Rights watchdog reports abuses in Shilluk Kingdom
NAIROBI, July 21, 2004 (IRIN) — Government-allied militias conducted “extensive
campaigns” of destruction in the Shilluk Kingdom of southern Sudan in
March and April 2004, destroying homes and in some cases whole villages,
according to the US-led Civilian Protection Monitoring Team (CPMT).
Village elders in Datang told CPMT investigators that militiamen from
Warjok garrison had begun burning the homes of suspected sympathisers of
the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and associates
in the garrison town of Datang on 28 March, said a report issued last
week. Numbering between 700 and 800, and supported by two
machine-gun-mounted Land Cruisers, they had also burned grain stocks and
medical stores.
CPMT investigators had counted 52 burnt homes in the village, it said. The
soldiers also reportedly used sticks to beat any civilians who tried to
grab their personal belongings as they fled.
On 1 April the militias returned to the village to engage in further
looting.
“Numerous” civilian witnesses had corroborated the sequence of events in
Datang, said the CPMT. They had “emphatically” identified government
militia troops under the command of army officers and militia commanders
as their attackers, saying they were mostly Nuer from Warjok military
garrison, but also included some Shilluk.
The attackers reportedly came in three groups: the main force from the
direction of Lelo; a barge transported two machine-gun mounted Land
Cruisers employed by Cdr James Othow; and three other commanders, Gabriel
Tanginya, Joseph Mobutu and Thomas Mabor, were transported from Malakal to
Datang by government military motorboats.
According to the CPMT, several witnesses pointed out that Tanginya and
Othow both held the official rank of brigadier in the Sudanese army.
Asked about the attack, the army commander in Datang, Lt Hamdun Da’ud,
recalled that militia had come to the village on 28 March, but said they
were “only passing through”. He could not comment on the force size, or
identify any army or militia personalities, the CPMT reported.
He categorically denied that motorboats or vehicles had arrived in Datang
on or around 28 March, and said that “drunken bandits” had burned the
homes, claiming that civilians sometimes wore army uniforms.
In a separate incident in the Shilluk Kingdom on 4 June, militias shot two
fishermen, the CPMT reported this week. One of the men was killed and the
other injured in the separate incidents in Nyilwa and Nyiyar, both near
Atar.
A tribal leader in Malakal told CPMT investigators that indiscriminate
shootings of civilians along the White Nile river had caused great alarm
among the Shilluk, and was preventing their displaced – who number tens of
thousands – from returning to their homes.
The Shilluk Kingdom became destabilised after 25 October 2003, when Lam
Akol, the leader of a government-allied militia, the SPLM/A-United
(SPLM/A-U), re-defected from the government side to the SPLM/A. Until
then, the area had enjoyed the enviable distinction of having stayed out
of Sudan’s civil war.
As a result of a power vacuum created by Akol’s realignment, Khartoum
brought in militiamen to the area to support the SPLM/A-U rump faction,
now led by James Othow.
Some of Akol’s Shilluk forces did not support his move back to the SPLM/A,
and were divided over whether or not to fight their former partners. For
the first time in many months, government forces reportedly became
embroiled in the conflict, while the militias razed an unknown number of
villages to the ground, looting and killing along the way.
The numbers of displaced remains unclear, but local sources say at least
100,000 were involved.
The US-backed CPMT investigates attacks against civilians or civilian
property/possessions. It became operational in September 2002, following
negotiations between the government of Sudan and the SPLM/A in March 2002,
which resulted in an Agreement to Protect Civilians from Military Attack.