EDITORIAL: Time to step up as genocide threatens South Sudan
The horrors of South Sudan’s civil war echo Rwanda as forces on both sides target civilians based on their ethnicity
South Sudan is teetering on the brink of genocide. Government soldiers and rebel militia have gone on the rampage, killing civilians, raping women and torching villages. In an echo of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, civilians in South Sudan are being targeted based on their ethnicity. On the one side are largely Dinka government soldiers and their allied militia loyal to President Salva Kiir. On the other are the largely Nuer rebel forces of opposition leader Riek Machar, who has sought refuge in SA. In November 2016, the UN’s special adviser on genocide, Adama Dieng, visited the town of Yei, 150km southwest of the capital, Juba. He concluded that immediate action was needed to prevent ethnic-based attacks from evolving into genocide. Nothing much has changed since then if the recent harrowing accounts of refugees are anything to go by. Every day, at least 2,000 cross South Sudan’s southern border into Uganda in what has become the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis. Since civil w...
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