Yambio riot recalled differently by students, military

January 23, 2010 (YAMBIO) – Hundreds of people fled and scores were injured last Thursday in a confrontation between protesters and armed security forces in the town of Yambio in Western Equatoria. The violence on January 21, just days after the celebrations for the 5th anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), was described in conflicting accounts.

The riot was a “spill over” from peaceful demonstrations by primary students demanding their “rights” from the CPA event organizers. The students had performed as dance troupes and expected to be paid by the organizers. Amid a stone-throwing confrontation that later developed, security personnel were seen moving up and down trying to quell the rioters at different spots.

“I heard a lot of gunshots in the air, houses were being surrounded by security forces, with the spirit of maiming and beating anybody they saw in their way,” said a pupil from P.5 Nakpangau Primary School who spoke to Sudan Tribune by phone. She recalled that many people at Hai Gangara Emelia were brutally assaulted.

“You see them and you know they are desperate to do the worst,” the student said of the security forces.

South Sudan’s military spokesman, on the other hand, suggested that the demonstrators were intent on destroying property. He said that soldiers were deployed to assist police in dealing with the riot, but that the soldiers did not fire bullets directly into the crowds.

Major General Kuol Deim Kuol, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman based in Juba, also objected to an earlier Sudan Tribune report that some 80 people sustained injuries during the riot. “All this information is not accurate,” the spokesman said in response to the report. He confirmed that only two civilians sustained gunshot wounds, and that these wounds, including a gunshot wound on the nose, were inflicted by police, not the army.

About fifty of those reported injured are already discharged from the hospital, having sustained only minor wounds, and only 22 were still hospitalized in Yambio as of Saturday.

BEGINNINGS OF THE CONFRONTATION

Anite from Tambura, a pupil of Nakpangau who declined to give her second name in fear of arrest, shared her experience of the Yambio ordeal.

She said that pupils on January 19th had performed dances for high-profile visiting leaders for the 5th anniversary CPA celebration. The pupils had rehearsed and performed at the request state organizers. The student claimed that students became angry because their possessions were stolen during the CPA celebration and they were not paid by organizers. She recalled, “After our tireless performing before Sudanese leaders, late in the evening, we asked our teacher, ‘Where is our money?’ The teacher replied to us that, ‘it is late, pupils, disperse to your houses and in the morning come to receive your money.’”

The next day, January 20, “We turned up in the mood of receiving money, to our surprise, they told us, our money was given to Arab traders who were reported to have escaped the same night for Egypt.”

“On that note, again we realized even our own belongings like clothes, bicycles and watches were stolen by the same people who had come to witness the CPA, as evidence we saw another man from the same group trying to steal a hired generator,” she said.

Puzzled and in frustration, the pupils found the man with the supposedly stolen generator, rounded him up with the car in which he was smuggling the Japanese-made generator, then demanded that until their belongings were returned the man would not be set free.

As the students continued to detain the man in demand of their money, the State Governor Jemma Nunu Kumba was informed. She came in and admitted owing money to the pupils, revealing to them that, indeed they deserved 500 SDG each, however the person with that money sneaked away with it. “But be patient, your money will be given to you next day,” she reportedly said.

On the next day, the day of the violence, the governor asked the students to come in their CPA celebration uniforms in order to identify those to be paid.

“We adhered to that call by our governor, dressing in our CPA uniforms. The car seized by the students was to drive inside the governor’s palace,” recalled the student. She said that the car, in which there were some pupils, made a U-turn and headed speedily elsewhere [it is not clear why], prompting pupils to start jumping down off the car. One pupil fell down and got his leg broken. She remembered that, “It increased the anger of pupils again on top of the fact that money [payment] is being delayed, they continued to hold the driver and other CPA furniture until their money was paid.”

DEPLOYMENT OF POLICE, SPLA

“To our surprise a few policemen came in, stood by the roadside, in a few minutes again more policemen deployed and started to shoot guns in the air, chasing the pupils in the surrounding bushes, and pupils retreated, pupils pelted stones against policemen and so the policemen increased their infantry shooting in the air,” said the witness.

The standoff between the police and pupils was tense until mid day. When the stone-throwing increased, the army was asked to deploy against the rioters. Maj-Gen. Andrew Dominic Saber was in the SPLA barrack in Yambio when he was approached by the head of police, Maj-Gen Shaye Abdulatif, for assistance with holding back the rioters, according to the army spokesman.

The police commander told the army commander that there were such a large number of demonstrators that they were capable of overcoming the police. “The students aimed to destroy residential houses and the stadium,” claimed Kuol, “so police Maj-Gen. Abdulatif came and asked the SPLA Maj-Gen Andrew Dominic to help him with the force.” An SPLA force was organized and rushed to the stadium.

Both the SPLA spokesman and the pupil of Nakpangau told that the gunfire began sometime around the arrival of the SPLA troops. “The armed forces shot at us, terribly injuring the boy Bakoyego. When we saw blood clots floating, we scattered,” said the student. But Maj-Gen. Kuol said that gunfire began from unknown shooters behind the demonstrators as SPLA was arriving at the stadium.

According to the military’s version of the event, the soldiers did not initiate the gunfire but responded to hostile elements behind the crowd, and they fired bullets upwards but did not fire directly at the demonstrators. “We believed that these [shooters] were people who are unhappy with the nomination of the incumbent governor to be the SPLM candidate to contest the governorship in coming April polling — I cannot point my hand to any particular person,” said the spokesman.

On the other hand, the student witness stated that, “The army continued to shoot at us boys and girls, the shooting escalated to residential areas, with anybody being caught in the cross fire. Indeed it concentrated shooting in Yambio last Thursday. To be sincere it was terrible for us female pupils, we ran in all directions, until now I don’t know how many pupils were arrested but they were many, including females, I was also among the arrested, however all the ladies were released yesterday.”

The South Sudan army spokesman, Maj-Gen. Kuol, emphasized that the police, not SPLA soldiers, took the lead in dispersing the rioters. “What I wanted to tell people of Sudan is that the SPLA soldiers have not wounded any demonstrators nor arresting any demonstrators in Yambio — all the 18 wounded people were wounded by riot policemen and the number arrested were arrested by riot police and not the SPLA soldiers’ command unit,” he said.

Kuol, although stressing that whatever caused the riot is not the concern of the military, suggested that the students posed a public order risk, threatening to overrun the police and damage property used at the CPA celebrations.

TREATING THE WOUNDED

Yambio Hospital was overwhelmed with the wounded. Out of some 80 reported wounded, 50 of them have been discharged with only minor injuries and 22 remain at Yambio hospital, with two critically injured. One boy who shot in his back and is reported to have been flown to Kampala for better treatment. One policeman was also reportedly wounded by a gunshot.

Eyewitnesses reported that most of the victims are between the ages of 18 and 20.

“Some of the patients had gunshot wounds in the head, in the chest, abdomen, and fractures in the leg and hand. The scene was very strong and we had a shortage of everything, but when IRC came they brought materials,” said Fozia Minaida.

FINGER POINTING

Although normal life is gradually returning to Yambio, the trauma of violence is still in the hearts and minds of the victims. Reports emerging from the inner circle of the state government are that finger pointing is growing, including questioning of who supposedly ordered the army to shoot live bullets against innocent pupils and civilians.

Meanwhile, the elections are approaching. “There is nothing we can do, but this has happened at the right time — our ballots will judge soon,” said the student.

(ST)

Reporting by Richard Ruati in Yambio and Manyang Mayom in Rumbek.