Anuak king narrowly escapes deadly ambush in Jonglei

May 16, 2013 (BOR) – Five people were killed and six others wounded on Wednesday in an ambush on a convoy carrying the king of the Anuak tribe from South Sudan’s eastern Jonglei state to Pinyudo in Ethiopia.

While king Akwai Aganda Akwai Cham escaped the attack unharmed, his driver is reported to have been injured, according to David Okwier, who represents Jonglei’s Pocholla county in South Sudan’s national parliament.

Okwier alleged that the attack was carried out by members of David Yau Yau’s Pibor-based rebel group, which has recruited heavily from disenfranchised youth from the rebel leader’s Murle tribe.

The MP said that the Ethiopian army arrived in the area shortly after the attack but was too late to save the victims, which included a woman and four men who were tied to trees and had their eyes and teeth cut out, in a brutal act of torture before they died.

Military officials in Ethiopia have declined requests by Sudan Tribune for comment on the matter.

Those wounded are now being treated at a clinic in Pinyudo, said Okwier, who also serves as the chairperson of a parliamentary sub-committee on peace and reconciliation.

He said the convoy was making the regular journey to Pinyudo, where people in the remote area rely on buying food from across the border due to the lack of roads connecting Pocholla to the rest of Jonglei.

The attack comes just days after rebels claimed that the neighbouring Anuak, Jie and Kachipo tribes, living to the south and east of Murle territory, supported their fight for a new state for marginalised minority groups in the east of South Sudan.

Pochalla county is predominately populated by the Anuak, while the Jie and Kachipo share Pibor county with the Murle.

Okwier, said he could not see the point of the attack on the Anuak community, who not only have no cattle to raid – a regular feature and cause of tribal conflict in Jonglei – but are not interested in the new state demanded by Yau Yau’s rebel group.

“We are now [an] independent country; how comes that we [can] claim a separate state by force of arms? It is not true that the Anuak and Murle should be in independent state and we have not requested for it”, he said.

“Even if there was a need for separate state within South Sudan, it should be achieved through peaceful negotiation with the Jonglei and national government in Juba, not through war”, he added.

(ST)