15th December, 2017
THE 4TH ANNIVERSARY OF JUBA MASSACRE.
The 15th December, 2013 marked the darkest chapter in the contemporary history of the people of South Sudan. Precisely, four (4) years ago, the government of President Salva Kiir Mayardit, unleashed a systematic and premeditated ethnic cleansing of the Nuer nationality in the capital Juba. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in collaboration with the Dinka tribal militias, conducted house to house targeted killings of men, women, children and elderly who hailed from the Nuer tribe. Thousands of innocent civilians were murdered in cold blood. Ethnic affiliation was there only crime.
Equally, the opposition forces (SPLM-IO) in avenging the killing of their kin and kith in Juba, embarked on similar ethnic targeting of Dinka and Shilluk civilians in Bor and Malakal respectively. These abhorred heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity became the seminal factor that ignited the current man-made infernal civil war in the nascent republic of South Sudan. The seed of tribal war was implanted since the word go, with dire consequences on the social fabric that once glued together the various nationalities in the country.
The raging civil war in South Sudan is a man-made catastrophe, resulting from politicking among the SPLM political and military elites, in their unjustified and blind quest for power and personal aggrandizement. Since the independence in July, 2011, the SPLM ruling clique adopted policies of exclusion, marginalization, social repression and economic exploitation of majority of South Sudanese. Turning the country into a one party dictatorship with absolute control of all levels of government. Its ruling elites were intolerance to peaceful democratic transformation and political criticism. Harassment of the opposition parties and their leaders, killing of journalist and government critics by the unknown gunmen, became the norm under the dictatorial and ethnocentric regime of Salva Kiir and his Jieng Council of Elders (JCE). There was no room for free political discourse and the dream of building a democratic stable and viable republic evaporated, plunging the country deep into the abyss of total destruction and hopelessness.
South Sudan is in dire economic peril due to poor and incompetent leadership under the SPLM ruling party. The unemployment figures are staggeringly high. The few available government jobs are reserved for the ruling party supporters and their sycophants. Nepotism and tribal patronage is the order of the day under Kiir’s dictatorship. The civil servants are going for several months without salaries. Their salaries are instead used by the government to finance itself and continue its war efforts against the people. Sources of deficit financing are believed to have been depleted compelling the government to cover its costs by printing more money, resulting in high inflation. Furthermore, high inflations and increased in food prices has compounded the suffering of ordinary citizens rendering them destitute and poor. In absence of peace South Sudan economy will eventually collapse, pausing serious security threat to the international peace and security.
Currently, millions of South Sudanese are internally and externally displaced by the on-going civil war. The rampant physical and food insecurity in the country have impacted negatively on the civil population forcing them to seek refuge in the United Nations Protection Camps and the neighboring countries. The impact of food insecurity is more poignant in the rural areas. The World Bank, South Sudan Economic Update, 2017 reported that ”as of February 2015, 2.5 million people, or about one fifth of the population, were in either Crisis or Emergency levels of food insecurity, more than double the number recorded in December, 2013, when the fighting broke out and that 3.9 million people are in a state of food security stress.” Yet, with these alarming statistics the government in Juba is abrasive about the suffering of the civil population and continue to pursue the path of war and destruction.
The National Democratic Movement (NDM) beliefs that South Sudan can be salvaged from eminent collapse and political disintegration if the government in Juba choose peace rather than seeking elusive military victories over the revolutionary forces in the country. As we mark the darkest day in the history of our nation, NDM would like to assure the families of victims of the current war that justice will prevail. Those who committed atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity would and must be held accountable for crimes their crimes. Reparation and compensation to victims and their families will be one of the pertinent issues your movement, the National Democratic Movement (NDM) would be advocating in any future peace talks.
Long live the struggle of our people
Long live South Sudan A luta continua
Ambassador; Emmanuel Aban For/ the Spokesman
National Democratic Movement (NDM) Email: ojwokj@hotmail.com
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