JUBA: Scores of civilians were killed in political clashes in South Sudan between February and May this year, a UN report said Tuesday, with women and children subjected to brutal assaults, including gang rape.
The clashes between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival, Vice President Riek Machar, in oil-rich Unity State affected at least 28 villages across three counties, with 173 people killed and 37 women and children kidnapped.
“Many of the abductees were subjected to sexual violence, including girls as young as eight-years-old and a nine-year-old girl who was gang-raped to death,” the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said.
Both sides committed severe abuses, the report said, adding that pro-government forces and militias loyal to Kiir appeared to be “the main perpetrators of the human rights violations.”
The violence caused 44,000 people to flee their homes across 26 villages, with a total of 131 cases of rape and gang-rape documented.
South Sudan has been wracked by instability since independence in 2011 and is still struggling to draw a line under a civil war between pro-Kiir and pro-Machar fighters that claimed the lives of almost 400,000 people.
The joint report covered the period between 11 February and 31 May 2022, with researchers traveling to the pro-Machar strongholds of Koch, Leer, and Mayendit as well as surrounding areas to document the aftermath of the violence.
It said that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that these attacks were consistently premeditated and carried out with a degree of organization mainly by the joint Government forces and allied militias/groups operating in these areas.”
In a press statement accompanying the report’s release, Nicholas Haysom, the UN envoy to the country, said that “human rights violations were committed with impunity.”
“The government is duty-bound under international law to protect civilians, investigate allegations of human rights violations, and hold suspected perpetrators accountable,” he added.
The UN has regularly criticized South Sudan’s leadership for its role in stoking violence, cracking down on political freedoms and plundering public coffers.
It has also accused the government of rights violations amounting to war crimes over deadly attacks in the southwest last year.
Since the five-year civil war ended in 2018, the country’s lumbering peace process has run into multiple delays, with violence regularly breaking out between Kiir and Machar’s forces.
In July, the United States pulled out of two peace process monitoring organizations in South Sudan due to the government’s failure to meet reform milestones, citing a “lack of sustained progress.”
UN: 173 civilians killed in South Sudan clashes
https://arab.news/jh2dn
UN: 173 civilians killed in South Sudan clashes
- Violence caused 44,000 people to flee their homes across 26 villages, with a total of 131 cases of rape and gang-rape documented
Bill Clinton says he ‘did nothing wrong’ with Epstein as he faces grilling over their relationship
- “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” the former Democratic president said
- The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress
WASHINGTON: Former President Bill Clinton told members of Congress on Friday that he “did nothing wrong” in his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and saw no signs of Epstein’s sexual abuse as he faced hours of grilling from lawmakers over his connections to the disgraced financier from more than two decades ago.
“I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong,” the former Democratic president said in an opening statement he shared on social media at the outset of the deposition.
The closed-door deposition in Chappaqua, New York, marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress. It came a day after Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat with lawmakers for her own deposition.
Bill Clinton has also not been accused of any wrongdoing. Yet lawmakers are grappling with what accountability in the United States looks like at a time when men around the world have been toppled from their high-powered posts for maintaining their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
“Men — and women for that matter — of great power and great wealth from all across the world have been able to get away with a lot of heinous crimes and they haven’t been held accountable and they have not even had to answer questions,” said Republican Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, before the deposition began Friday.
Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Thursday that she had no knowledge of how Epstein had sexually abused underage girls and had no recollection of even meeting him. But Bill Clinton will have to answer questions on a well-documented relationship with Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, even if it was from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Bill Clinton in his opening statement said that he would likely often tell the committee that he did not recall the specifics of events from more than 20 years ago. But he also expressed certainty that he had not witnessed signs of Epstein’s abuse.
During a break after two hours of questioning, Democratic lawmakers said that Bill Clinton had tried to answer every question and had not invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Still, Republicans were relishing the opportunity to scrutinize the former Democratic president under oath.
“No one’s accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, but I think the American people have a lot of questions,” Comer said.
Republicans finally get a chance to question Bill Clinton
Republicans have wanted to question Bill Clinton about Epstein for years, especially as conspiracy theories arose following Epstein’s 2019 suicide in a New York jail cell while he faced sex trafficking charges.
Those calls reached a fever pitch late last year when several photos of the former president surfaced in the Department of Justice’s first release of case files on Epstein and Maxwell, a British socialite who was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 but maintains she’s innocent. Bill Clinton was photographed on a plane seated alongside a woman, whose face is redacted, with his arm around her. Another photo showed Clinton and Maxwell in a pool with another person whose face was redacted.
Epstein also visited the White House several times during Clinton’s presidency, and the pair later made several international trips together for their humanitarian work. Comer claimed the committee has collected evidence that Epstein visited the White House 17 times and that Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s airplane 27 times.
Democratic lawmakers said they also posed tough questions to Bill Clinton about his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell.
“We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long,” Bill Clinton said in his opening statement. “And by the time it came to light with his 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him.”
Comer pledged extensive questioning of the former president. He claimed that Hillary Clinton had repeatedly deferred questions about Epstein to her husband.
Bill Clinton went after Comer for calling his wife before the committee, telling him that “including her was simply not right.”
The committee was working to quickly publish a transcript and video recording of her deposition.
Has a precedent been set?
Democrats, who have supported the push to get answers from Bill Clinton, are arguing that it sets a precedent that should also apply to President Donald Trump, a Republican who had his own relationship with Epstein.
“I think that President Trump needs to man up, get in front of this committee and answer the questions and stop calling this investigation a hoax,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, on Friday.
Comer has pushed back on that idea, saying that Trump has answered questions on Epstein from the press.
Trump on Friday expressed remorse at Bill Clinton being forced to testify. “I like Bill Clinton, and I don’t like seeing him deposed,” he told reporters as he departed the White House en route to Corpus Christi, Texas.
Democrats are also calling for the resignation of Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Lutnick was a longtime neighbor of Epstein in New York City but said on a podcast that he severed ties with Epstein following a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.
The public release of case files showed that Lutnick actually had two engagements with Epstein years later. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home, and in 2012 his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island.
“He should be removed from office and at a minimum should come before the committee,” Garcia said of Lutnick.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace questioned Hillary Clinton about Lutnick’s relationship to Epstein during the deposition on Thursday. On Friday morning, Mace joined in calling for the commerce secretary to come before the committee.
“I believe we will have the votes to subpoena him,” Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna said.
