Created in 2011 to “collect information, conduct analysis, and advise relevant authorities,” the NSS has instead evolved into a super agency with policing and combat functions that operates with unchecked power and impunity.
Moreover, the UN Panel of experts recently found the NSS has repeatedly violated the UN’s 2018 arms embargo on South Sudan and obstructed humanitarian access to the country. The Panel found that top officials at the agency were involved in provoking long-standing hostilities between the Murle, Gawaar Nuer, and Lou Nuer and Dinka Bor communities of Jonglei state by providing them with weapons and other military support. The consequences were devastating. Thousands were displaced and hundreds killed and maimed between February and August this year. Civilian, including humanitarian, property such as health centers and schools were also attacked and destroyed.
HRW: NSS targets, tortures, and kills citizens
South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) has become a liability to the people of South Sudan and tortures, detains, and kills citizens instead of its core mandate of gathering and processing security information according to a report released by Human Rights Watch yesterday.
In its latest report on South Sudan titled “‘What, Crime Was I Paying For?”-Abuses by South Sudan’s National Security Service’ the international rights body faulted the NSS of gross human rights abuses such as jabbing needles in prisoners genitals, pouring melted plastic on their skin and hanging them upside down for long periods.
TOM ODULA and SAM MEDNICK Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya– Jabbing needles in prisoners’ genitals, pouring melted plastic on their skin and hanging them upside down for long periods: These are tortures allegedly being perpetrated by South Sudan’s National Security Service, according to an international human rights group.
Electric shocks, gang rapes, abductions and killings are also abuses carried out by the security agency charged Human Rights Watch in a study launched Monday.
Established in 2011 shortly after the country gained independence South Sudan’s National Security Service has been operating beyond its constitutional mandate of collecting information, conducting analysis and advising relevant authorities, the report said.
World
Associated Press
CAIRO – The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum said Monday that President Donald Trump s administration has removed Sudan from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a move that could help the African country get international loans to revive its battered economy and end its pariah status.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement the removal came after Sudan s transitional government met “the statutory and policy criteria” and charted a “bold new course away from the legacy” of former autocratic President Omar al-Bashir.
Sudan is on a fragile transition to democracy following an uprising that led to the military s ouster of al-Bashir in April 2019. The country is now ruled by a joint military and civilian government that seeks better ties with Washington and the West.
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