Human Rights Watch Report : Arbitrary Detention in South Sudan -JUNE 21, 2012
This 105-page report documents violations of due process rights, patterns of wrongful deprivation of liberty, and the harsh, unacceptable prison conditions in which detainees live. The research was done during a 10-month period before and after South Sudan’s independence, on July 9, 2011.
“I don’t think about the future. It is only God and the Government who know whether I will stay or be released.”
–Female prisoner, Bentiu prison, October 2011[151]
There are several categories of people in South
Sudan’s prisons who simply should not be there. Some are imprisoned in
order to compel appearance of a relative or friend. Others are accused or
convicted of adultery or other sexual crimes. Police, judges, and medical
workers imprison people with mental disabilities, even when they have committed
no criminal offense. Such detentions – like those resulting from serious
procedural flaws described in the last section of this report – are also
“arbitrary” under international law because they cannot be
justified by any legal basis, or otherwise violate basic rights and freedoms.[152]
Those who are detained for failure to pay civil debt, court
fines, or compensation awards should also not be in prison. These detentions
are arbitrary because they are often indefinite, discriminatory on the basis of
sex, directly depend on a persons’ socio-economic status not the offense
they commit, and are in direct contravention of the ICCPR’s prohibition
against imprisonment for failure to fulfill a contractual obligation.[153]
Imprisonment is also an inappropriate sanction for many of
the children in conflict with the law in South Sudan’s prisons. Detention
is given for petty crimes as a matter of course, not as a last resort, as is
required under international law.[154]
Sentencing and imprisonment of children often violates provisions under
domestic law, and no single prison in South Sudan provides conditions for the
detention of children in line with international standards.
Proxy Detention
There has been repeated criticism over the past years of the
practice of detaining relatives or friends of criminal suspects in order to
compel their appearance.[155] Human
Rights Watch met women being held in lieu of their sons in both Rumbek and
Bentiu and heard anecdotes of proxy detentions in other prisons, demonstrating
that people continue to be imprisoned for other’s crimes.[156]
The file of a 60-year-old woman in Bentiu prison indicated
that she was convicted in October 2011 by a customary court for kidnapping and
sentenced to one month in Bentiu prison. She told Human Rights Watch: “My
son took a girl that he loved. Her family refused to let her marry him, so they
went off to Khartoum in July… The girl’s brother brought me to the
police… The court put me here so that my son will return.”[157]
When Human Rights Watch spoke to her, she had been in prison for 10 days.
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Proxy detentions are arbitrary and illegal because the
detained person did not commit any crime, and there is no legal basis on which
to justify the detention. Police, prosecutors, judges, and chiefs should immediately
cease detaining, charging, or convicting individuals simply because the primary
investigation target or accused person cannot be found. They should collaborate
to secure the immediate release of all those currently in proxy detention.
