The Real Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (R-SPLM), the National Salvation Front (NAS) and the South Sudan United Front (SSUF) opposition movements in South Sudan have retained the international law firm of Amsterdam & Partners LLP following their refusal to be recognised by the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) on the 16th October 2019 as members of the South Sudan Opposition Movements alliance.
According to a statement by Amsterdam & Partners LLP, international lawyer Robert Amsterdam will explore international legal options to defend the rights of these parties and their members, while highlighting ongoing corruption and human rights abuses allegedly taking place under the present government in order to bring accountability to those responsible.
Amsterdam is known for his representation of African political figures such as Bobi Wine of Uganda, Tundu Lissu of Tanzania, former President Rupiah Banda of Zambia, and numerous others.
The R-SPLM, NAS, and the SSUF are all calling for there to be genuine truth and justice in South Sudan for the deaths of more than 400,000 South Sudanese citizens under the now 14-years-long regime of President Salva Kiir Mayardit.
“The people of South Sudan have been subjected to a series of systemic human rights violations by the current administration and its security services for years; something which the new nation may not recover from for a whole generation or more,” said Robert Amsterdam, founding partner of Amsterdam & Partners LLP. “These reprehensible acts of state aggression and violence – episodes that have not been seen since the days of Omar Hassan al-Bashir – require a robust and broad response from the international community to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.”
The united alliance of R-SPLM, NAS, and the SSUF was announced on the 30th August 2019 in The Hague, The Netherlands in response to the violation of the full implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) by the government of Salva Kiir Mayardit.
According to Mr. Amsterdam, “to date, no justice has been delivered to the many victims of this long-running conflict, which we argue was instigated by Mr. Salva Kiir himself in December 2013.”
In particular, Mr. Amsterdam says, it is “deeply concerning” that the current Kiir government is spending more than $3.7 million on lobbying in Washington DC according to numerous media reports.
“Lawmakers and stakeholders need to understand that this lobbying spending is aimed at laundering Kiir’s image and halting the formation of the Hybrid Court for South Sudan and covering up years of crimes and abuses,” Amsterdam said. “Salva Kiir is an illegitimate president; he does not enjoy the democratic consent of the people of South Sudan to lead the country. The international community must not allow it.”
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