KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) – The U.N. ambulance carried an urgent patient: a local woman in labor. South Sudan government soldiers stopped the ambulance 15 times at checkpoints in the capital, Juba. The Aug. 2 journey, which usually takes 15 minutes, lasted nearly two hours.
“The baby was dead on delivery,” says a confidential report from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the U.N. Security Council. The report, obtained by The Associated Press, offers a stark list of the ways that South Sudan’s government has obstructed the U.N. peacekeeping mission in a country devastated by civil war.
In one incident last month, two South Sudanese soldiers stopped a U.N. vehicle and threatened to kill the international staffers inside, the report says. In another, soldiers in the capital beat the driver of a U.N. truck “with an electric cord.”
The report is the first by the U.N. chief since the Security Council gave South Sudan’s government an ultimatum in mid-August: Allow the deployment of a 4,000-strong regional protection force and let the existing U.N. mission do its job unimpeded – or face a possible arms embargo.
While South Sudan’s government agreed in principle to the regional force during the council’s visit to the country early this month, its officials have spoken out against it, saying it violates the country’s sovereignty. Hostility against the international community inside South Sudan has grown.