{"id":30762,"date":"2016-12-02T04:24:56","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T04:24:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-sudan-conflict-un-warns-of-ethnic-cleansing\/"},"modified":"2016-12-02T04:24:37","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T04:24:37","slug":"south-sudan-conflict-un-warns-of-ethnic-cleansing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-sudan-conflict-un-warns-of-ethnic-cleansing\/","title":{"rendered":"South Sudan conflict: UN warns of &#8216;ethnic cleansing&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Ethnic cleansing is taking place in war-torn South Sudan, the country&#8217;s UN human rights commission has warned.}<\/p>\n<p>It says it has observed starvation, the burning of villages and rape being used as weapons of war across the country.<\/p>\n<p>The three-member commission, which was established earlier this year, has just completed a 10-day visit to South Sudan, which has been blighted by conflict for more than three years.<\/p>\n<p>President Salva Kiir has denied that ethnic cleansing is taking place.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement released on Thursday, the commission said the stage is being set for a repeat of what happened in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide against Tutsi.<\/p>\n<p>Yasmin Sooka, the chair of the commission, said that everywhere the team went in South Sudan, it &#8220;heard villagers saying they are ready to shed blood to get their land back&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>South Sudan&#8217;s civil war has caused more than 2.2 million people to flee their homes.<br \/>\nIt began in 2013, two years after South Sudan became independent, when President Salva Kiir sacked his cabinet and accused Vice-President Riek Machar of instigating a failed coup.<\/p>\n<p>Government and rebels agreed to attend peace talks in 2014, and a deal was signed a year later.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Machar eventually returned from exile to be reinstated as first vice-president of a new unity government under Mr Kiir in April 2016.<\/p>\n<p>However he was again sacked months later after renewed conflict.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-16795 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_92782438_southsudan.jpg\" alt=\"Many South Sudanese are trying to find out if their relatives are dead or alive\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Ethnic cleansing is taking place in war-torn South Sudan, the country&#8217;s UN human rights commission has warned.} It says it has observed starvation, the burning of villages and rape being used as weapons of war across the country. The three-member commission, which was established earlier this year, has just completed a 10-day visit to South [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30762"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30762"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}