It is the duty of the government to ensure the safety of all persons, and provide equal protection once intervenes to situation such as this of ours with neighboring Murle tribes. We cannot tolerate government’s intervention to protect the life of Murle Civilians from us while the life of our children is at risk from Murle attackers in our Lou Nuerland!
January 2, 2012 (SSNA) — While the government of the Republic of South Sudan’s SPLA army and the UN Peace Keeping Forces turns their attention on our armed youth in Pibor county Murle land, some Murle armed groups have attacked our Children on New Year Eve December 31st 2011, at the Lou Nuer’s Akobo West, Ulang Buma, WechLual, Wech Lore, and Juwa Buma, burning houses to ash and killing 5 people including 2 women, 2 elderly men, and 1 child. Another group of Murle army has attempted to attack children in central Lou Nuer Waat on Sunday January 1st 2012, but was chased away by some youth in the area. The groups were suspected to come from the SPLA Army base in Waat or nearby SPLA army barracks. More attacks are expected to occur in our area.
We warned the Jonglei State Government, the SPLA and the UN joint forces not to focus their protection on Murle civilians alone, but also to our children back in our Lou Nuer Land. Failure to do so may result in our youth advancing their search for hided Murle in the bushes to revenge the continuing killing of love ones back home. Lou Nuer Youth want to make it clear to the government of South Sudan, Jonglei State government, the SPLA and UN peacekeeping forces and the rest of the International community that our action against Murle tribe is not our choice but a defensive war that was triggered by our neighboring Murle People. You should not look at us as destructors when in fact we are the peace lovers. We called for peace to prevail between our two communities, agreed to the government disarmament, and as well appealed to the government to return our abducted children and stolen cattle from Murle since 2005. What else can we do when the government failed to protect us?
At this time, if the Government of the Republic of South Sudan has understand the seriousness of this tribal conflict and is willing to protect the life of Murle civilians from us, we expect the SPLA troops and the UN peacekeepers to provide the same protection to our children, destruction of our properties, and the looting of our cattle by Murle gangs while we are in the process to return to our land.
As civilian and a society with dignity, we have to apologize for any destruction that we may have done beyond our targets. Our mission is not to target everyone, but we aim our target at the people who are responsible for the death of our love ones, looted our belongings, and abducting our children. Yesterday evening in Pibor County, the SPLA forces have start shooting at us killing several of our youth, while we were matching toward our targets looking for our kidnapped children and stolen cattle. We are not appreciating the kind of government intervention to cease the situation by attacking us. Since we are the most victims of Murle gangs, and that the Murle armed groups who attacked our territory on 8/18/11 were dressed in SPLA army uniforms, we have the right to shoot at any person with gun whether in the Army uniform or civilian clothes. We cannot differentiate our target from the SPLA army at this time. So to protect ourselves from being hurt by our enemies, we warn the SPLA troops to avoid returning our fires, so we know they are the government troops; otherwise, we will consider any one returning our fire as our enemy and we will proceed our way.
“Justice Delay is justice denial!”