The South Sudanese presidency has stood by its claim that an attempted coup by Riek Machar was the cause of the ongoing civil war despite the African Union finding no evidence for this narrative.
The AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan said in its report released this week: “From all the information available to the Commission, the evidence does not point to a coup.”
The Commission said South Sudan’s National Security Services director told them the government intercepted phone calls between former Unity state governor Taban Deng and Machar in December 2013 where they spoke about a coup.
But the Commmission said when they listened to the recordings of those calls provided to them by NSS, there was no evidence of coup plotting.
Kiir’s spokesperson Ateny Wek Ateny said the government rejects still the conclusion there was no coup. He said a coup was the cause of the war.
“The only thing that we will talk about is the point that there was no evidence for a failed coup attempt in Juba,” he said of the Commission’s report. “South Sudan would not accept this, the people of South Sudan would not accept it, because if there was no coup, so what caused the war?”
The Commission said the war started with a fight between Dinka and Nuer members of the presidential guard in Juba on 15 December 2013, followed by massacres of Nuer civilians and soldiers throughout Juba by government troops.
The massacres appeared to be “an organized military operation that could not have been successful without concerted efforts from various actors in the military and government circles,” the Commission, led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, concluded.
Kiir’s spokesperson Ateny said the government otherwise found the report similar to previous human rights reports issued in the past by non-official bodies. He may have been referring to the leak earlier this year of a draft of the Separate Opinion published as part of the AU Commission of Inquiry report.
The report found both sides to the conflict committed serious violations against human rights.