Nuer Community in North America Denounced Policies Targeting Nuer Ethnic Group

Press release

August 18, 2011 (SSNA) — After series of meetings and consultations among the leaders of Nuer community in North America, the leadership of NCDS reached a unanimous decision to pass resolutions that condemned government of South Sudan’s deliberate policies to marginalize the Nuer ethnic group by eliminating its leaders and killing civilians. The NCDS identified three approaches pursued by the Dinka government in Juba to subjugate and exterminate the Nuer in South Sudan.

First, the supreme leadership of the NCDS came to conclusion that the government of President Salva Kiir Mayardit has a policy to eliminate Nuer’s figures. The assassination of Lt. Gen. Gatluak Gai on July, 23^rd, 2011, after signing peace on July, 19, is one indication that the Dinka leadership in Juba wants to eliminate Nuer’s figures one by one. The policy of eliminating Nuer’s figures is something which dated back to 1980s when the SPLM/A under the leadership of late Col. John Garang assassinated Col. Samuel Gai Tut who was the leader of Anyanya II. His successor, Col. William Chuol Deng Luoth, was also assassinated by the SPLM/A. After 1991 Nasir Declaration, more than four hundred Nuer officers of the SPLA/M were murdered in cold-blood in Greater Equatoria and Bahr El Ghazal by the orders of the SPLM/A leadership. One of the architects of the policy of eliminating Nuer’s officers after Riek Machar’s coup of 1991 was the current sitting President of South Sudan.

The policies of assassinating Nuer’s figures continued up to present day. In March, the government of South Sudan agreed to make peace with forces of Maj. Gen. James Gai Yoach and told them to assemble at Mayom County. After luring them to a designated area in the name of peace, the forces of Maj. Gen. James Gai Yoach were attacked. Similar tactics were employed on April, 25^th, 2011 when the SPLA forces attacked Maj. Gen. Gabriel Tang at Kaldak village after signing peace with him.

Second, the policy of exterminating the Nuer was also manifested in the way the SPLM/A committed serious human rights abuses against the Nuer civil population since the inception of the Movement in 1983. The Nuer were the first Southern civil population that was ethnically cleansed and massacred by the SPLA forces in 1985. The first bullets of the SPLM/A Movement were fired at Eastern Nuer of Gajaak clan where over 26 villages were burned down to ashes, while the hundreds of innocent women, children and elderly peoples were murdered between 1985 and 1987. The policy of massacring Nuer population was also implemented in Fangak and Bul Nuer areas in the same period.

After the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the same policy of exterminating the Nuer was also implemented. Prior to the signing of the CPA, Dinka leaders of the SPLM/A secretly met in Yei and passed what is now known as “Thirty Nine Laws against the Nuer”. Among those laws was the plan to assassinate Nuer’s figures and exterminating civilians. In 2006, the SPLA army embarked on putting those policies into action in Nuerland under the pretext of disarming the civilians. Hundreds of villages were burned where girls and elderly women were raped. Extermination of Nuer civil population was also manifested in Kaldak village and Mayom County this year.

Third, the policy of marginalizing the Nuer and other ethnic groups of the South is something that is done in a broad day light. Despite the fact that the Vice-president is a Nuer, marginalization and mistreatment of Nuer and other Southerners continued unabated. In most occasions, Dr. Riek Machar is not consulted by the President of South Sudan, Lt. Gen. Salva Kiir because he is being used as a symbol to mask Dinka’s policies of dominating South Sudan by treating other ethnic groups as second class citizens. Most institutions of the government of South Sudan are being dominated by Dinka tribe despite the fact that Dinka are only 25% of South Sudan population. Recently, President Salva Kiir appointed his own clansmen from his home town as Chief Justice of South Sudan Supreme Court and Chairman of the Bank of South Sudan. In 2009, the same Salva Kiir decided that oil refinery of the South will be built in his home state of Warrap instead in Unity State where oil comes from in order to take jobs to his state.

After identifying the above policies aimed at targeting the Nuer in South Sudan, the supreme leadership of the NCDS passed the following resolutions:

1. The Nuer community in North America will mobilize the Nuer in the world, particularly those in South Sudan to defend their tribe from extermination.

2. The Nuer community will lobby the Western governments to educate them about the policies of Dinka government in Juba to marginalize the Nuer and other South Sudan ethnic groups by treating them as second-class citizens.

3. The Nuer community in North America wants the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to independently investigate the assassination of Lt. Gen. Gatluak Gai.

4. The Nuer community wants the UNMISS to secure the release of Maj. Gen. Gabriel Tang, Maj. Gen. Thomas Mabor Dhol and Brig. Gen. Gatwec Joak.

5. The Nuer community calls upon other tribes of the South to unite with the Nuer to reverse Dinka domination in South Sudan which has replaced old Sudan’s Arabism and Islamism.

Signed By:

NCDS Chief Mr. Brown Both Bol Guanduong

Contacts: