GENOCIDE - South Sudan

"South Sudan's civil war spirals into genocide, leaving ghost towns in its wake" PBS NewsHour 5/1/2017

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SUMMARY:  South Sudan was founded in 2011, and now it's on the edge of collapse.  Forces allied to the president and vice president have been fighting along tribal lines.  Murderous raids on civilian communities are a favored tactic, and UN peacekeepers have been criticized for not doing more to stop them.  Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

"Millions are on the brink of war-driven starvation in South Sudan" PBS NewsHour 5/2/2017

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SUMMARY:  Countless numbers of people in South Sudan are on the run from government troops, targeted because of their tribe amid a brutal civil war.  Communities hide in the wilderness to avoid violence, but there is nothing to eat, fueling a man-made famine as aid agencies struggle to reach people.  Special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

"How rape is used as a weapon in South Sudan’s war" PBS NewsHour 5/3/2017

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SUMMARY:  Rape has become a tool of war in South Sudan, wielded against women of rival tribes.  In partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, special correspondent Jane Ferguson reports from a camp for people fleeing ethnic violence where most women are rape survivors and they don’t dare leave because they fear they will be violently assaulted.

SOUTH SUDAN - Looting the Wealth

"South Sudan leaders used chaos of war to loot billions, investigation reveals" PBS NewsHour 9/12/2016

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SUMMARY:  Founded in 2011, South Sudan is the world's newest country; but for much of its statehood, it has been engulfed in civil war.  The violence has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than two million people.  A report released on Monday by rights group The Sentry accuses South Sudanese political leaders of making a fortune off the conflict.  The NewsHour's P.J.  Tobia reports.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  South Sudan is the world's newest country, gaining independence from Sudan in 2011.

But, two years later, civil war broke out in the small East African nation.  Though a peace agreement was signed in 2015, sporadic fighting continues.  Millions have been displaced, while rival leaders fight for power and the country's oil and mineral wealth.

A two-year-long investigation into those leaders and their allies revealed billions have been looted from the country.

NewsHour producer P.J.  Tobia has our story

And a warning:  Some viewers may find some of the imagery disturbing.

P.J.  TOBIA, NewsHour producer:  Small, poor and dangerous, the U.N. has called South Sudan one of the most horrendous human rights situations in the world.

Fighters loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, have been battling those backing former Vice President Riek Machar for most of the last four years.  Caught in the crossfire are Sudan's impoverished civilians.  More than two million South Sudanese have been displaced by the fighting.  Tens of thousands have been killed.

The U.N. found that, in just six months last year, 1,300 women were raped by fighters in one South Sudanese state alone.  A report released today by The Sentry, a rights group in Washington, accuses the leaders who've orchestrated this brutality of making billions off the conflict.  Actor George Clooney wrote the foreword to the report.  “Hotel Rwanda” star Don Cheadle also works with The Sentry.  Both were at the National Press Club this morning to talk about the investigation.

GEORGE CLOONEY, Co-Founder, “The Sentry”:  This is pretty explosive stuff.  We're talking about the president and the ousted vice president, along with all of their generals, that we're able to prove without any question that not only are they committing these crimes which they have already been accused of, but that they're profiting off of it.

P.J.  TOBIA:  The report outlines how South Sudan's political leaders, generals and their families have used the chaos of war to generate vast sums of wealth.  They have built mansions across the world, from Uganda and Kenya to Australia.

That young woman flashing the peace sign from the sunroof of a BMW?  She's the daughter of a former general, a former general whose state salary was never more than 45,000 U.S. dollars.

This man is the stepson of another South Sudanese general.  He calls himself the young tycoon.  His Facebook photos show a life of privilege unimaginable to most South Sudanese.  Here, he narrates a tour of a presidential suite at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas.

JOHN PRENDERGAST, Enough Project:  So, it's like a mafia in some ways.  A mafia has taken over the state.

P.J.  TOBIA:  John Prendergast is the director of the Enough Project, a rights group that oversees The Sentry group.

JOHN PRENDERGAST:  The mafia we see in the movies, that is shooting a few people.  In South Sudan, tens of thousands of people have died in this war, with horrific atrocities, mass rape, child soldier recruitment, all the worst of the worst of the human rights abuses that we hear about globally.  And this is how they stay in power.

CHILDREN OF WAR - South Sudan

"A portrait of turmoil in South Sudan, from behind the lens" PBS NewsHour 8/19/2016

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SUMMARY:  South Sudan, the world’s newest country, is again on the brink of a civil war.  Photographer Sebastian Rich has covered the conflict in the country for more than four decades, and he is there now on a mission with UNICEF, documenting the turmoil and the toll it has taken on civilians.  The area is plagued by malnutrition and the lowest education levels in the world.  John Yang speaks with Rich.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  The world’s newest country, South Sudan, established in 2011, again stands on the brink of civil war.  A peace deal signed last year between rival governing factions is in tatters.  More than one-sixth of the country’s 12 million citizens have been displaced, and the humanitarian crisis there is worsening by the day.

John Yang has the story.

JOHN YANG (NewsHour):  For that view, we turn to photographer Sebastian Rich, who has covered conflict zones for more than four decades.  He has been to South Sudan many times.  He is there now on assignment for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.

He joins us now via Skype from Juba, the capital.

Sebastian, thanks for joining thus evening.

First of all, tell us how it feels now, what the situation is like on the ground now.

SEBASTIAN RICH, Photojournalist:  Well, the situation is a little more tense than it was, obviously, before the recent fighting.

The recent fighting has put the people, the ordinary people in the street.  They’re much more tense than they were.  There’s not so many friendly faces.  If you walk in the streets of Juba now, you’re not greeted the same way you were a couple of months ago or even a year ago, when I came last year.

JOHN YANG:  And how is this affecting the children that you’re covering, that you’re there watching, looking at behalf on UNICEF, particularly the issues of malnutrition?

SEBASTIAN RICH:  Well, it’s affecting the children very badly.

And there’s 250,000, a quarter-of-a-million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.  And that’s not including the children who just got malnutrition, the first stages of.

So, what’s happened is that the children who were actually starting to recover from severe acute malnutrition before this recent fighting, when the fighting happened, those children couldn’t come back to the hospitals to get their follow-up treatment and children that had started to get malnutrition couldn’t get to the hospitals either.

So now we have this huge increase in malnutrition and severe cases of malnutrition.  And UNICEF is trying its very, very best to keep on top of this disaster.

SOUTH SUDAN - The Ongoing Conflict, Massacre

"Rebel leader denies blame for South Sudan massacre" (Part-1) PBS NewsHour 4/23/2014

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A massacre in the world’s newest nation has prompted condemnation from the White House.  This comes as efforts to resolve the political strife in South Sudan and ease a looming humanitarian crisis suffered another setback this week, after reconciliation talks were postponed.

And a warning to viewers:  Some images in this report may be disturbing.

The U.N. convoy made its way through the streets of Bentiu over the weekend, and bodies quickly came into view.  They were strewn in the streets and piled in front of the mosque, where people had sought safety.

Toby Lanzer, a U.N. representative in South Sudan, witnessed the aftermath of the killings firsthand.

TOBY LANZER, Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General:  What I have so far seen in the mosque and in other parts of town has really been very, very heart-wrenching.  Certainly, atrocities have been committed here on very significant scale.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  South Sudan’s foreign minister charged that rebels of the Nuer ethnic group, led by the country’s former vice president, were behind last week’s violence.

BARNABA BENJAMIN, Minister of Foreign Affairs, South Sudan:  The rebels of Dr. Riek Machar have violated the cessation of hostilities and have actually — have carried out a massacre in Bentiu town, where civilians were targeted at the churches, at the mosques, and at the hospital.  It is one of the most disgusting events one has ever seen.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Machar rejected the accusations, and said his troops could not have been involved.

South Sudan’s 11 million people are made up of about 60 indigenous ethnic groups, the largest being the Nuer and the Dinka.  The country has struggled with ethnic fighting since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011.  But U.N. officials say that, in Bentiu, the targets included not only Dinka, but traders from Darfur and Nuer people who refused to cheer the rebels’ arrival.

President Obama condemned the killing.  In a statement, he said:  “These acts of violence are an abomination.  They are a betrayal of the trust the South Sudanese people have put in their leaders.”

Meanwhile, thousands of people headed for protection at the U.N.’s base in Bentiu.  It now holds 22,000 civilians, but they’re limited to just one liter of water per person per day.

"Will violent rivalry tip South Sudan toward famine?" (Part-2) PBS NewsHour 4/23/2014

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SUMMARY:  The slaughter of hundreds of civilians is just the latest act of reprisal violence in South Sudan that began as a rivalry between two politicians of different ethnic groups.  Judy Woodruff takes a closer look at the root of the crisis, tensions over natural resources and the urgency of humanitarian aid and regional diplomacy with Nancy Lindborg of USAID and Khalid Medani of McGill University.

SOUTH SUDAN - Unrest in the World's Youngest Country

IMHO:  This is what we can expect from a people who are new to democracy.  Who still have a very long, ingrained, link to tribalism (tribe before the nation) rather than democracy (nation before tribe).

"Political clash in world's youngest country grows into wider South Sudan unrest" PBS Newshour 12/20/2013

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JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour):  The political crisis in the world's youngest nation deepened this week, raising fears of all-out civil war.

Foreign nationals began evacuating and the United Nations sought to bolster its force there, after two Indian peacekeepers were killed yesterday.  On Wednesday, President Obama ordered 45 American troops to reinforce U.S. Embassy security in Juba, the capital.

South Sudan broke off from Sudan in mid-2011.  This conflict began as a power struggle between the country's president, Salva Kiir, and his former vice president, Riek Machar, whom he fired earlier this year.

They represent rival ethnic groups.  Kiir is Dinka.  Machar is Nuer.  And some say that's fueling the violence.

SOUTH SUDAN - Born, World's Newest Nation

"In South Sudan, a Nation Is Born -- But With Troubles"
PBS Newshour 7/11/2011

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JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Rebecca Hamilton, what are the other main challenges facing this new country?

REBECCA HAMILTON, Pulitzer Center: Can I just say before the challenges that it's a huge moment of hope and expectation? Because I think we can get so quickly bogged down in the challenges, and what you have here as the greatest resource is a people among whom everybody knows someone who died in that war. And so the stakes are so huge to make this project of South Sudan work to honor the memory of those who were killed.

But you're right. The challenges are enormous. And I think the first one is whether this government, this new government is going to be able to deliver on citizen expectations. If you go and interview people who are not in the capital city, who are out in the rural areas, and you ask them what are their expectations of the new nation, they don't talk about an abstract sense of nationhood. They talk about real concrete change in their daily lives.

Are there going to be hospitals? Are there going to be schools that are not under a tree? Are there going to be roads? And they have been blaming the North, the Sudanese government in the North, for not having those things. That's certainly been a huge part of the story, but it's not the only thing.

And the question now is whether this new government is going to be able to deliver services to the population before they get frustrated. If they do get frustrated, there is every chance they won't channel that frustration through a political channel, but will instead resort to arms that are prolific across the region.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Rebecca Hamilton, what do you look for in the months to come to see whether this new country is getting on its feet or not?

REBECCA HAMILTON: Yes. I think we have got to start firstly by changing the way we look at the new government of South Sudan.

For a long time, the international community has seen the South as the victim, which it has been the primary victim in the war years. But now we have got to be able to hold it just as accountable as we would any other government to make sure it lives up to the expectations of its people. That means dealing with issues that are already a problem, like corruption, a huge amount of corruption in the Southern government right now, about making sure that it is putting in the work to start diversifying its economy, because, if you are 98 percent dependent on oil, you are in a very risky situation.

And the good news is that South Sudan is this incredibly fertile territory. If you go, it is not the image that you have of Sudan. It's green and it's lush. It really could be a breadbasket for the region. But it means that they need to shift their focus and start developing the agricultural industry.

And then I think the other key thing is whether they are going to avoid the fate of so many liberation movements, which is that, when they get into power, they don't live up to the ideals that they were fighting for. And that means increasing political space in South Sudan. It's very much controlled by one party at the moment, and they need to open up that space, so that, when there are inevitable challenges and frustrations, they get channeled to a political system.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rebecca Hamilton, thank you for helping fill out the portrait of this new country. We will be watching