Soaring is the indignant rhetoric from Amnesty International and other human rights organizations against South Sudan’s homicidal factions, and eloquent is the world community’s condemnation of this explosion of savagery in the globe’s newest country. But it is a virtual certainty that none of the guilty parties will suffer even the most miniscule sort of punishment. Human rights groups have no trouble at all catching these miscreants “dead to rights,” but it all amounts to less than nothing in the absence of a robust mechanism for hauling the criminals into an international court.
It is ironic indeed that these grotesque outrages are taking place in a country whose independence is in considerable measure due to many years of agitation by groups opposed to the Islamic Republic of Sudan’s efforts to control its restive southern regions. So-called “independent” South Sudan quickly demonstrated how thoroughly undeserving it really is of any sort of moral applause.
We can at least resolve to treat the alleged “leadership” of this barbaric realm to the contempt it absolutely deserves.
Frank W. Goheen
Camas
