February 25, 2023 (NAIROBI) – South Sudanese authorities must clarify the fate and whereabouts of a detained critic, a rights group said Saturday.
On 4 February, Morris Mabior Awikjok Bak, a critic of the South Sudanese government was reportedly arbitrarily arrested or unlawfully abducted, allegedly by armed Kenyan security forces, a South Sudanese man and Kenyan woman in civilian clothes, in Nairobi, Kenya, where he resides.
It is believed Mabior was forcefully returned to the South Sudanese capital, Juba and is being held in incommunicado detention at a National Security Service (NSS) detention facility.
The Pan-African Lawyers Union (PALU) petitioned the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to try and establish the fate and whereabouts of the critic.
“We applaud PALU’s efforts seeking, through the EACJ, to clarify the fate and whereabouts of Morris Mabior Awikjok Bak, a South Sudanese man who attempted to seek refuge in Kenya in 2021. We call on the South Sudanese authorities to, without further delay, clarify the fate and whereabouts of Morris Mabior Awikjok Bak,” said Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East and Southern Africa Flavia Mwangovya.
According the rights body, what happened to Mabior “matches a broader pattern of abductions and illegal transfers of South Sudanese refugees from neighbouring countries by the NSS of South Sudan”.
“In addition to clarifying the fate and whereabouts of Morris Mabior Awikjok Bak, the South Sudanese authorities must ensure he has regular access to his family, a lawyer and a doctor, and unless he is charged with an internationally recognisable offence, immediately release him,” said Mwangovya.
On 3 July 2019, Hope for Humanity Africa and PALU sued the Government of South Sudan and the Republic of Kenya at the EACJ concerning the abduction, enforced disappearance, illegal and/or extraordinary rendition, arbitrary detention, torture, and possible subsequent murder of Dong Samuel Luak and Aggrey Ezbon Idri. The case is still before the EACJ.
Since the NSS Act in 2014, the NSS has accumulated unchecked powers, becoming one of the main perpetrators of human rights violations and the most powerful security actor in South Sudan. On 21 February, however, South Sudan government agreed to remove sections 54 and 55 in the act that give NSS unconstitutional powers to arrest without and with a warrant, therewith agreeing to curb the NSS’s powers which, if enacted, would be a step towards bringing the 2014 NSS Act in line with the constitution.
(ST)
