Bahr el Ghazal youth back calls for president Kiir to step down

June 30, 2014 (JUBA) – Youth leaders from South Sudan’s Bahr el Ghazal region said on Monday that they support a proposal by the council of elders calling on president Salva Kiir to step down, saying peace and unity in the country is more important than individual ambitions.

“With a great pleasure and desire for peace, we the youth from greater Bahr el Ghazal affirm our support to the leadership of the country under President Salva Kiir Mayardit. President Salva Kiir is a humble and a peace loving person which this country has ever had. Unfortunately, the current situation has taken different dimension and makes us feel that his political stand in the eye of South Sudanese people is at the stake, if he does not correct it with a strong decision,” Daniel Garang Yel, an executive member of Bahr el Ghazal Student Union, told Sudan Tribune from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, on Monday.

“We therefore agree with the proposal of our elders for the president to step aside. This is an honest call and it should be misinterpreted,” he added.

Yel said the situation in the country had spiraled out of control because of misconception that it was conflict between the two tribes than being political differences.

Meanwhile, Bol Muorwel, a student in Kenya, said had lost many of his relatives when violence conflict erupted in Juba and in Upper Nile region.

“My own people were killed in Juba. Others were killed in Bor and Bentiu. Some were civilians who know nothing about the SPLM politics it’s something worse than a dream,” Muorwel said by phone.

“I have always been speechless. I can’t believe something like this would take place in my country because of leadership ambition,” he added.

Muorwel, who was in Juba last year when political differences within the leadership of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) showed warning signs, claimed the deaths in the months that followed were allegedly part of a plan to break the opposition by forcing the army to come in and impose martial law.

He said the world should hold president Kiir responsible for the violence, which he compared to some of the worst actions of dictators of the past.

The United Nations said both South Sudan government and its rebel forces committed crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and other sexual violence, during months of fighting that has left thousands of people dead and displaced nearly 1.5 million people.

(ST)