily arrest and detain journalists, curtail press freedoms and limit freedom of expression all together back at home. It did not even cross their minds that they can resort to American media because freedoms and rights are enshrined in tested democratic legislation unlike back home.
More so for the case of President Kiir who has in the past threatened to kill Journalists and two days after he issued the threat at a press conference a Juba based South Sudanese journalist, Julius Moi, was shot dead in cold blood. Does he now want to reconcile with the slain journalists family using this ‘novel’ approach?
As far as the December 2013 Juba pogrom is concerned, President Kiir should be held wholly responsible, arraigned alongside his cohorts and minions and charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, mass murder, rape and more because he was in charge of the force that carried out the targeted killings in Juba and eventually in the Country’s Upper Nile region.
Hundreds of South Sudanese were killed and an estimated two million displaced internally and externally in the ensuing senseless war that is still ongoing albeit on a muted scale. The economy of the nascent country has collapsed and investments and livelihoods have been laid to waste. Hunger, pestilence, disease, starvation, destitution and death now rule a land that was so hopeful at independence in 2011, just five years ago. The euphoria and the joy that was abundant at independence has been replaced by interminable despair and hopelessness.
How can President Kiir and his new ally in this scheme to evade justice, his erstwhile nemesis Riek Machar, expect the people and nation of South Sudan to forgive and forget the man-made disasters that have been visited upon them by their fellow countrymen who swore to God to uphold the constitution and protect the lives of the very South Sudanese they killed and continue to kill presently? That people should look the other side and sit down and make peace with the person who raped their mother and sister, killed their father and brothers? And this in a land where revenge killings are the order of the day in this age due to lack of recourse to justice, even before the commencement of the war two years ago. A land where revenge killings are still traditionally carried out to avenge the death of family at the hands of another clan and where pubescent girls are given as compensation, against their will, to the family or clan of a deceased by the family or clan of the killer? Now put into perspective the tens of thousands who have been killed and an equal number of their relatives vying to revenge their deaths as things stand now. Their thirst for revenge might just be quenched and they mollified, if justice through the hybrid court is carried out as stipulated in the agreement.
What example will this justice evasive tactic prescribed by Kiir and Machar set in a country where an aggrieved people just pick up their guns and go to a nearby bush, form a loose confederation of disgruntled people and start fighting real and imagined enemies, rustling cattle, raping women and defiling young girls, looting and pillaging villages and towns and cutting off roads that deliver much needed medical and other aid, let alone development?
This smooth attempt to evade justice must be categorically rejected by the international community-particularly USA and Britain (co-signatories to the agreement) – and the people of South Sudan who have borne the brunt of the senseless fratricidal war of attrition that was visited upon them by avaricious and power hungry leaders who have in the past demonstrated that they are only good at looting the resources of their country and her anguished stoic people.
The African Union report is clear on the horrific atrocities that were committed and even documents some of the leading perpetrators of these gruesome crimes against the long suffering people of South Sudan. In their report, the UN Panel of Experts categorically stated that Kiir bears “command responsibility” for forces that attacked civilians in Juba, Unity State and elsewhere. Similarly, the African Union Commission of Inquiry concluded that killings of unarmed Nuer civilians in Juba in December 2013 were carried out “pursuant to or in furtherance of a State policy.”
These verified reports should be the starting point for bringing the perpetrators to book so that what happened in South Sudan never repeats itself in that country or any other country. Those who are interested in knowing how the pogrom in Juba was planned and executed should read Tim K. Edwards book ‘A bloody Nile-How South Sudan imploded two years after independence’, an expose about the leadership of South Sudan and how they successfully run the nascent country aground. It documents the corruption, murder, intrigue that characterized the country’s elite and military class.
No to Kiir and Machar’s escapism. For The Republic of South Sudan (RSS) and her people to rise again and be equal among nations, Justice has to prevail and be seen to be done by the suffering and aggrieved peoples of the country. For sanity, rule of law and a semblance of democracy to prevail in confidence, the perpetrators of violence, massive graft and misrule should be brought to book in an independent but fair judicial process by the hybrid court for South Sudan.
The distracting and short term alternative that Mr. Kiir and Mr. Machar propose is not only criminal but will only lead to more people taking up arms to avenge their dead and possibly even culminate in the forceful removal of the status quo the two former adversaries seem to be hell-bent on perpetuating. Already militia commanders like the notoriously efficient and infamous Major General Peter Gadet Yak, who is already under UN sanctions, and his ilk broke ranks with Riek Machar’s SPLM-IO because they claim the latter has sold out the Nuer people for the sake of high office and personal benefit. They have vowed to fight to the death for justice and to avenge their dead. Numerous armed militia groups have taken up arms and sprang up in Upper Nile region, particularly in Unity State and the Shilluk Kingdom, Bahr el Ghazal region and in the vast Equatoria region. The wobbly peace agreement between Kiir and Machar means nothing to these armed groups after all they consider the two principals the main culprits in the new country’s relapse into chaos.
Perhaps the two new found ‘friends’ are dreading the clause in the peace deal that says, “No one shall be exempted from criminal responsibility on account of their official capacity as a government official.”
In the event President Kiir and Vice President Machar get their way, circumvent the Hybrid Court and justice is not carried out, then the political and military architects of the massacres and the war that ensued will only strengthen their strangle hold onto positions of power so as to protect themselves from other forms of justice by aggrieved victims and also use political and military might to protect their embezzled wealth. Planned elections at various levels will be scuttled and only war lords will hold sway over vast territories of the poor country leading to a vicious circle of violence.
Stimulatingly VP Machar, hardly a couple of weeks ago, gave the Foreign Policy Magazine an interview at his base in Juba in which he admitted that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed during the last two years. He admitted that forces loyal to him also carried out war crimes and that he was willing to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague or any other Court charged with tying war crimes in South Sudan during the recent war. Of course he blamed most of the war crimes on President Kiir and his minions. This was just a couple of weeks ago and now he co-pens an op-ed with his adversary President Kiir appealing for Justice to be not even put on hold but discarded all together. Little wonder they say even a single day is a long time in politics.
The two principals temporarily putting their differences aside and cutting a deal that amounts to a marriage of convenience-for their selfish interests and ultimately political survival-at the expense of millions of suffering South Sudanese only acts as a smokescreen and prolongs the problems afflicting the infant country. Assuming their deal holds till the thirty months of the Transitional Government of National Unity that they now lead comes to an end and the prescribed elections, in which both Kiir and Machar have declared intentions to run, then what will happen to the already polarized people of South Sudan? Fight some more on either side of the two protagonists? Ultimately, justice should not be evaded and the world in its entirety must ensure that justice is done if they want South Sudan and her citizens to stop being a burden on the rest of the world in terms of high costs in humanitarian aid, relief, refugees and regional instability.
Us South Sudanese would rather justice is done and not only seen to be done. Then, only then, we can think of forgiveness and pardons for the sake of reconciliation and national unity. Without justice first and fast, South Sudan will be condemned to perpetual turmoil of an even greater scale and magnitude than has been witnessed these past two years. In fact there will be no Country to write home about called the Republic of South Sudan. Rather there will be a myriad of vicious tribal militia groups that will sow violence and reap only horror and mass death aplenty.
The vast majority of the common poor South Sudanese who have not been part of Kiir’s and Machar’s hegemony, patronage and belly politics pray that the two principals are promoted to the next level with befitting tittles for the lot of them-Lords of War Emeritus. E meaning ex and meritus meaning they deserve it. This and a hybrid court will solve South Sudan’s spiraling problems decisively in the medium and long-term.
#Ends#
The writer is a South Sudanese refugee living in Nairobi-Kenya.
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