South Sudan violence was not genocide: FM - Article <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article49906#tabs-1> - Comments (0) <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article49906#tabs-2>
[image: email]Email<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=enviar_email_articulo&id_article=49906> [image: print]Print<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=imprimable&id_article=49906> [image: pdf]Save<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?page=spipdf&spipdf=spipdf_article&id_article=49906&nom_fichier=article_49906> [image: separation] [image: increase] <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article49906#> [image: decrease] <http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article49906#> [image: separation] [image: separation] ------------------------------ February 10, 2014 (LONDON) - South Sudan's Foreign Minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, said Monday that its government had no hand in the mid-December outbreak of violence in the capital, Juba. *South Sudan's Foreign Minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin at Chatham House in London. 10 Feb 2014 (Photo: Chatham House)* The minister said he was optimistic peace talks would resume on Tuesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, adding that he was "optimistic" that the warring parties would be able to "resolve our differences through dialogue". It emerged on Monday that the rebels had boycotted the talks over non-implementation of the ceasefire deal<http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article49905> signed on 23 January in Addis Ababa. The main issues at stake are the rebel demands for the release of the four senior political prisoners in Juba and the withdrawal of Ugandan forces from South Sudan. Speaking at a meeting in London, a member of the opposition United South Sudan Party based in London told minister Marial to "tell the truth" about what happened in the first days of the conflict and admit that President Salva Kiir was "personally responsible". Marial, however, responded by saying that while there had been violence against civilians from the Nuer ethnic group in Juba, there were no government orders calling for the attacks, which included people being targeted in their homes. "The perpetrators of the violence will be brought to justice through investigation teams in the South Sudanese army (SPLA) and the police," Marial said, adding that over 100 soldiers had already been arrested. "Yes it [violence on the basis of ethnicity] has happened but not like in Rwanda" the foreign minister stressed, denying that any of the mass killings that occurred constituted a "genocide". Both sides have been accused of atrocities - the United Nations is currently being accused of delaying the publication of human rights report into the violence. Marial accused Riek Machar - South Sudan's ex-vice president who has assumed leadership of the factions of the army who have defected - of playing the ethnic card to mislead people that this is a war between the Dinka and Nuer tribes. Estimates greatly vary, but between 1,000 and 10,000 people are believed to have died and over 700,000 people displaced within the country as a result of conflict. Also, another 120,000 people have reportedly fled to neighbouring countries. *CHANGING THE 'THERE WAS NO COUP' NARRATIVE* South Sudan's foreign minister was speaking at Chatham House - an independent think tank on international affairs - at the beginning of a week-long trip to London during, which he hopes to convince the international media and the UK government to accept Juba's version of events on what triggered the conflict. Marial said although events of December 15 had been given various names, the fighting between members of the presidential guards was a "coup attempt" and not spontaneous reaction to one group of soldiers being re-armed while others were deliberately excluded, as has been widely reported. After Marial's address, however, Douglas H. Johnson a researcher and historian specialising in South Sudan told *Sudan Tribune* that there are still "too many details about what happened that remain unclear or unaddressed and the narrative that we were given today about the somewhat accidental killing of people in Juba as a result of the fighting that broke out between the presidential guards". "I think it is going to be very difficult for the international community to accept that as the full explanation of what happened," he added. Johnson said that he believed President Kiir may have been acting "preemptively" as "the way in which the armed rebellion began does suggest that there was some network in existence between those commanders that got activated as a result of the incidence in Juba." Marial, who was promoted from his previous post as information minister last year after President Kiir sacked his whole cabinet, criticised the international media for not describing the conflict as an attempt to seize power from a democratically-elected government. "There must be systems. Governments can no longer change hands in Africa through coup attempts," he said, suggesting that Machar and his followers form their own party rather than continue to use the name of the SPLM - the political wing of the former rebels who secured South Sudan's independence in 2011. However, Marial admitted that South Sudan needs urgent reforms within its army police, civil service and to improve its human rights record. The current conflict has created "a need for reconciliation [...] based on the institutions we have built" since South Sudan was granted autonomy in a 2005 peace deal with the government of Sudan. *UGANDA'S MILITARY PRESENCE* Despite the rebel's insistence that the talks could be undermined by the continued presence of the Ugandan military South Sudan, Marial said that their presence "will not be a hindrance" to the peace process. The foreign minister restated the government's position that the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) have been deployed in South Sudan since 2008 to fighting the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) - a Ugandan rebel group. "At South Sudan's request, the UPDF forces were redeployed from Western Equatoria state to Juba airport [to] allow for the mass evacuation of foreign nationals to occur in the days after the conflict started," Marial said, but made no mention of the additional Ugandan forces that were later on deployed. The United States have led international calls for the UPDF to withdraw in order to aid the peace process. Uganda's President Museveni has admitted that the UPDF has fought alongside the South Sudanese army to force the rebels out of key towns in Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile that they were able to occupy for much of the conflict. *THE JUBA FOUR* As well as the presence the Ugandan military, the rebel delegation to the talks have demanded the release of the four senior members of the ruling party - most notably the former powerful SPLM Secretary General Pagan Amum - who remain detained in Juba. The other seven who were released and sent to Kenya were prevented from traveling to Addis Ababa to take part in the talks, despite an invitation extended by IGAD. President Kiir sacked Amum at the same time as Machar in July last year on charges of corruption and working against the interests of the party. Amum has since been banned from traveling or talking to the media. He was among the politicians who held a press conference early December last year at which they described Kiir's methods of running of the country and the ruling party as "increasingly dictatorial". The foreign minister also encouraged those at the meeting to visit Juba and witness that "there are no bullets flying in Juba unlike [in] Central Africa", referring to the current unrest in South Sudan's neighbour. In the days preceding the outbreak of fighting in Juba, a meeting of the SPLM's National Liberation Council had failed to resolve the growing rift between supporters of president Kiir and senior leaders like Machar and Amum, who expressed interest to replace the South Sudan leader. *"NO BAD BLOOD" WITH UN MISSION* Marial played down recent tension between his government and the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which President Kiir had accused of wanting to act like a "parallel government". The dispute arose when a senior politician was refused entry to the UN's base in Bor, the scene of some of the worst fighting, because he was accompanied by armed bodyguards and UNMISS had a policy of not allowing any weapons into its camps. However, Marial said there was "no bad blood" but "only administrative differences" over how to manage to deal with the over 70,000 people who have since sought shelter from the violence in UN bases across the nation. The foreign minister noted that South Sudan had accepted to increase the number of peacekeepers in the country, under UN Security Council resolution 2132, to 12,500 troops and the number of police to 1,323. *ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT* Marial defended the SPLM's record in government, describing the ruling party as "pioneers" considering the lack of infrastructure and functioning institutions in country at the time of 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The government, considering these constraints, has done "pretty well" in terms of nation building, he said, in response to a question over whether national building efforts since independence had been sufficient to create a national identity to bring the country's many ethnic groups together. "South Sudan will never be a failed state, we shall resolve our differences." "We have a crisis. We will resolve it [...] What we have done since independence is amazing," he stressed, emphasising South Sudan's viability as a country due to its natural resources. Marial was keen to tell his audience of the historic background of South Sudan's independence. Joseph Lagu, a veteran of the Anyanya movement, which fought for South Sudan separation from 1955 until a 1972, was part of the Marial's entourage. Rosalind Marden a former British Ambassador to Sudan and South Sudan, until last year said the European Union and the Troika group - UK, US and Norway - had done a lot of work on security reform, but added that a lot more was still needed. "To resolve the conflict, grass roots reconciliation was needed as well as a reinvigorated and inclusive constitutional review process," said Marden, who also served as the EU's special representative to the two Sudans. The South Sudanese foreign minister said he would hold talks with the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office regarding his country's bid to join the Commonwealth. (ST) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14oo5D1EEfyKzDd5oyARHxTpHFQkbu6W7fHtBF3dQYuOfOQ%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
