:00:00. > :00:00.the country for the past eight years has eased. Now it's time for
:00:00. > :00:37.HARDtalk. Today, HARDtalk is on the road in
:00:38. > :00:40.Juba, South Sudan. Three years ago, this city was full of hope as people
:00:41. > :00:43.celebrated the birth of Africa's newest nation. Today, much of that
:00:44. > :00:46.hope has turned to fear because this country is in the grip of a brutal
:00:47. > :00:49.struggle between the President and his former deputy. It is a conflict
:00:50. > :00:52.which has threatened to spread terror and ethnic hate throughout
:00:53. > :01:05.South Sudan. Why have things here gone so wrong so quickly? It was a
:01:06. > :01:12.long march to freedom in South Sudan. In Juba, they commemorate
:01:13. > :01:15.every step. After a war with Khartoum that cost many thousands of
:01:16. > :01:22.lives, the Sudan People's Liberation Army became the guardian of national
:01:23. > :01:26.unity. A blend of South Sudan's many tribes. They cowboy hatted
:01:27. > :01:30.President, Salva Kiir, was drawn from the majority Dinka people and
:01:31. > :01:46.his deputy was from the Nuer, the second`biggest tribe. South Sudan
:01:47. > :01:49.was to be their shared identity. Last December, the president accused
:01:50. > :01:57.Nuer troops of mounting a military coup, backed by the recently
:01:58. > :02:01.dismissed vice president. The Nuer claimed they were the victims of an
:02:02. > :02:17.ethnic assault and as the fighting spread, civilians paid the price.
:02:18. > :02:22.The killing was ethnically targeted. Dinka killing Nuer, Nuer killing
:02:23. > :02:25.Dinka. From Juba to the towns of Bor and Bentiu, reports emerged of
:02:26. > :02:40.killing that reminds us of the Rwandan genocide. There was a
:02:41. > :02:54.failure to end the violence despite the peace agreement. Riek Machar is
:02:55. > :02:57.the leader of South Sudan's rebels. Fired from the vice presidency, he
:02:58. > :03:06.accused President Salva Kiir of being a dictator. I met him in the
:03:07. > :03:12.Ethiopian capital. Riek Machar, welcome to HARDtalk. Let's talk
:03:13. > :03:15.about your own political ambitions. You have said that Salva Kiir is, in
:03:16. > :03:22.your view, and will remain, illegitimate. Is it your intention
:03:23. > :03:29.to push for a return to your old job as vice president? What do you want?
:03:30. > :03:36.We want to negotiate and to find a solution to the conflict. It won't
:03:37. > :03:42.be military. It will have to be a political settlement. So you are
:03:43. > :03:49.prepared to work with Salva Kiir as president of South Sudan? We will
:03:50. > :03:54.negotiate on the table. That is not a negotiating point. He is the
:03:55. > :03:59.president of South Sudan. For the time being, he is. To us, he is an
:04:00. > :04:04.illegitimate president. Let's talk about your responsibilities. Are you
:04:05. > :04:20.prepared to take responsibility for perhaps the single worst atrocity
:04:21. > :04:23.during the conflict. That is, your forces going into the town of
:04:24. > :04:26.Bentiu, the northern oil town on April 15, and, according to all of
:04:27. > :04:29.the reports, independent reports, being responsible for the massacre
:04:30. > :04:36.of hundreds of civilians. I have heard of the incident. We have
:04:37. > :04:54.discussed it. We have decided to investigate it. All in all, we say
:04:55. > :04:57.that we must investigate. You must have read the UN and the Amnesty
:04:58. > :04:59.International report based on interviews with a multitude of
:05:00. > :05:03.People who catalogue how armed men went into a Catholic Church, went
:05:04. > :05:19.into a mosque, went into a hospital and killed civilians, having
:05:20. > :05:25.established their ethnic identities. This investigation of yours, you
:05:26. > :05:29.must know whether that is true. I do not know if it is true because there
:05:30. > :05:37.can be also other facts besides this. I acknowledge that something I
:05:38. > :05:52.would not accept myself has happened in Bentiu. You aren't talking about
:05:53. > :06:01.what happened in Juba. It was administered by the President in the
:06:02. > :06:06.eyes of the international community. 20,000 people, one ethnic group were
:06:07. > :06:14.killed, massacred. Buried in mass graves. Why are you not talking
:06:15. > :06:21.about that? Are you saving you will never accept a Salva Kiir as
:06:22. > :06:29.president of South Sudan? He has lost his legitimacy. He is dividing
:06:30. > :06:32.South Sudan. After five months of conflict, the youngest country in
:06:33. > :06:44.the world is fast becoming one of the most traumatised. This is the
:06:45. > :06:47.camp for displaced civilians. It is overcrowded, unsanitary and, in the
:06:48. > :06:55.words of the UN official in charge, a death trap. Almost 20,000 Nuer
:06:56. > :07:33.civilians refuse to leave because of one overwhelming factor. Fear. Borne
:07:34. > :07:38.of terrible experience. You say that your eldest daughter saw her father
:07:39. > :07:40.being shot dead. What impact has it had on her and the rest of the
:07:41. > :08:25.children? The UN is protecting and policing
:08:26. > :08:34.almost 100,000 displaced civilians in camps across South Sudan. In all,
:08:35. > :08:40.one million people have been made homeless. The toxic cocktail of
:08:41. > :08:51.ethnic suspicion, anger and accusation has seeped into the soil
:08:52. > :08:57.of this new nation. In the camp, we meet this man. Until five months
:08:58. > :09:05.ago, he was a senior official in the office of the President. Now, he
:09:06. > :09:10.sits in a tent with nothing. The killing was of Nuer tribes. Ethnic
:09:11. > :09:17.cleansing? What happened in Rwanda, yes. Your tent is three minutes'
:09:18. > :09:21.walk to your home from where we are sitting now in the camp. Why don't
:09:22. > :09:28.you go home now? If I go home, they will kill me. They will kill me. You
:09:29. > :09:33.make it sound like this country has already sunk into tribal warfare.
:09:34. > :09:40.Absolutely. That is it. Tribal warfare. When you speak like this,
:09:41. > :09:44.you sound like a man who, if you had a gun, you would go out of this camp
:09:45. > :09:54.and try to kill Dinka people. I'm not going to kill. President Salva
:09:55. > :10:02.Kiir has to come down. If not, the war won't stop. He will tell you
:10:03. > :10:09.outside, the man, the same thing. We need to elect a new president for
:10:10. > :10:15.the country to unite us. Juba, the capital of South Sudan, is
:10:16. > :10:38.relatively calm. The violence that swept through has left an indelible
:10:39. > :10:44.mark. I have driven for 30 minutes out of central Juba. This suburb was
:10:45. > :10:47.where, five months ago, government security forces moved in against
:10:48. > :10:58.rebels from the Nuer tribe and many Nuer residents were killed. We don't
:10:59. > :11:05.know how many. The survivors fled. That is why this suburb is now
:11:06. > :11:07.virtually deserted. In Juba's majority of Nuer neighbourhoods,
:11:08. > :11:17.shops, homes and streets are eerily empty. I went to the property
:11:18. > :11:23.belonging to the Nuer official who worked in the President's office.
:11:24. > :11:30.The length of the grass is a sure sign that no`one had lived here for
:11:31. > :11:32.months. It feels like a neighbourhood that has been
:11:33. > :11:45.ethnically cleansed, though it is hard to get anyone to talk. Why did
:11:46. > :11:53.they damage the houses and shops? Some were damaged by wind and
:11:54. > :11:58.sometimes, when the... (CROSSTALK). The army was here? The army was
:11:59. > :12:07.here. There were many people killed here? I am new here. If many people
:12:08. > :12:12.were killed, I am not aware. You say that you are new here. You just
:12:13. > :12:20.moved in? I was here and then I went somewhere and came back. And you are
:12:21. > :12:28.Dinka? Yes. The Nuer are not here. I can't see them. Why don't you think
:12:29. > :12:41.they are here? Are they frightened? The Nuer? I don't know. I have no
:12:42. > :12:47.answer. The worst fallout from South Sudan's descent into violence is
:12:48. > :12:52.being felt in the countryside. It has forced farmers off the land.
:12:53. > :12:56.Most of this year's wheat was left unplanted. Aid supply lines have
:12:57. > :13:09.been cut and a humanitarian catastrophe looms. The only way to
:13:10. > :13:16.keep hundreds of thousands of people alive is by dropping emergency food
:13:17. > :13:23.supplies by air. It is ten times more expensive to deliver aid by
:13:24. > :13:25.plane rather than truck. Unless international donors come up with
:13:26. > :13:33.hundreds of millions of dollars now, this emergency airlift could grind
:13:34. > :13:43.to a halt within a month. The UN warns of a famine that could be as
:13:44. > :13:48.bad as Ethiopia's three decades ago. Hilda Johnson, welcome to HARDtalk.
:13:49. > :13:51.It seems to me that you neither have the mandate, nor the forces to
:13:52. > :13:59.intervene in a meaningful way in the conflict that is unfolding. This is
:14:00. > :14:06.a peacekeeping operation, which means it is here to support peace.
:14:07. > :14:11.The mandate is redundant. It is not an intervention. It is not about
:14:12. > :14:17.intervening in a conflict which is ongoing between parties. The mandate
:14:18. > :14:21.must change to have relevance. It is under review by th Security Council.
:14:22. > :14:27.The Security Council will have to decide what to do in the current
:14:28. > :14:34.situation. The conflict has spread and it has spiralled. Yet, the
:14:35. > :14:41.Security Council can't deliver on a promise to give you more troops. It
:14:42. > :14:43.is the member states and the troop contributing countries that are
:14:44. > :14:50.within the peacekeeping missions that will have had to respond to the
:14:51. > :14:55.cry for resources. It is a desperate need on our part. We are
:14:56. > :14:58.overstretched. We need all the resources we can get, both
:14:59. > :15:04.militarily and on the police side to face the challenge we are in the
:15:05. > :15:08.middle of. Each camp you set up reflects what you have called an
:15:09. > :15:14.ethnic violence in this country that threatens to spiral out of control.
:15:15. > :15:17.Is the danger not that, by acting as you do, offering refuge,
:15:18. > :15:19.understandably doing that in the spirit of humanitarianism, you are
:15:20. > :15:20.part of the entrenching of this ethnic warfare and ethnic cleansing
:15:21. > :15:36.in South Sudan? our gates and given refuge to these
:15:37. > :15:43.people, it is very likely they would have been killed. It is very likely
:15:44. > :15:47.that the cycle of violence would have spun out of control, to a much
:15:48. > :15:50.larger extent on what we have seen so far. Every independent expert
:15:51. > :15:57.believes that a massive humanitarian hunger`based crisis is facing South
:15:58. > :16:05.Sudan. How seriously are you taking that threat?
:16:06. > :16:08.If critical actions are not taken now, money is not coming in to fund
:16:09. > :16:11.the humanitarian operations now, access is not provided to all
:16:12. > :16:14.corners of the affected population in South Sudan, we are likely to see
:16:15. > :16:26.a devastating hunger situation, towards the end of the year.
:16:27. > :16:31.You have used the word famine. And we can also face famine.
:16:32. > :16:36.The worst famine, you have said, in Africa since the 1980s is looming
:16:37. > :16:39.here. In the region, and in South Sudanese
:16:40. > :16:47.history. That is the risk we are facing. That is why we are sounding
:16:48. > :16:50.the alarm bells. If there is anything we should do it is to stand
:16:51. > :16:54.up and support the suffering people. They have suffered for far too long,
:16:55. > :16:57.through a civil war, and now they are there again. Let us now mobilise
:16:58. > :17:02.everything we can to help them, while there is still time. We are
:17:03. > :17:06.running out of time, in fact. For now, the relief planes are still
:17:07. > :17:15.flying. Mass starvation remains a grim prospect, not current reality.
:17:16. > :17:30.But in South Sudan, the margin between life and death is perilously
:17:31. > :17:33.thin, and getting thinner. For President Salva Kiir, the
:17:34. > :17:36.mismatch between the high hopes of independence three years ago and the
:17:37. > :17:40.despair of today could hardly be starker.
:17:41. > :17:46.President Salva Kiir, welcome to HARDtalk.
:17:47. > :17:53.Where is this conflict going from here? The ceasefire does not appear
:17:54. > :17:57.to be working and there seems to be a real danger this country is
:17:58. > :18:00.descending into total civil war. I don't believe it can slide into
:18:01. > :18:11.civil war, because it is not the two sides which are on the offensive. It
:18:12. > :18:15.is only one side. That is the side of Riek Machar.
:18:16. > :18:21.You characterise this as a conflict instigated by him. But the truth is,
:18:22. > :18:30.right now, this looks like a conflict between tribes, with the
:18:31. > :18:48.ethnic hatred fuelling the fighting. Well, it is him who has incited the
:18:49. > :18:54.Nuer against Dinkas. The hatred has been incited by Riek Machar and we
:18:55. > :19:06.always defuse it. The facts do not appear to bear that out. The first
:19:07. > :19:08.serious, outrageous acts of violence based on ethnicity appear to have
:19:09. > :19:17.taken place here in Juba, right after 15 December. We have reports
:19:18. > :19:20.from the UN and Amnesty International of your troops going
:19:21. > :19:22.into neighbourhoods in the city, seeking out Nuer men, taking them to
:19:23. > :19:30.secure facilities and murdering them. We received information that
:19:31. > :19:41.there was killing going on in the states around Juba. `` estates
:19:42. > :19:45.around Juba. I set up the commission and sent in troops to arrest anyone
:19:46. > :19:48.who had taken the law into their own hands.
:19:49. > :19:51.With respect, it was the security forces who were doing the killing,
:19:52. > :19:57.based on ethnicity. Your security forces.
:19:58. > :20:01.I am not defending them but the law does not know who you are. If the
:20:02. > :20:03.security forces were involved in that, they must be punished for
:20:04. > :20:10.their actions. Well, let's not say "if". All the
:20:11. > :20:12.evidence, including independent reports, said that your forces were
:20:13. > :20:17.responsible. I will not accept that until it is
:20:18. > :20:20.confirmed. Because we have the fighting, we
:20:21. > :20:34.also have a massive humanitarian crisis developing in South Sudan.
:20:35. > :20:38.I agree with you. I spoke to the director of the World
:20:39. > :20:41.Food Programme, who said it is no longer a question of whether people
:20:42. > :20:44.die of hunger in South Sudan, it is a question of how many. He is
:20:45. > :20:46.concerned that your government does not understand how serious the
:20:47. > :20:51.situation is. We understand. It is a man`made
:20:52. > :20:54.disaster. This is why it we want the war to stop, so that we can allow
:20:55. > :21:03.the humanitarian access to everybody in the country. The civil population
:21:04. > :21:11.is going to face one of the worst famines that has ever been witnessed
:21:12. > :21:14.in South Sudan. We have to stop this fighting so that we save the
:21:15. > :21:26.people's life and people do not die of hunger.
:21:27. > :21:29.Hilde Johnson suggested to me that in the next few weeks the UN must
:21:30. > :21:32.make a crucial decision whether to strengthen the mandate of the
:21:33. > :21:36.thousands of peacekeeping troops who are here. And there is discussion of
:21:37. > :21:52.a stronger mandate, giving them more ability to intervene in this
:21:53. > :21:56.conflict. Would you support that? You know, the problem with the UN
:21:57. > :21:58.missions in South Sudan is that they have no capacity even to defend
:21:59. > :22:05.themselves, let alone intervening to protect the civilians. So why are
:22:06. > :22:12.they here? South Sudan will not be taken over by foreign forces in the
:22:13. > :22:15.name of the United Nations. As for hopes, I still hope that South
:22:16. > :22:17.Sudan, if there was no conflict today, we were progressing very
:22:18. > :22:23.rapidly. With respect, Mr President, you were
:22:24. > :22:34.not. You yourself wrote a letter to all of your ministers decrying
:22:35. > :22:39.systematic corruption. You said that $4 billion had gone missing. You
:22:40. > :22:44.said to your own ministers that we cannot continue in this way. Your
:22:45. > :22:47.own office, the Office of the President, was investigated. Two of
:22:48. > :22:50.your most senior officials were accused of systematic corruption.
:22:51. > :22:55.With respect I come back to the same point. Do you really believe you are
:22:56. > :23:00.the man to get South Sudan out of this crisis? It is not me to say
:23:01. > :23:09.that I am. It is not me. When I came to this office, they elected me. I
:23:10. > :23:14.did not come in through bullets. I came in by the votes of the people
:23:15. > :23:17.of South Sudan. And you still believe you can pull
:23:18. > :23:24.this country back from the brink? I believe so. If these people do not
:23:25. > :23:37.stab me from the back, I can improve this country. I can pull it out from
:23:38. > :23:40.where it is now. South Sudan is at a tipping point.
:23:41. > :23:48.If the violence continues, ethnic divisions will deepen and thousands
:23:49. > :23:50.will succumb to starvation. Africa's youngest nation might not
:23:51. > :24:40.survive its infancy. Hello, there. For many places, it
:24:41. > :24:43.turned a bit brighter on Thursday. Sunshine broke through the clouds
:24:44. > :24:47.but that set off some showers in the south. And as we head through the
:24:48. > :24:48.night, this weather front continues to produce showers