South Sudan Security Law Revisions Adopted

[John Ashworth]

South Sudan: Damaging Security Law Revisions Adopted

President Kiir Should Reject Law and Limit Broad, Unqualified Powers

Human Rights Watch
July 4, 2024 4:30AM EDT

(Nairobi) – South Sudan’s National Legislative Assembly on July 3,
2024, amended the law governing the National Security Service (NSS),
in ways that will further undermine human rights and entrench the
agency’s longstanding abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.

Parliament passed amendments to the 2015 National Security Service Act
after a four-hour debate by a vote of 274-114 that will allow the
agency to continue arresting or detaining people without a warrant.
Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have documented how
the agency has used the 2015 law’s broad and vague powers to establish
a regime of censorship, surveillance and other abusive interference
with fundamental rights and freedoms.

“Instead of reining in the security service, which has been the
government’s preferred tool of repression, South Sudan’s parliament
has further emboldened the agency,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa
director at Human Rights Watch. “This was an opportunity to promote
and enhance justice and human rights but instead parliament chose to
strengthen a security service that routinely abuses rights with
impunity.”

The security service has exercised these powers without meaningful
judicial or legislative oversight, and its agents are rarely punished
for abuses.

The National Constitutional Amendment Committee drafted the amendments
as part of reforms initiated by the Revitalized Peace Agreement of
2018. When the committee failed to reach consensus on the agency’s
arrest authority, the bill was referred to the Justice Ministry in
2019 and in April 2021, to the presidency for resolution. In August
2022 the presidency sent the bill back to the Justice Ministry, which
suggested limiting the agency’s powers of arrest and detention.

On February 21, 2023, several media outlets reported that the
presidency had agreed to remove the relevant provisions (articles 54
and 55) and abolish the agency’s authority to arrest and detain anyone
with or without a warrant.

But the bill presented to parliament in May 2023 by the justice
minister, retained arrest powers but limited them to use “under
emergency circumstances,” and also explicitly allowed the agency to
arrest an individual without a warrant if they are suspected of broad
“crimes against the state.” The bill has a broad definition of “crimes
against the state” as “any activity directed at undermining … the
government” and references the provision on “crimes against the state”
in the 2008 Penal Code, which is equally vague and problematic.

The government has in the past used trumped-up charges of “crimes
against the state” to restrict freedoms of expression, assembly and
association, in particular, peaceful exercise of these rights by
political opposition, or other public criticism of government policy
and actions. In July 2023, Human Rights Watch urged parliament to
remove the agency’s powers of arrest or at a minimum to limit its
powers of arrest to those that require a judicial warrant.

Several parliament members who had voted against the agency having
powers of arrest and detention expressed their dismay to Human Rights
Watch.

“We have argued that the agency has no prosecutorial or arrest powers
and should only have an intelligence gathering role as envisioned by
the constitution,” a member affiliated with the South Sudan Opposition
Alliance told Human Rights Watch. “But certain powers believe it is
better to embolden the agency more and more. It is a very dark omen
for the days to come that the agency can now without fear, or doubt,
pick any member of the public up without any warrant.”

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on the South Sudanese
authorities to limit NSS powers to intelligence gathering, as
envisioned by the Transitional Constitution of 2011, which mandates
the agency to “focus on information gathering, analysis and to advise
the relevant authorities.

Over the past few months, the agency has unlawfully detained
activists, critics, and even foreign citizens. People interviewed said
that in at least seven cases, the agency arrested people without
warrants, detained them for long periods without access to legal
counsel and in some cases, also held them incommunicado.

Human Rights Watch has also received reports of torture and
ill-treatment. For example, one person told Human Rights Watch that he
was caned daily for the first three days when he arrived at the agency
headquarters, Blue House, in Juba. He said that every time his wounds
began to heal, he would be beaten again. Detainees are held in
overcrowded and unsanitary cells and eat once a day.

The agency also continues to hold Morris Mabior Awikjiok, a South
Sudanese critic and former refugee in Kenya, since February 2023, even
though the justice minister directed the agency in June this year to
free him.

Victims of agency abuses have no credible, far less effective, avenues
in South Sudan to seek redress.

South Sudan’s partners should raise concerns about the agency’s record
of abusive behavior and that the law is likely to facilitate further
abuses, Human Rights Watch said.

The next step is for the speaker of parliament to refer the bill to
the president for assent, and the president has 14 days to assent or
refer the bill back to parliament for reconsideration, noting his
reservations.

“President Kiir should reject the broad powers of arrest and detention
and send the law back to parliament so they can bring the law in line
with the constitution and international human rights standards,” Bader
said. “This could go a long way to curtail abuses by the security
service and contribute to a rights respecting South Sudan.”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/04/south-sudan-damaging-security-law-revisions-adopted

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