Southern Sudanese police stand guard outside a polling station in Juba on January 9, 2011 as residents queue to vote in the first hours of a week-long independence referendum expected to lead to the partition of Africa's largest nation and the creation of the world's 193rd UN member state.Trevor Snapp/AFP/Getty Images
It was a proud moment for the Canadian police who were training the elite of southern Sudan's fledgling police force. At a mid-December ceremony, after nearly a year of training, more than 5,000 recruits graduated from a new police academy, pledging to build peace to their land.
But 10 days after the graduation ceremony, trouble began. Dozens of new policemen were issued with scissors and ordered to enforce a conservative dress code in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan.
The police grabbed young men with dreadlocks, beating them and forcibly cutting their hair. They detained women who wore trousers, slapping them, cutting holes in their clothes, and telling them to wear dresses. They patrolled the bus station, pulling aside any arriving passengers whose clothing was deemed indecent. For two days, including Christmas Day, many young people stayed nervously at home to avoid the police assault.
The crackdown soon ended, and the government has apologized and promised an investigation. But the scandal over the police abuses has shocked many people in southern Sudan, and it shows the complexity of trying to build new civilian institutions in this war-torn region where a rebel militia was the dominant force for decades.
Critics say the Canadian government was too quick to trust a training program that was deeply flawed and over-ambitious. In a country with a shattered education system and high illiteracy, it may have been naive to think that a few months of training would produce a police force that understands the concepts of human rights.
The Canadian government, along with several other donors, made a big commitment to the police training program. Dozens of police officers from the RCMP and provincial police forces - up to 15 at a time - were deployed in southern Sudan on a rotational basis. Their job, according to a spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department, was "guiding, advising and mentoring" the southern Sudan police force. In addition, Canada spent $3.7-million on police communications and security training for the referendum on secession this month.
The new police academy, just outside Juba, began with almost nothing. The recruits had to set up tents, build their own shelters, and cook their meals on outdoor fires. Their classes were sometimes held under a mango tree, on rented plastic chairs, with students dodging the mangos that fell.
Their training included sessions on human rights and gender violence. But those lessons seemed to be quickly forgotten after graduation. One theory is that the students heard an over-zealous speech at the graduation ceremony and misinterpreted it as a call for a crackdown on anyone who looked like a possible troublemaker.
"Some of them took it the wrong way," said Staff-Sergeant Walter Boogaard, an RCMP officer who has been working on police training since his arrival in Juba last September. "They were pumped up, and they wanted to make a difference."
Most of the Christmas violence was spearheaded by members of a "riot control" unit of about 2,500 police officers who are assigned sensitive tasks such as referendum security. Although they are civilian police, they wear military-style camouflage uniforms, which tend to frighten and intimidate people.
A witness to the violence, Moses Moditia, was shocked by the scene that unfolded on Christmas Day in a market where he sells car parts. He watched three police officers - one carrying a pair of scissors and two others with batons - march into the market and grab a young man who sells tickets at an informal bus station in the market. The man had long dreadlocks, and the police told him that he should have short hair.
When he refused, the police wrestled him to the ground, put their boots on his chest, and cut off some of his hair. "He was shouting and crying," Mr. Moditia said.
He rushed over and told the police to stop beating the man, but they told him to mind his own business. "This guy is stubborn - why is he wearing dreads?" the police told him.
Lawrence Korbandy, chairman of the Southern Sudan Human Rights Commission, said the police had no mandate to cut hair or impose conservative standards of dress, yet an unidentified commander ordered them to do it. "With their actions, they discredited the police," he said.
"I think something was wrong in the police leadership," he said. "It was unlawful and a violation of the constitution, and the culprits should be apprehended and brought to book."
The motives for the attack were complex. Some police officers were apparently influenced by the strict Sharia laws of the Islamic regime in northern Sudan, even though the south is largely Christian and animist. (Women in the north have been flogged for wearing trousers.) The police also knew that the government wanted a crackdown on a youth gang in Juba known as "the Niggaz" who had adopted U.S. rapper fashions such as low-slung jeans. This was interpreted as an order to harass any young person with long hair or "indecent" clothing.
Mr. Korbandy already has witnesses who are prepared to testify about the police attacks. He complained about the assaults to the Minister of Internal Affairs, who is responsible for the police, and the minister told him that a mid-level police officer had distributed scissors to his men in advance of the assaults. "If the minister is serious, he can apprehend that officer," Mr. Korbandy said.
He was surprised that a trained police force would try to enforce a dress code in southern Sudan. "Dress codes are not part of our culture," he said. "Some of our communities go around naked. My own mother wore leaves and bare breasts."
Fred Yiga, a Ugandan police commissioner who is a senior adviser in southern Sudan's internal affairs ministry, was troubled by the police attacks. "We're still wondering who told them that this is the way to behave," he said. "We're confused - we don't know who turned them loose. They went overboard."
One key problem, he said, is the high illiteracy and lack of education among the police, even though the government has made an effort to recruit secondary-school and university graduates into the police. "They are the children of war. They saw their parents fighting and being killed. This thing is still in them."
Whatever the reason for the Christmas assaults, it raises questions about the quality of the police training that Canada and other countries supported. "It certainly seems like a disastrous international effort right from the beginning," said a security expert in Juba who spoke on condition of anonymity. "At the very least you can say the amount of training was nowhere near enough."
After the police attacks, the Canadian government "made its concerns known" to the government of southern Sudan, according to Lisa Monette, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa. "Canada recognizes that the Government of Southern Sudan has committed to investigate the matter seriously and immediately, as abuse should not and will not be tolerated," she said.
Despite the scandal, the Canadian police officers in Sudan are still optimistic about the new police force. "It's a perfect example of nation-building," said Sergeant Guy Higgott, an Ontario Provincial Police officer who helped train the southern police for nine months last year. "They're creating a police force that is representative of all 10 states in the south, and all of the tribes. If they can work together, they can solve the tribal conflicts."
Staff-Sgt. Boogaard, the RCMP adviser, is confident that the police force will improve soon. "They still have a long way to go, but the enthusiasm and motivation is there."