{War in South Sudan is worsening with “extreme violence” and growing hunger, rights groups warned Monday, one year since the start of conflict in which tens of thousands have died.}
Campaigners say South Sudan is locked in conflict, with the bloodshed that erupted in Juba exactly a year ago having set off a cycle of retaliatory massacres across large swathes of the country.
“Twelve months on from the outbreak of this war, it is hard to fathom that worse could be yet to come,” South Sudanese peace activist and priest James Ninrew said.
Fighting broke out in South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, when President Salva Kiir accused his sacked deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday said the crisis was “tragic and unacceptable” as he called for a power sharing deal.
“The leaders of South Sudan have allowed their personal ambitions to jeapordize the future of an entire nation,” Ban said in a statement.
“The very premise of the country’s independence struggle — a new beginning that was supposed to be founded on tolerance, good governance, accountability and unity — is disappearing before our eyes.”
Memorial services and candlelit vigils will be held later Monday in Juba, as well as in neighbouring nations into which hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have fled.
South Sudanese civil society groups, shut out of peace talks between top leaders, have been collecting lists of names of the dead which will be read out on Monday by radio stations.
“Reading the names… is one way we can remember and honour the thousands of innocent men, women and children who should still be alive,” said project organiser Anyieth D?Awol.
The International Crisis Group estimates that at least 50,000 people have been killed, while some diplomats suggest it could even be double that figure. The UN says “tens of thousands have died.”
Rights groups said the situation now was worse than at the end of the two-decade long civil war that paved the way for independence in 2011, when billions of foreign aid dollars were spent to help rebuild.
“We’re in an even darker place than before independence, it will take decades for South Sudan to recover and heal,” said Edmund Yakani, from the Juba-based Community Empowerment for Progress Organization.
Few are optimistic of peace any time soon.
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