[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 140 (Wednesday, August 22, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5825-S5826]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              SOUTH SUDAN

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, several of the warring parties in the South 
Sudanese civil war, including President Kiir and the leader of the main 
opposition party, Riek Machar, recently signed a power-sharing deal to 
ostensibly bring to an end a conflict that has resulted in hundreds of 
thousands of deaths and the largest refugee crisis in Africa. Today in 
South Sudan, there are nearly 200,000 people sheltering at UN 
peacekeeping bases, 4.5 million people have been forcibly displaced, 
and an estimated 7 million people are in need of humanitarian aid. 
Several ceasefires have been negotiated and broken by both sides since 
the conflict began in December 2013, and the United States has invested 
well over $3 billion in humanitarian aid to help the people of South 
Sudan who have been largely abandoned by their political leaders.
  Unfortunately, the viability of the recent power-sharing deal and the 
prospects for a broader peace agreement remain in question. What we do 
know is that decades of corruption, marginalization, political 
manipulation, and human rights atrocities led to the most recent 
iteration of catastrophic violence in South Sudan, and it will take 
decades for the country to fully recover, but there is at least one 
action that President Kiir should take today that would have immediate 
benefits: the release of all political prisoners, journalists, 
academics, and others who have been detained as a result of peacefully 
exercising their right to free expression.
  One such individual is Peter Biar Ajak. Mr. Ajak was resettled in 
Philadelphia in January 2001 as a teenage refugee of the Sudanese civil 
war and one of the 40,000 ``Lost Boys'' left homeless by that conflict. 
Remarkably, he went on to earn a master's degree from Harvard and is 
now a doctoral candidate at Cambridge. Mr. Ajak has been a courageous 
and vocal critic of the failed peace process in South Sudan, 
particularly the role of President Kiir and opposition leader Machar, 
who for years have put amassing wealth and power for themselves far 
above the welfare and rights of the South Sudanese people. It is this 
criticism that his supporters believe led to his arrest and 
imprisonment on July 28 by the South Sudan National Security Service, 
NSS.
  While the charges against him have not been publicly confirmed, Mr. 
Ajak

[[Page S5826]]

is allegedly being charged with treason and other crimes against the 
state and has reportedly been denied access to a lawyer. Reports 
suggest he is one of several dozen detainees being held by the NSS at 
the infamous Blue House prison in Juba.
  Mr. Ajak's detention is consistent with a pattern of abuses by the 
NSS, which has been implicated in the arbitrary arrest and detention of 
journalists, national staff of the United Nations, academics, civil 
society activists, and young business leaders like Kerbino Wol; the 
forced disappearance of human rights lawyers and members of the 
political opposition, such as Dong Samuel Luak and Aggrey Idri, 
respectively; and other human rights violations and denials of due 
process. Although President Kiir has previously announced that he would 
release all political prisoners and his government has committed under 
a recent deal to release detainees, human rights monitors continue to 
report that dozens of people remain detained without charge at the Blue 
House and other detention sites in the capital.
  No matter what documents are signed to move the country beyond its 
civil war, true peace and stability will not be achieved if the 
government continues to repress free speech and arrest, detain, and 
forcibly disappear journalists, politicians, academics, and members of 
civil society. If and when the U.S. government is again called on to 
support the government of South Sudan and to help rebuild its security 
services, their actions in this conflict--and their treatment of people 
like Peter Biar Ajak--will not be forgotten. I urge all Senators to 
join me in calling for the immediate release of Mr. Ajak and other 
prisoners of conscience and accountability for the perpetrators of such 
abuses.

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