A large array of international players, including corporate
giants in the United States and China, have profited from South Sudan’s long
civil war, according to a report by a Washington-based watchdog group.
The Sentry, which reports on links between corruption and mass atrocities in
Africa, charged in its report released Thursday in London that several
business owners and corporate entities engaged in widespread,
government-sanctioned corruption, leading to the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of South Sudanese during the civil war.
“Dar Petroleum, a multinational oil consortium led by the China National
Petroleum Corporation, is not just a passive beneficiary of the horrific status
quo. The company actively participated in the destruction of South Sudan,”
George Clooney, an actor and co-founder of The Sentry, said at the group’s news
conference in London.
The oil giant “supported deadly militias, polluted communities,
endangering hundreds of thousands of people, and paid off government officials
along the way,” Clooney said.
The
Sentry’s other co-founder, John Prendergast, praised the U.S. Treasury
Department for its actions to end the chain of corruption connected to U.S.
assets.
“Rather than just sanctioning one official at a time, the U.S. Treasury
Department has frozen the U.S. assets and dollar-denominated transactions of
entire networks of people and companies complicit in terrorism, nuclear proliferation,
drug trafficking and other illicit activity,” he said.
Prendergast urged the U.S. and U.K. governments to investigate Dar Petroleum’s
activities in South Sudan and, “if appropriate, impose these kinds of
sanctions” on the Chinese company and other entities and individuals named
in The Sentry report.
The report found that throughout South Sudan’s 5½-year civil war, international
investors “have been willing to form commercial partnerships” with
senior politicians and members of their families, several of which had ties to
violent activities.
It said a multinational oil consortium in South Sudan, controlled by
China’s Dar Petroleum and Malaysia’s state-owned oil firm, Petronas, provided
“material support to a pro-government militia that committed atrocities,
including the burning of entire villages, targeting civilians, and an attack on
a U.N. protection-of-civilians site.”
The report said Ara Dolarian, an American arms dealer operating from
Fresno, California, tried to sell $43 million worth of weapons in early 2018 to
General Paul Malong, identified as a “warlord” by The Sentry,
who was fired by President Salva Kiir and has since formed his own
rebel group.
The report also accused two British citizens of forming an oil company with
“a warlord,” Lieutenant General David Yau Yau, who has been
accused of “forcibly recruiting thousands of child soldiers.”
It cites a 2013 report by the Human Security Baseline Assessment for Sudan and
South Sudan that found Yau Yau’s troops “killed and raped
civilians, looted property and slaughtered those who will not join [his]
rebellion.” (Yau Yau is a Murle militia leader who led
a military rebellion against the government, leading to the creation of the
Greater Pibor Administrative. Yau Yau was appointed
administrator of the region by Kiir.)
The Sentry recommends the U.S., European Union, Australia and Canada
investigate and, if appropriate, sanction the individuals and entities named in
the report. It also advises banks and governments to act to “prevent
the purchase of luxury real estate by South Sudanese elites and their
international enablers.”
–VOA
