South Sudan has criticized the revocation of US visas for all its nationals as unfair and said it was based on an incident that didn't involve one of its citizens but another African national.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the decision to revoke all visas for South Sudanese came because the country’s government failed to accept the return of its citizens being removed from the United States “in a timely manner.”
On Monday, South Sudan's Foreign Ministry said that the deportee who was denied entry on Friday was found to be a Congolese national and he was returned to the US and all supporting evidence shared with American officials.
“The government deeply regrets that despite this history of collaboration and partnership, South Sudan now faces a broad revocation of visas based on an isolated incident involving misrepresentation by an individual who is not a South Sudanese national,” it said in a statement.
Political mistrust, delayed elections and economic turmoil have pushed South Sudan to the brink of another protracted internal strife with ramifications far worse than what the suffering millions have already endured.
South Sudan’s Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth told The Associated Press on Monday that the US was “attempting to find faults with the tense situation” in the country because no sovereign nation would accept foreign deportees.
The UN in March warned that South Sudan was teetering on the edge of renewed civil war. The country’s vice president and main opposition leader Riek Machar remains under house arrest on charges of incitement after an armed group allied to him overrun an army camp and attacked a UN helicopter.
It was not immediately clear how many South Sudanese hold U.S. visas.
US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on social media the dispute centers on one person, certified by South Sudan’s Embassy in Washington, that Juba has refused to accept. That person was not named.
No new visas will be issued, the U.S. said, and “we will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation.”
