Government forces killed about 50 people in South Sudan’s Unity state in October by locking them in a container and leaving them to suffocate, the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission said.
According to a report on the JMEC website and available for download below, the incident took place in Leer county on about 22 October when a group of government forces seized cattle and between 53 and 60 people. The people were put in a shipping container in a compound used by the government as its headquarters.
“About 50 civilians died whilst in the custody of Government Forces in Leer between 20 and 22 October 2015,” JMEC said. “A large number of these people suffocated. Their bodies were taken and thrown into the bush along the Gandor road. Many of the bodies were recovered by their families.”
JMEC said it was unable to find any survivors of the incident, but concluded that “there is no doubt” the incident took place. The group based its findings on three visits to the area on 2 November, 13-16 November, and 29-2 December, as well as interviews with other reliable and trusted international sources who had interviewed family members of the victims and seen the bodies.
“There is a great deal of information from a wide range of sources about this incident,” JMEC said.
JMEC said they received a report of the killings on 26 October from an SPLM/A-In Opposition official, and accessed the site nine days later. The monitoring group said the case was difficult to investigate, which was one reason for the delay in producing the report which is dated 19 December but was only released recently.
“The SPLA authorities were not cooperative and limited the movement of both the [JMEC monitoring and verification team] and accompanying UN personnel,” JMEC said.
JMEC said further investigations are necessary to discover exact details of the killings and which individuals were responsible for the atrocity, and called for a further enquiry into the matter.
At the time of the incident, the acting government commissioner in Leer County was Kor Gatmai Garang, the commissioner of Mayendit County. Wol Yoach, the current Leer commissioner, was in Juba during the killings.
The report noted that the deaths may have been either deliberate or a result of negligence, but in either case are a clear violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law on the part of the government.
Separately, the United Nations Panel of Experts on South Sudan also described the incident in their report which was published last week, though some details differ.
The experts said that around 24 October, approximately 50 men were taken by the government-affiliated forces from Adok, Leer County to Leer town and subsequently killed.
“Reports vary on the method of killing and are yet to be verified, but preliminary reports claimed that the men may have been beaten to death,” the panel said.
The panel of experts said the bodies were dumped by a road on the outskirts of town, and that personnel of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) located and photographed the bodies nine days later on 2 November. The panel said the bodies had decayed and were scavenged by animals, making conclusions as to the cause of death difficult to determine from the photographs.
The UN panel said they had a list of names of the dead, and also heard reports from first-hand witnesses. UNMISS has not made any statement about the incident.