From crimes to genocide

Before the signing of the Peace Agreement, we were talking about crimes, after the signing of the Peace Agreement, we are now talking about genocide unfolding in South Sudan.

The chaos goes on seemingly unabated in South Sudan. Public affairs Editor Paul Busharizi sat down with human rights and governance expert Dr Remember Miamingi to understand the mess.

Please see an excerpt from the interview below which you can read in full here.

Question: What is the state of Affairs right now in South Sudan?

The state of Affairs right now in South Sudan at the moment is tragic and to put it in perspective before the Peace Agreement was signed in August 2015, South Sudan had less than 200,000 internally displaced persons less than 100, 000 refugees that we had outside the country.

After the signing of the Peace Agreement, today South Sudan has close to two million South Sudanese outside as refugees, over 500,000 internally displaced South Sudanese.

In 2013, we had around 2m people that were said to be facing famine. Today, six million South Sudanese are facing starvation in the country.

Before the signing of the Peace Agreement, we were talking about crimes, after the signing of the Peace Agreement, we are now talking about genocide unfolding in South Sudan.

So after the signing of the Agreement, the situation has deteriorated significantly that the UN, AU and international Agencies are now saying genocide is unfolding in South Sudan in a rate that is extremely disturbing.

Abandoned Township of Wudu

Who is perpetrating the genocide?

It is both ways; it is the armed practice to the conflict. But what has happened is that we had a political conflict which degenerated into an ethnic conflict and this ethnic conflict has been excavated by a rhetoric of dehumanising other people on the base of their ethnicity and that which started in 2013, you had a conflict which picked the Dinka ethnic groups and Nuer ethnic group.

But right now we are having ethnic groups within Equatorial region have taken arms predominantly in response to abuse they have received but also targeting other ethnic groups on response of their ethnicity.

So you have a gov’t that is embarked on a policy of ethnic cleansing on the base of ethnicity but you also have armed groups that have gone back to return the same policy and targeting communities, wiping out entire communities  on the basis of ethnicity.

And when you have a country where ethnicity, ethnic hatred is as deep as we have in South Sudan where dehumanisation of others is a state policy while conflict has provided a symbol of context for it, and the economy has completely collapsed and there’s a war for survival, genocide in that context is devastating.

And so what we are seeing in South Sudan if not arrested will be than worse than what we witnessed in Rwanda.

Please click here to read the article in full.