South Sudanese authorities have arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured and ill-treated people to the point of death, despite repeated promises to release detainees, Amnesty International said on Monday.

“People in South Sudan have been arrested for their political and ethnic affiliations and are then subjected to unimaginable suffering – sometimes leading to death - at the hands of the government’s security forces,” said Seif Magango, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.

Between February and July 2017, the rights group said, four men - Mike Tyson, Alison Mogga Tadeo, Richard Otti and Andria Baambe - died in detention due to harsh conditions and inadequate medical care.

Amnesty International pointed out that it previously documented the deaths of at least 20 people in detention between February 2014 and December 2016.

In the latest briefing titled “A trail of broken promises”, former detainees told Amnesty International that they were made to drink water from the toilet and defecate and urinate in front of each other. They also said they were rarely allowed out of their cells for sunlight or exercise. They were also not allowed to talk to each other. Some detainees were fed only once a day and, in more extreme cases, just a few times a week.

The ex-detainees, according to the rights group, said they were also denied access to their families and lawyers. In some cases, the authorities seemed to deliberately make it difficult for their lawyers and families to find them, by transferring them from one detention facility to another.

On 10 March 2017, President Salva Kiir pledged to release political detainees, before subsequently releasing about 30 of them in August the same year. He later reiterated his intention to free political detainees in December 2017 during the signing of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, and in June 2018 when signing the Khartoum Declaration of Agreement between Parties of the Conflict of South Sudan.

Amnesty International criticized the arrest of Peter Biar Ajak, a prominent South Sudanese academic and activist who was arrested at Juba International Airport on 28 July 2018.

“It is extremely unconscionable that South Sudanese authorities arrest, torture and ill-treat people in total disregard for their human rights. The government must end these arbitrary detentions by immediately releasing the detainees or charging them with internationally recognizable offenses. It must also hold to account all those responsible for these grave human rights violations and deaths in detention,” said Seif Magango.