Jonglei: Six abducted children reunited with families

By John Actually

February 5, 2011 (BOR) – Bor county commissioner, Maker Lual Kur has received six children abducted by Murle tribesmen from the southern army who had helped secure their release and returned them to their families.

News reached Bor that the children had been found on January 30 when it was reported that they were in neighboring Pibor county waiting for a United Nations flight to return them to Bor.

However, senior Murle figure Ismail Konyi (a former Sudan Armed Forces major general who was incorporated into the Southern government in 2006) brought the abducted children to the SPLA headquarters in Bor by truck on February 2.

Five year old Garang Joh Garang was seized by Murle on 16 July 2010 from Kolnyang payam [district] with two cousins who have not yet been found, in an attack which left his step mother and aunt dead, besides another woman with serious injuries.

Nyibol Malith Kelei (9) and her brothers, Leek (7) and Bior (2) also from Kolnyang were abducted on January 30, 2010, were shocked with happiness when they were reunited with their mother, Atong Mac Ciengkou, at Panpandiar SPLA headquarters in Bor.

Nyibol cried, but smiled and hugged, mother saying that they had thought she had been shot dead on the night they were seized.

The three siblings were kidnapped in a night time attack on Malualchat near Bor town. She said they were captured by four Murle tribesmen and taken to a Murle village where they were split up and sold to different people within the same village.

“We were fed with half roasted meat, drunk dirty water and moved on bare feet for three days before reaching home, but life was difficult for Bior who could not eat hard things like meat”, Nyibol said describing their escape while falling into her mother’s arms.

Their uncle and the family bread winner, Majok Kelei Malith who works in the ministry of agriculture as director of animal production and fisheries in Jonglei, said that their father was killed in the north-south civil war in 1990s.

Ayen Makor Garang (12), was taken from Kolnyang by Murle in November 2009. She named her abductors as Lacarnya and Mawuu, who she says sold her to a woman who tethered her in a house for a year.

However the woman who bought Ayen renamed her Thamatho, meaning free gift from God. Ayen said although she had a bad life with the woman, she had met a young man who had promised to marry her when she was old enough.

Debora Ajah Amuor, Ayen’s mother to reacted to her daughter’s new name saying “God knows me, they took her for free but God returned her to me for free” before her and her daughter broke down in tears.

Thirteen year old Anuak girl, Abipini Ujulu Oman from Barator Payam in Pochala county, said that she was captured, two years ago, while travelling from Pochala to Nyum with her aunt to Zalmany village by Lokoli.

She said that she had been sold, by the Murle who captured her, to a childless woman for 42 cows. Abipini said she escaped after secretly reporting herself to a woman called Amot also from the Anuak tribe, who has been abducted many years earlier.

According to Abipini, Amot told SPLA soldiers at Lekuangule who came and took her to Pibor where she met the other five children.

Maker Lual, the commissioner of Bor county said he appreciated the moves taken by SPLA to stop child abduction and trafficking besides cattle raiding, which are the centre of conflict between the Dinka Bor, Nuer, Anuak and Murle tribes in the region.

The Murle have a reputation for abducting children from other tribes to sell them to families who have no children.

SPLA Brig Gen Joshua Irer, who helped return the children, said his soldiers had worked with Murle elders and others in the community to secure the release of the children. He noted the efforts of some young men in the Murle community who help search for abducted children in an effort to build peace between the communities.

Irer said that he has a list of abducted children who are believed to be in Pibor county and his forces were going to continue to work to find and return them to their families.

He also urged the county’s commissioner to divert his operations to the rebellion of David Yauyau who began fighting the southern government after last year’s elections.

The major tribes of Jonglei Dinka Bor, Nuer, Anuak and Murle have been in conflict with each other since the 1980s with Murle gangsters taking the lead in child abduction and cattle raiding, which escalated after 1983 when the second north-south civil war began, resulting in a sharp increase in smalls arms in the region.

(ST)