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South Sudanese military targets U.N. personnel, report says

Workers beaten, vehicles searched, bribes demanded

The Columbian
Published: March 19, 2014, 5:00pm

UNITED NATIONS — South Sudan’s relationship with the United Nations has plummeted to an unprecedented low as authorities have beaten U.N. personnel and relief workers, forcibly searched their vehicles and organized public demonstrations demonizing the world body as an enemy of the fledgling African nation, according to a confidential internal report obtained by Foreign Policy.

The U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations compiled the list of attacks — as well as a separate incident in which South Sudanese security agents threatened to arrest a local U.N. employee if he refused to spy on the international organization — in a March 18 paper to the U.N. Security Council.

The paper found that the South Sudanese government had violated the Status of Forces agreement that provides immunity for U.N. personnel dozens of times between Feb. 9 and March 12. It cites three incidents in which anti-government forces have either refused or delayed U.N. requests to land at a rebel-controlled airport in the city of Malakal.

South Sudan forces have routinely stopped U.N. convoys transporting food, medicines, and other humanitarian goods, and in many cases, beat the truck drivers, according to the report.

They have also blocked the U.N. from conducting routine land and air patrols throughout South Sudan, as well as impeding the work of U.N. de-mining experts in Jonglei state. In one case, explosive experts from the U.N. Mine Action Service were prevented by South Sudanese and Ugandan government forces from clearing bombs from an area south of Bor.

In one March 11 incident, soldiers from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army stopped a U.N. relief truck carrying emergency reproductive health kits, the report stated. “The driver and his assistant were instructed to offload the medical equipment and were beaten by SPLA soldiers when they refused to do so.” On the same day, SPLA soldiers accosted the driver of a vehicle delivering humanitarian goods from the town of Rumbek in Lakes state to Yambio in Western Equatoria state. “The driver was beaten, made to offload the cargo and forced to pay the soldiers money,” according to the U.N. report.

The incidents don’t appear to have been isolated cases.

On Feb. 21, South Sudanese police stopped employees from a U.N. aid agency that were transporting water to a camp for displaced people in the town of Bor. The report said that the police were reportedly acting under instructions of the SPLA to “not allow any truck delivering food or water to proceed to the protection side, unless cash was paid for each truck.”

Relations between the U.N. and the South Sudanese government have been tense for well over a year, but they have markedly deteriorated since the world’s youngest independent country erupted into civil war in December. The U.N. infuriated the South Sudanese government in January when it refused to allow the country’s information minister, Michael Makuei, and his two armed guards to enter a U.N. compound where thousands of civilians had sought refuge from fighting between government and rebel forces.

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