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South Sudan Urged to Free More Prisoners Over Virus Fears

By Diing Magot April 22, 2020

With the threat of the coronavirus infecting thousands of prisoners held in extremely overcrowded South Sudanese facilities, Human Rights Watch (HRW) is urging the country's prison authorities to release pretrial detainees and prisoners who have served most of their terms.

According to HRW, the country's prisons and detention sites are overcrowded, unsanitary, and have inadequate medical care: the perfect breeding ground for spreading the pandemic.

Closing the borders, imposing a travel ban, and suspending all mass gatherings are all positive moves taken by the government to control the spread of coronavirus, said HRW researcher in South Sudan, Nyagoah Tut Pur, but prisoners are still at great risk of becoming infected.

Many of them sleep in overcrowded hallways on single mattresses, increasing the risk of infection. Prison authorities should ease overcrowding by releasing non-violent prisoners, Tut said.

"Those who are in pretrial detention for non-violence and less offenses, they should consider older people, older prisoners as well as prisoners with underlining conditions and prisoners with disabilities and those who do not pose a general risk to the public," Tut told South Sudan in Focus.

She also suggested that detention facilities run by the National Security Service (NSS) be closed.

"Beyond prisons we have also focused on National Security Service detentions because the NSS do not have the constitutional mandate to detain civilians, but they still do. And now we have called on the government to ensure those unlawfully detained by NSS are released and that NSS facilities are shut down," Tut told VOA.