South Sudan’s National Assembly should urgently enact reforms of the National Security Service or NSS to end arbitrary detention and abuse of detainees, says Human Rights Watch.
In a statement seen by CRN, it adds that the authorities should also ensure that the security agency releases all those arbitrarily detained in Juba and elsewhere in the country and hold all those responsible for abuses to account.
‘South Sudan’s national security agency has for years carried out a full-blown assault on critics of the government and political opponents in brazen disregard for basic rights,’ said Jehanne Henry, associate Africa director at Human Rights Watch. ‘With the formation of a unity government, South Sudan’s leaders should now show they are serious about ending these abuses and holding those responsible to account.’, Human Rights Watch stresses.
Human Rights Watch urges lawmakers to prioritize revising the National Security Service Act 2015 to prohibit the agency from carrying out arrests and detaining people and ensure adequate and broad-based discussions on the reforms.
It calls on the authorities to also close all unauthorized detention sites and release or appropriately charge detainees and transfer them to police custody.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on the authorities to limit NSS powers to intelligence gathering, in accordance to the Constitution of 2011, which mandates the agency to focus on information gathering, analysis and advise the relevant authorities.
‘Human Rights Watch, the South Sudan Human Rights Commission, and others have documented and reported on the pattern of arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances by the National Security Service, with little to no accountability for the abuses’.
It says NSS detainees are often kept in poor conditions in unauthorized, ungazetted, secret detention facilities and in congested cells with inadequate access to food, water and medical care.