A member of the United States Senate yesterday told South Sudanese diplomats in Washington that they should be “totally embarrassed” to represent their government and he implied that President Salva Kiir and his former vice president should be jailed for war crimes.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was speaking at a hearing yesterday titled “Independent South Sudan: A failure of leadership.” At the same hearing, another senator, Ben Cardin, said the country’s leaders should be investigated for perpetrating genocide.

Corker (a Republican) and Cardin (a Democrat) questioned witnesses summoned before the committee from the US Agency for International Development and the US State Department.

The two lawmakers queried the US officials about reports of atrocities committed by the warring parties in South Sudan and about reports that the South Sudanese government has harassed and restricted US-funded aid operations.

“I don’t know how representatives of South Sudan can show up at these types of meetings without being totally embarrassed by the actions of the government,” said Corker.

He was addressing a number of South Sudanese diplomats who were attending the event as observers. Hearings of the Senate, the upper house of the US legislature, are normally open to the public.

Corker told the diplomats: “You’re targeting aid workers. I would be embarrassed to be in a hearing like this. I would be embarrassed to send out the kind of press release that you sent out prior to this hearing. I don’t know what kind of government you represent.”

The South Sudanese diplomats on the occasion were not permitted to speak, but they earlier had made a press release.

Corker’s criticism of the diplomats came after Bob Leavitt, USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator, and US Special Envoy Donald Booth, both testified that South Sudanese government and opposition forces had harassed aid workers.

Booth: “There continues to be harassment of aid workers of assistance delivery.”

Corker: “By government officials and/or their proxies?”

Booth: “I think it is at a more retail level [lower level]. It is not an official policy that has been pursued, but … the negative rhetoric about the UN mission has contributed toward a sense that you can attack these people with impunity. And we have urged that the rhetoric be changed, that the UN and those providing assistance be recognized as people helping the people of South Sudan.”

The US envoy also said the South Sudanese government had adopted a practice of withholding security guarantees “to discourage assistance to areas that are on the other side.”

Cardin: ‘We will not tolerate the status quo’

In related remarks, Senator Ben Cardin cited the recent expulsion of former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Toby Lanzer as an example of government harassment of aid workers. He also criticized the draft NGO bill saying it was oppressive.

Cardin slammed the government for human rights abuses saying, "people are being brutalized,” and he referred to reports of alleged “rape camps” run by a government militia in Unity State.

“We all said after Darfur never again. And it is happening again,” he said, referring to killings in Darfur that the US Congress had labeled ‘genocide’ in a 2004 resolution.

The lawmaker threatened that the US legislature would pass a new law imposing strict measures against the South Sudanese warring parties.

“I think Congress will pass a ‘Plan B’. It’s a matter of when, if the peace process doesn’t go forward. I’m not sure what that Plan B is going to be - I do not want to undermine the peace process, but we will not tolerate the status quo. We just won’t,” said Cardin.

This remark came after Ambassador Booth suggested it was “a bit dangerous” to talk about a Plan B because it could undermine the existing peace process.

Corker: Kiir and Machar could both end up in jail

In remarks at the hearing, Senator Cardin suggested that the US government should give funding to the African Union hybrid court so that it can prosecute officials “at the highest levels.”

In a question to Booth he said, “What is the status of the establishment of the hybrid court? And do you envision that there will be need for direct US support for the hybrid court... how do you see that -- in fact, going after, at the highest levels, those who are responsible for the atrocities that have been committed?”

Cardin said that justice mechanisms in South Sudan should not be left in the hands of the warring parties but should be independent.

The lawmaker suggested Booth was being overly diplomatic about this issue. “The perpetrators of these atrocities will be held accountable… We will use any means we can,” Cardin said.

Likewise, the Republican senator predicted that the establishment of a credible war crimes court would result in the prosecution of Riek Machar and Salva Kiir.

“Would it not mean that with any standard court both the leader and the former vice president would end up in jail very soon? … it sounds to me like incredible atrocities are being created and done by both of them and their proxies,” he said.

Booth responded that was a decision that must be made by a “competent judicial authority”.

The senator later repeated the same point, saying if the peace agreement were truly implemented it would lead to judicial accountability and reforms to halt corruption and therefore "it would leave them both [Kiir and Machar] in jail and without resources."

Lyman advises ‘trade ban’ if peace deal fails

In testimony later in the day, Princeton Lyman, a former US presidential envoy, recommended that the US should take “much tougher steps on the parties if this [peace] agreement fails,” including blacklisting South Sudanese exports. 

Referring to a ‘Plan B’, Lyman advised the lawmakers to consider imposing “a trade embargo on anything except food and medicine. Let’s starve the fighting, not the people.”

Lyman, who is currently an advisor at the US Institute of Peace, said the United States could try to use its influence with China and Sudan to seize South Sudanese oil revenues and hold them in an ‘escrow account’ until peace returns.

“They have to agree to a trade ban -- and I would add one other thing that is hard because of the Chinese and the Sudan government: eventually getting the oil proceeds into an escrow account. So that you really deprive the contending parties of the resources to carry on the war.”