W. Equatoria governor protests illegal arrest of 36 youth
July 3, 2015 (JUBA) – The governor of South Sudan’s Western Equatoria state, Joseph Bakasoro, on Friday protested illegal arrest of 36 youth from Maridi county in the state by South Sudanese army (SPLA) commandos, saying his administration was not informed.
“We don’t know what they have done. The cause of the arrest up to now is not clear. Neither me nor the county commissioner was informed,” lamented the governor.
He challenged the South Sudanese army, saying the way the arrest was made was not “conventional.”
He said the local youth members were just picked up from their homes and arrested for unclear reasons. Bakasoro explained that the youth were randomly arrested and taken by a car to Juba on Thursday, adding he knew nothing whether they were now in detention and on whose orders they were arrested.
The top executive in the state said he had asked Members of Parliament (MPs) in the national legislative assembly representing Maridi county to go for a search of the arrested youth and to find out who exactly was behind the order.
“We have asked our members of parliament in the national legislative assembly in Juba to go and ask the whereabouts of the youth in Juba. We want to know where they are [detained] and who ordered their arrest so that if anything happens to them we can ask those who took them,” he said.
It was not clear why the governor didn’t use his authority and executive channels to find out what transpired in the state from where the youth were arrested instead of referring the matter to the MPs from the area.
The protest by the governor also came two days after his state government’s minister of information accused the South Sudanese army of using “brutal tactics” to “destroy the country”, warning that such acts by the “brutalizing force [SPLA]” will increase the ongoing insecurity in the country.
“Western Equatoria [state] government condemns this brutal tactics of solving problems as one which will just alienate the population and increase insecurity and violence at a time when we should have been preparing to celebrate our fourth anniversary [of independence] and reduce the spread of violence to other peaceful areas of South Sudan,” Western Equatoria state’s minister of information, Charles Kisanga said on Wednesday.
“Why would we like to destroy the whole country before we can achieve peace or would we really be trying to contain violence to where it already occurred so that at least the cost of building this country is minimal afterwards?,” he inquired.
The state official asked the national government and the military leadership at the general headquarters to immediately withdraw the “brutalizing force” from the areas affected by the military activities in the state.
All innocent detained youth, he said, should be freed and SPLA should only go after rebels and their camps if at all they were in Western Equatoria state, because “rebels have bases” and not picking innocent youths from their homes.
He attributed the cause of the current unrest in the state to the events that ensued in Maridi and Mundi counties as the result of the tension between the two groups. He accused pastoralists from neighbouring states in the area of allegedly having been allowing their cows to go to the fields and eat up growing plantations.
He also denied that members of the state youth group threw grenade on a cattle camp which triggered fighting last month.
South Sudanese government said rebellion was in the making in Western Equatoria state, justifying the deployment of forces in order to contain the situation in the area. Minister of defense, Kuol Manyang Juuk, last month told the national parliament that rebel groups were emerging in the state.
(ST)