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By “Papa” Maury Clark
December 29, 2013 (SSNA) — My Nuer family in Malakal are children who have never held either a gun or any anger toward another child, yet you are killing them, their mothers and their friends in the streets.
Salva Kiir and Riek Machar stop killing Our Children! My Dinka family in Bor are children who have never held a either a gun or any anger toward another child, yet you are killing them, their mothers and their friends in the streets.
Salva Kiir and Riek Machar stop killing my children! I am an old, bald white man whose family is Nuer, Dinka, Pojulu, Kuku, Shilluk, Anwak. Do you hate me so deeply that you are willing to sacrifice my children and the children of the other great nations of South Sudan for your own politics and power?
Salva Kiir and Riek Machar Stop killing our children! Because my children are children of your nation, and you are sacrificing them on the altar of your own blind ambition, regardless of cost. My children deserve better than what you are doing to them. You have lost the heart and soul given to you by God, and each one of our children who die will carry a piece of you with them in their death.
These children, regardless of age, are boys and girls, men and women, mothers and fathers and grandparents who survived a war for freedom. Who lost pieces of their families for that peace and freedom? Who do not want death? Who want only peace, security, and a chance to live out a full life while working toward a better future? Who are infants, children, and adults? Who believed that both of you actually loved them and would protect them? Who believed that the cruelty of Khartoum would not ever exist in South Sudan? Who believed in protection guaranteed by the hard-won constitution?
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SALVA KIIR AND RIEK MACHAR,
STOP KILLING OUR CHILDREN!
Papa Maury Clark is a former advisor to the government of South Sudan, retired investment banker/broker, as well as a Called and Commissioned Deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Northwest Washington Synod. He served under Bishops Appointment as pastor of Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church in Maple Valley, Washington in 1990 and 1991, and also served four years on the Synod Council and he has been deeply involved with the people of South Sudan since 1996.