Gov’t admits purchasing spy tech, but dismisses ‘unfounded’ report implicating security services in abuses

JUBA – South Sudan’s information minister and government spokesman, Michael Makuei Lueth, has admitted that the government has purchased surveillance devices, but dismissed as “baseless and unfounded,” a recent report by the UK-based human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, that accused the government of using abusive tactics to terrorize opponents.

The report, titled “’These Walls Have Ears’ – The Chilling Effect of Surveillance in South Sudan” also highlighted roles played by telephone operators to help the country’s notorious National Security Service (NSS) in caring out the unlawful acts of surveillance against the country’s own citizens ranging from journalists to government critics.

“Unchecked and unlawful surveillance by the NSS is having a chilling effect on civil society and peaceful activism. The threat of surveillance is a weapon in itself – government critics and human rights activists told us they live in constant fear of being spied on,” said Deprose Muchena, Amnesty International’s director for East and Southern Africa last week.

Reacting to the report, Makuei debunked the accusations as “baseless and unfounded”, accusing unnamed individuals within the country of being behind the anti-government Amnesty reports, but then admitted the government had purchased surveillance machines to pursue criminals and people he said are law-breakers.

“These are baseless and unfounded reports written against the government of South Sudan so that people earn a living. Let them earn their living in other ways other than writing fictitious reports in order to tarnish the image of the government of South Sudan. I think this person must be writing inside his room in a hotel in South Sudan,” the senior government official said, according to the Juba-based Eye Radio.

“Those are people who are against the law or those who are in conflict with the law. They are the ones that must be tracked down, not any individual who is using his telephone,” he said of the people who are the government target in the surveillance scheme.