\n The United Nations warned Wednesday that entrenched suspicion was clouding a newly-minted deal to restore peace to South Sudan, as Amnesty International accused government forces of war crimes.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There's currently a key ingredient that is lacking. That's trust,\" said David Shearer, head of the UN mission in South Sudan, referring to the September 12 peace accord.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Those who signed the agreement have in the past been former friends and foes,\" he said. \"From my discussions with them, suspicion is still widespread.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The agreement was signed by President Salva Kiir and rebel leader and former vice president Riek Machar.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We also need to see clear evidence that all the warring factions have the political will to stop the violence,\" Shearer said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We have not seen anything concrete at the moment. What needs to happen first (is) we need to see a disengagement of the forces.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Recent clashes in the southern region of Central Equatoria were the subject of an investigation, he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Government security forces had also shot a Nepalese peacekeeper in the southern town of Yei over the weekend, he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Northern 'war crimes' -\n<\/p>\n
\n South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, broke away from Sudan in 2011 after a long and bloody independence struggle.\n<\/p>\n
\n But just two years later, war broke out, triggering a severe humanitarian crisis.\n<\/p>\n
\n A struggle for power between Kiir, a member of the Dinka tribe, and Machar, a Nuer, meant the conflict quickly took on an ethnic character with civilians subjected to massacres and widespread rape by forces on both sides.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions pushed to the brink of starvation or forced to flee their homes in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.\n<\/p>\n
\n In a report released on Wednesday, Amnesty International said it had uncovered evidence of \"war crimes\" in a brutal government offensive on Leer and Mayendit counties in the northern state of Unity.\n<\/p>\n
\n It said the offensive began in April and continued until early July \"a week after the latest ceasefire was brokered on 27 June\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The ceasefire paved the way for last week's peace agreement.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Shot, burnt alive, hanged' -\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Civilians (were) deliberately shot dead, burnt alive, hanged in trees and run over with armoured vehicles,\" it said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Amnesty said its report drew on testimony from around 100 civilians survivors.\n<\/p>\n
\n The group also documented \"systematic sexual violence\", rape and gang-rape as well as abductions of women and girls, and the deliberate killing of young boys and male infants.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Michael Makuei, South Sudan's minister of information, lashed out at the report as seeking to sully the country's image.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"These are the people who do not want peace for South Sudan,\" he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"These are people who keep on sending such reports so that the international community is made to believe that South Sudan is not at peace.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The details outlined in the report echoed the type of brutality that has been characteristic of South Sudan's five-year civil war.\n<\/p>\n
\n UN rights experts have warned of \"ethnic cleansing\" and the threat of genocide, while Amnesty has blamed the ongoing violence on Juba's failure to prosecute perpetrators.\n<\/p>\n
\n A so-called \"hybrid court\" to try war crimes and crimes against humanity, proposed by the African Union as part of a failed 2015 peace agreement, has yet to be set up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations warned Wednesday that entrenched suspicion was clouding a newly-minted deal to restore peace to South Sudan, as Amnesty International accused government forces of war crimes. \"There's currently a key ingredient that is lacking. That's trust,\" said David Shearer, head of the UN mission in South Sudan, referring to the September 12 peace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-38921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n