 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is our series called Transitional Justice, and today we're going to talk about transitional justice in South Sudan with a member of the Project Expedite Justice Organization, who just happens to be in non-PEN, that's where he's from, his name is Atatep Mies. Thank you, Atatep. Thank you, Tepp, for joining us today. Thank you for having me. So I want to talk about Sudan, you know, because I think that, you know, the way the media works is, you know, you hear about, you know, the flashbots, you hear about the raw meat stories. A few weeks later, there's some other raw meat story, and they don't report about Sudan anymore. But I want to be clear, Sudan is still happening. South Sudan is still in violence, and there's two generals battling each other and killing people who were in the crossfire. And Project Expedite Justice is still on it from its people all over the world, including you. So tell us what you know about, you know, how this is evolving in South Sudan right now. So in order to understand the current conflict, you would have to go back when to Sudan itself became independent. That was in 1956. And ever since Sudan was just engulfed in a series of civil wars, I believe there were two that ranged from 1962 to 2005. And in 2005, that's when peace talks started to take place. There was this drafting and almost the adoption of a comprehensive peace agreement called the CPA, which would be a resolution for the northern government and the rebellious south to agree on peace, essentially. And it was until 2009 that talks of South Sudan's autonomy and independence began. And in 2011, that's when South Sudan actually became independent. But not for long. It was soon enough. We had a lot of violence. Can you talk about the more recent experience with violence in Sudan? Oh, there were multiple instances of violent eruption of violence within South Sudan, even after the country gaining independence. Fun fact, it is still it still maintains the title being the youngest country in the world having gained independence in 2011. But in 2013 to 2015 to 2018, and as of recent in 2020, there were a series of violence where allegations by the international community surfaced that South Sudan, the various factions fighting within the country are committing grave and atrocity crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity or potentially genocide. It's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that this these war crimes and atrocities and violations of human rights and the like are between people who are in the same country. They're all Sudanese and the two generals that are battling it out now, they're Sudanese and the people who are wounded and killed and the victims of war crimes and in the crosshairs are being killed by their two Sudanese armies. This is, you know, hard for American people to understand because we haven't had that, not not on the same level. And and therefore, you know, you have to sort of change the culture, don't you? You have to find who is responsible for this and and show the Sudanese people, whatever institutions there are, and the world, that this is not acceptable. And one of the ways to do that is you investigate and find out who has done what. So tell me about the you know, the state of investigation, if you would, as to all the war crimes that have happened in Sudan, South Sudan, over the past few years. Who's investigating? Who is encouraging them, organizing them to investigate? What kind of, what is investigation along these lines? And where does that lead? The current situation is in South Sudan, it is not short of interested players who are conducting these investigations onto these serious human rights violations and also atrocity crimes, PEJ being included. I won't speak so much about the international players, but rather, I will just focus on what PEJ is doing within South Sudan. We are, well, we no longer hope it was a previous project. But as we were operating, we were helping local CSOs and NGOs within capacity building, mentoring and training local investigators, where they would go onto these conflict affected areas within South Sudan, nine regions were our focus at the time. What these investigators will do is that they document these atrocity crimes from witnesses and victims. They bring them back to us. And we sort of sanitize these reports for accountability purposes, whether it's in the form of publishing it as an investigative report or maybe submitting that to a judicial body, whether it's a domestic or an international court such as the ICC. Yeah, the ICC, we've been covering that a little bit and finding out that the primary method of referral of war crimes to the, for the prosecution of the ICC is done by the United Nations, even though the two are distinct organizations, the United Nations, is where the charge comes from, so to speak. But the United Nations is locked up because in the Security Council, we have two wayward members at least, and one of them is Russia, one of them is China, and they don't particularly want to go after war crimes because they are conducting war crimes themselves. It's understandable. So the problem is that the United Nations doesn't refer a whole lot of cases to the ICC. There are other arrangements, other possibilities for referring cases by the prosecutors themselves and others in the community. But it strikes me that there are so many places in the world of war crimes being investigated, but the ICC hasn't had any trials. It hasn't had any live prosecutions. The only places you can think of lately is Germany, where they prosecuted a Syrian general a year or two ago, and that was somewhat encouraging. And then France, where the Supreme Court of France has been behind a legal wall, and up till just this year, the Supreme Court of France really didn't allow for a lot of war crimes prosecution under the notion of universal jurisdiction, but they changed it and we'll see what happens. I think France has a way to go to get to where Germany is. And of course, you can go into the country itself. You can go into South Sudan to the extent that there are institutional institutions that can actually prosecute and conduct trials, but there's not a whole lot of options. So I pose to you this possibility of lots of investigation or lots of reports, but no prosecution. What are your thoughts about that? So it really depends on, so international experts have posited the notion of the possibility that the case of South Sudan may appear within the ICC's jurisdiction for two reasons. First, by way of Article 12, Item 3 of the Rome Statute, which the ICC may incur its jurisdiction onto South Sudanese perpetrators, which may possess a dual citizenship, especially with a country that is a state party to the Rome Statute. As of current South Sudan... Talking about universal jurisdiction in Europe, right? It could... No, it's more about the principle of complementarity under the Rome Statute. So the ICC can prosecute those who have possessed dual citizenship if the other citizenship is of a country that is a party to the Rome Statute. So this is similar to the... It's an analogy. It's not a direct example, but really I think to bring the closest example that I can think of is the case of Myanmar and the Rohingya Muslims, where even though the ICC does not have jurisdiction to look into the situation of Myanmar, they have conducted investigations onto the Muslim victims that have crossed the Myanmar border into Bangladesh, being a party to the Rome Statute. So a similar situation may happen, but it is very slow. Second is an even slower solution. I'm not sure whether it's even a possibility, but it is to await the election of a new leader that would possibly ratify and consent to the ICC's jurisdiction, and possibly could also agree for the ICC to look retroactively into crimes that took place even before 2013. So those are the two possibilities, but there are a lot of geopolitical issues with the ICC and also African leaders, especially with the recent backlash of them thinking that the ICC is very biased towards African nations. Now, the problem is that the world is watching. There's enough media out there to make the world aware, I think, but the world also is likely to react. Well, that's nice, but gee whiz, how about some prosecutions? In the case of Ukraine, you see it on television. You see the witnesses like in 60 minutes, a couple of days ago, you see I see the witnesses essentially telling their stories about the atrocities against them, but it's only media, and it doesn't result in prosecutions or convictions or sentences. And the average person says, well, this system isn't working very well, because it's only a story. It's not a result. And so my feeling about more crimes is we have to develop a better system. But let's talk about the investigation and the capacity building. I guess the first thing we need to do, and this goes back to Berkeley, doesn't it? The Berkeley agreement, the Berkeley agreement where you have standards for investigation. And so what are the standards in general? And who is investigating? And what do you do to investigate? So we sort of structured our investigating process after the Berkeley protocol too. One of the main principle that we want to abide by is taking a human rights-centered approach to the investigations, and that is to prevent risk of re-traumatization. I forgot to acknowledge too that PHH role with its investigations onto the situation of South Sudan, we do place an emphasis on gender-based violence, which the risk of re-traumatization is much, much higher. You mean like against women? Against women, yes. And young girls too, because when you hear these stories, it just angers you. Women who are placed in refugee camps are sometimes they would need to go out to nearby forests to fetch some water or firewood to bring back to the camps. And along their journey, you would constantly hear reports of them encountering the different military factions, whether it's from the government or other rebels, and they are then raped. If lucky, they survive. If not, they're a shock on the spot. So it angers you. And it's not only women. There's no discrimination as the age of victimization really, because you hear also stories, young girls as young as 10 years old who are also sexually assaulted, raped, and usually they pass away from the incident too, because of succumbing to their injuries. But why do people, never mind, I mean it is a question, why do people do such things? Why are they so mean, so pathological that they have to kill women that way? That was the main question amongst external viewers too. When they look into the situation of South Sudan, they just can't wrap their heads around as to why these incidents are happening. And throughout my work, it appears to be on an ethnic basis where even though South Sudan is very ethnically diverse, they're also very loyal to their ethnic groups. So anyone who is outside of their group, they would not treat them so fairly. So PEJ is investigating. PEJ is, you're in Penang Pen. And we have other PEJ people we've talked to who are outside the country, like for example in Kampala. And how can you investigate at long distance that way? How can you encourage the investigation or organize or train investigators remotely that way? I would want to be privy with the namings of our partners too, but we do have, we help these local investigators, we sort of get connected to them and we sort of post calls on a bi-weekly or sometimes a monthly basis just to check up on them. They document these atrocities, they put it in a Google Doc form or a Word document. They send it to us. We sort of help review and help provide comments essentially because some of the reports do not have all the elements that is needed to establish a crime. And sometimes they often confuse with what is a domestic crime and what is an international crime, which can render some of these evidence inadmissible before an international forum. And so we sort of help guide them to drafting these reports to be admissible and as clean as possible before being submitted for an international judicial body. That's very interesting. So they use computers and they type it out on Google Docs or whatever program it is and then they email it to people like you and the woman I mentioned, her name is Cynthia Ibali in Kampala. And you look at it and say, this may or may not be useful. So why don't you go back? Am I right? Why don't you go back to this witness that you spoke with and ask some more questions and flesh out this report so it can be more useful for more jurisdictions? Am I right? Yep. And I can't help but say this enough. Their work is incredibly admirable because they are putting themselves and their lives and their families' lives on the line by going into these conflict-affected areas to document these atrocities because the government can always find ways to trace back who are helping these prospective victims. And that could present a lot of dangers to these local investigators. And there were also an instance, I think, I believe back in late 2019 or early 2020 where civil society organizations were have their offices raided in linkage to a demonstration that took place in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. So there's a lot of danger in the face of these investigators. Yet still, they want to help their countrymen. They want to help find accountability for the victims and hold perpetrators to account. These documents should get in English or some other language. They are in English, yes. But there is a process, I believe, a process of translations too because not all victims or witnesses speaks English. They speak in their native tongue, the majority being Dinka or Noor. Those are the ethnic dialects or languages within South Sudan. And most likely, they are translated into English and then sent to us. And then we provide guidance and we send it back to them. You know, Tep, one picture is worth a thousand words and that's really true and shown to be true in our time. So, Querie, do these reports that the investigators make and send to you and others, do they include graphics, pictures, maps, footage of any kind or is it just written down? It is only a written statement, but the details are incredibly disturbing. I believe in one of the reports that I remember back when I just freshly graduated from uni, I did not have. So I've heard of criminal cases before and it can be incredibly graphic, right? But I've seen it on TV and I never really saw it for myself until I started working for PEJ. I read, I started reading these reports and when you read, you started making, you started to visualize it in your head, right, as to the events that took place within this particular story. And there was this one victim who encountered five armed men from the military. He was accused of helping some of the rebels and they sort of took him to a nearby bush. They raped him with their guns. Essentially, they stick the muzzle of their guns onto the person's anus and then they shot him from the inside out. It was incredibly, incredibly. Oh, that is disturbing even to think about it. So the investigators were at some risk. What's interesting is that you have two warring factions, both of them are conducting, am I right? Both of them are conducting war crimes and atrocities, both sides. And so it doesn't matter which side your report writes up. It doesn't matter which side you're investigating. Both sides are going to be looking to dismantle your operation and find you and punish you because you're investigating essentially the truth about war crimes. So that makes it very dangerous for anybody who is out there in the field talking to witnesses, am I right? Exactly. It started with two, mainly the Sudan's Liberation, Sudan's People Liberation Movement or Army, the SPLA or M. Usually the names are very convoluted when it's being reported by different players wishing to investigate. And the other is the Sudan's People Liberation Movement or Army in Opposition, the SPLA IO. The conflict started between the infighting of these two groups where the president accused the president being Salva Kier at the time. In 2013, he accused his vice president, Rick Mishar, of conducting a coup d'etat, but it was a failed coup attempt. And then when the party lines sort of split, the soldiers who remained loyal on an ethnic basis sort of separated from the main Sudanese government, which gave rise to the term in opposition of the SPLA IO. And then the fighting between these two groups sort of spread across South Sudan, creating more and more defections, more splinter groups, more rebels, so on and so forth. And every group sort of fight upon or fight for this idea of patriotism. They're fighting for their countrymen, but at the same time, they're always looting, they're always destroying, they're always killing their own people under the accusation of, oh, you're supporting Party A or Party B, why aren't you supporting me? Right? So that is the situation of South Sudan in a nutshell. Yeah, that's madness. So the other thing that comes to mind is that if I'm a witness, and if the investigator has talked to me or wants to talk to me, and I'm a witness and I'm either writing it down or talking to the investigator to report what I have seen, what I know, I'm also at great risk, because I'm also I'm also a target for both sides, because in reporting the truth, I make myself the enemy of essentially of both sides. And so gee whiz, I would want to stay secret. I would want to stay out of harm's way, just as the investigator wants to stay out of harm's way. So here we have the report, the report is written, and maybe it's, you know, there's supplements to it, as you said. And ultimately, it's going to be submitted to a court or an international organization that conceivably could make a prosecution out of it. But when that happens, the names of the individuals come out. So isn't it possible that those who conducted the war crimes at whatever level at the, at the, you know, trooper in the field level or the general level, they're going to find out the names of the people involved and, and go after them, isn't that ever happening? So as part of the do no harm principle, we also try to maintain the safety and security of those and the investigators' interviews. And essentially, there is a process of redaction where their names, personal and other personal information are redacted, but they are withheld by the investigating organization. We're not the ones conducting the investigation, rather we help the investigating organization. We help guide them as to make good and sanitize, investigate reports to be admissible before a court. Speaking of a court, I forgot to mention that there was this prospect of the establishment of a hybrid court within South Sudan. A lot of people have been longing for it. It is also part of the peace agreement when all of this conflict sort of broke out. But there is this constant lack of political will and also, you know, it's just perpetrators knowing that they will be prosecuted someday, that they do not want to have this be successfully executed because they're going to be facing jail time. Is there a death penalty in the law? I cannot recall. I do not think so within South Sudan's constitution. So the other thing you mentioned is trying to achieve the trust of the people involved to socialize it, not only among the investigators, but among the witnesses. How do you do that when there is such a risk for them to tell you what happened? How do you make them trust your investigator and trust, you know, all the organizations involved? That is also incredibly difficult because there was an assessment done by the South Sudanese Law Society and they surveyed what people think, what is the definition of transitional justice or justice in general within the context of South Sudan. Some people wanted the war to end, others wanted accountability. But these groups do not, there seems to be no consensus. They're so extreme on both points where the people who are not affected by the conflict just wants the conflict to end and the victims just wants accountability. So it is incredibly difficult and incredibly stagnated, but we can only hope that in due time progress is made and justice is served. Well, you know what, of course, I think it's valuable for people who are conducting war crimes to know that they are being investigated and that one day they may wind up in jail and lose their liberty, their freedom, and be punished. And maybe that is a factor in what they do and for how long they do it. But it strikes me that the threat of accountability may not be the solution to a civil war. It may not be the solution to people who are out there killing and raping and doing atrocities every day. So the question I put to you is what role does that, that is the investigation and ultimately, hopefully, the prosecution of these atrocities, what role does that play in the larger, what do you want to call it, historical process, the process by which hopefully someday this will stop? What will it take to stop it? I can't say for certain because you have in the transitional process, you're going to have different groups with different competing interests. And that was also one of the questions for, I believe, I forgot what the specific name was called. It's a human rights, it's a UN Human Rights Commission that talked briefly about this. And they also pointed out the issue of who to prioritize first, the two aforementioned groups, the people who wants accountability, the others who wants just for the conflict to end. But I believe the first step for South Sudan to take is to stop the fighting. And it has been doing that to be fair to South Sudan, but there's still small scale fighting that is happening. It has decreased admittedly ever since 2020, I believe, but still the small scale violence also produces more numbers of victims. One is more than enough. I can't answer that question directly today. No, I understand. Maybe it's unanswerable. What do you do to stop the madness? Because rationality is not necessarily a solution here. And I've suggested to other people who have appeared on our shows that maybe it's just a fatigue theory, where as society, including the war criminals, just get tired of doing it. And they find out there's really no benefit in it, and they just get tired and stop. After a time, some people anyway would not be interested in doing that. That's the only thing I can think of as a factor that would determine the end of the process of the criminal war process. So I want to know about your view of this and how you feel about it. You've alluded to that. And I'd like to ask you, you know, you're Cambodian. Cambodia has had its own problems. We've discussed that. But how do you feel about what's going on? I mean, it's also happening in Ukraine. And I suppose we could look at other places in the world where there are atrocities taking place on a regular basis. It must be a hard life for you to hear these stories, examine the testimonies of the witnesses and so forth. It must get on your nerves, doesn't it? It does. Again, it feels incredibly sad that one person is so small and you cannot help in a conflict as big as a civil war. But all that we can do right now as investigators is to document as much as we can so that when the judicial process or proceedings starts, it goes smoothly. And there are no delays. And as you said at the start of the show, if justice is delayed, justice is denied. Right? Yeah. We are doing the best that we can when it comes to the investigations. I wonder about your commitment to deal with this. Your commitment to invest your time and your education, your interest in dealing with these atrocities. What does it look like from here for you? I think diplomacy would be a big, big contributor to stopping the conflict. Because if one knows how to properly conduct a characteristic approach to the parties involved, then most likely the conflict will end much more sooner. Because as you said, there's no point as to fighting. And sometimes waiting for the fighting to fatigue, it's very time consuming. There's no right or wrong approach, but I believe that if people can talk it out properly, people can sort of see on a bigger picture as to what is happening, how many people have died and how much resources they are wasting as opposed to just developing the country. Maybe it'll bring them back to the road of development and prosperity for the country. Well, I hope you do that. I hope you commit your whole life to it. I think it's a very valuable way to spend your time and I admire you for your commitment. Inatep Mies, joining us from Nampen, Cambodia, a part of Project Expedite Justice. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Jay. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.