SSHURSA Welcomes Presidential Decree and Asks his Excellency to do More

PRESSS STATEMENT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, October 8, 2013 (SSNA) — The South Sudan Human Rights Society for Advocacy (SSHURSA) welcomes the Republican Decree issued on Monday, October 7, 2013 by the South Sudan President His Excellency Salva Kiir Mayardit, ordering release of General Gabriel Tanginye, General Thomas Mabor, General Simon Gatwec Joak, Former United Democratic Front opposition leader Advocate Peter A. Sule and others. This is a welcoming move by President Kiir and we congratulate him for listening to the voices that call for justice.

General Tanginye and his two colleagues were taken into detention since April 2011 after his forces clashed with the SPLA in Kaldak area, Upper Nile State while Sule and 9 of his colleagues still at large were arrested in November 2011 after they were accused of a rebellion in Western Equatoria State.

SSHURSA has been calling on President to release them since the detainees had stayed in illegal military detention for more than three years  without charges and neither being taken before a court of law for trial.This has been a violation of their rights to fair and speedy trial as enshrined in the Transitional Constitution of South Sudan 2011. With their release, the President has done exactly what justice requires of him by virtue of his office, because keeping a person in a detention without charges or trial, is ill treatment, inhuman and amounts to complete torture. Releasing them is a correct way forward.

SSHURSA again calls upon His Excellency the President to also consider a decree on the following:

1. Order the immediate trial of those alleged responsible for the assassination of Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awuol(Isaiah Abraham) held by National Security in Juba.

2. Order the release of all the 9 young men arrested together with Peter A. Sule who have been kept somewhere under SPLA detention outside Juba since 2011.

3. Order the National Security or Military Intelligence to produce those who disappeared in persons of Eng. John Louis Silvio(2011), Rev. Idris Nalos Kida, Rev. David Gayin(2013), Modessa Wiyual(2012) and others to hand them to police and take them for trial if any charges.

SSHURSA thanks the President once again and urges him to do more acts which preserve the supremacy of the Constitution in which people’s rights are enshrined.

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