Thank you very much, Mr. Reid.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and members of the committee. I am happy to be here today, and I will share with you some experiences in South Sudan in the recent political crisis.
First of all, I am speaking to you from my personal experience as a displaced person, twice a refugee in the first civil war in the 1970s, a refugee in Cairo and a refugee in Canada. I have seen it all. I have gone through all this experience of being a refugee going through the war situations. My experience as a refugee and displaced person has led me to become a human rights campaigner, to become the voice of the voiceless for the people of South Sudan, and in Sudan, Darfur, Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains.
My remarks today will be a background on the current situation in South Sudan. Then, I will give you the current situation of the country and the peace talks. Then, I will have some recommendations for your committee on what Canada can do. Then, I will conclude.
For over 20 years, South Sudanese freedom fighters fought against the Khartoum injustice, discrimination, inequality, Islamization, Arabization, and slavery. Ironically, the rebels, the SPLM-SPLA, which assumed the power in South Sudan in 2005 after the CPA, comprehensive peace agreement, have not introduced the political reform, freedom, equality, justice, and distribution of power that they fought for for over 20 years. The freedom of the democratic processes is part of the mission of the SPLM-SPLA.
The SPLA government in South Sudan has denied the South Sudanese these rights, as the Khartoum regime carries on the genocide in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and Blue Nile. In a nutshell, the Salva Kiir government in South Sudan can be defined as an era of entitlement and the transfer of Khartoum policies to South Sudan, to Juba.
Here is the background. In 2013, we saw the conflict that devastated the lives of the majority of the people of South Sudan. It has killed tens of thousands, and left nearly a third of the population at risk of famine. The conflict has been brutal—killing, rape, forced recruitment of children, mass displacement, and destruction of livelihoods.
With regard to rapes, I would like to read to you remarks from one of the human rights women activists in South Sudan.
This is what she said:
This current conflict, described as senseless even by the warring sides, does not spare women or girls—they have been specifically targeted. Killings and rapes are repaid with killings and rapes. Sexual violence has been inflicted on a scale unseen even by the brutal standards of previous wars.
That's 1997 and 1983.
Victims range in age from young girls to elderly women, some in their 80s. Many stories tell of women given the option between rape and death. Women who refused to be raped were penetrated with sticks, guns and other objects and bled to death. Those who chose rape were gang raped, many not surviving the brutality. Pregnant women had their babies ripped out of them.
The conflict has a major effect on the environment, with the breakdown of the social fabric of the South Sudanese culture, psychosociological trauma generated by the sexual violence on women, and child exploitation. It has left open the wounds of 1991. That era of 1991 is the era of the Riek Machar-John Garang-Salva Kiir Mayardit split. We saw similar killings in 1991.
The same scenario is repeating itself, since 2013. Their political crisis was not a coup, as is stated by the government. It was a misunderstanding between the Dinkas and the Nuer officers in the Presidential Guard. The conflict created three more rebels in Equatoria, and as we speak now, it is under the leadership of Major General Martin Kenyi, Major Losuba Lodoru, and Captain Robert Kenyi.
Mr Chair, if you don't mind, I have some information here to substantiate what I'm saying and I would be happy to provide it.