South Sudan: An Army general who is under EU sanctions is supposed to become Deputy Minister of Defense

According to the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), it is a scandal that an Army general who is under EU sanctions is supposed to become South Sudan’s new Deputy Minister of Defense. “War profiteers must not be rewarded! This is a bad sign for lasting peace and justice. The promotion of the controversial general by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir is a slap in the face of the families of more than 50,000 civilians who were killed in the bloody civil war,” stated Ulrich Delius, the STP’s director, in Göttingen on Tuesday. The promotion is also to be seen as an affront against the United States, Canada, the European Union (EU), and the United Nations, which had imposed sanctions on the general and on three of his companies.

On Monday night, South Sudan’s president had appointed Lieutenant General Malek Reuben Riak Deputy Minister of Defense. He is accused of purchasing more than 24,000 rifle guns and rocket launchers, grenades, ammunition, and anti-tank weapons from China after the civil war broke out in December 2013. The general – who is in charge of the supply of the South Sudanese army – is accused of planning targeted military offensives and of trying to fuel the civil war. There are also accusations of corruption. Thus, he is said to have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from foreign companies through three of his companies.

On September 6, 2017, the US had imposed sanctions against the general. In the US, all of his funds and his companies’ assets were confiscated, and US citizens are no longer allowed to do business with him or his companies. Later, Canada and the EU followed the example of the United States.

“His promotion is another clear sign that the government of South Sudan is not willing to prosecute war criminals,” Delius emphasized. Only last week, a commission on the human rights situation in South Sudan (initiated by the UN Human Rights Council) had called on the African Union (AU) to finally come up with detailed plans to install a court that is supposed to focus on war crimes and crimes against humanity in South Sudan – as stated in a peace agreement signed in August 2015. However, a peace agreement that was signed in September 2018 no longer provides for the creation of such a special tribunal.

Header picture: Steve Evans via Wikimedia Commons