40 Days Later: The Death of Isaiah Abraham
9 min readIt is 40 days since the mysterious murder of Isaiah Abraham, the same question dangles: Who kills Isaiah Abraham? The Position Paper of Greater Bor Community (GBC) in Juba.
It was on 5th December 2012 at around 2am when the malicious gangs and dirty political goons killed Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awuol at his Gudele West home in Juba. He was letter laid to rest in his Kongor home village-Twic East County on 9th December 2012 marking 40 days since his burial. Isaiah Abraham was a prolific and sophisticated political opinion writer who his ideas shaken the Government of South Sudan. His thematic areas of writing were imbedded on governance, rule of law, human rights, security and economy.
Prior to his death, the Late Isaiah told family that he received numerous threats from unknown people alleged to be national security personnel who were not happy with his critique of the government. His last opinion article on 28th November 2012 on Sudan Tribune online website is entitled “KHARTOUM THOUGH HAS A CASE; MUST GIVE PEACE A CHANCE” In this opinionated seminal article, Late Isaiah argued that South Sudan should revisit its relations with SPLM-N and other northern rebels so that its accusations against Khartoum’s rebels that are destabilizing South Sudan make sense. In his robust argument, late Isaiah meant that for the two countries to live side by side as mutual viable states, they must delink themselves from rebels support and insurgencies caused by these rebels so that peace prevail between two countries. This article and other numerous articles late Isaiah Abraham had penned on during transition period are perhaps the reasons for his murder.
His death has been pointed out as intended political assassination by wide intellectual community of South Sudan and its government. The Council of Ministers in its Friday sitting 7th December 2012 resolved 70% murder of Isaiah Abraham to be political assassination since the scoundrels took only his mobile phone and left all his other belongings including his laptop. The President of South Sudan Salva Kiir issued administrative order to form a committee that should thoroughly investigate his death and bring culprits to book. This Ad-hoc committee was supposed to be technically supported by the American investigative institution known as Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) given its mighty technology to identify the heinous killers. The FBI technical committee members came to Juba but could not commenced the investigation as the committee said by the country’s president was not in existence.
It is now 40 days and the Ad-hoc committee has not yet been officially formed nor has any person been arrested in connection to late Isaiah Abraham’s death. This begs a question, is justice going to be done for late Isaiah Abraham? But before reaching a conclusion that justice may not be done in time as argued by Rev. Martin Junior that “Justice Delayed is Justice Denied”, one can paused and think, who kills Isaiah Abraham? The answer to this question may looks difficulty but the grain of truth is that Isaiah was assassinated by the Government of South Sudan headed by non-other than President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his bossy national security boys from his village. President Salva Kiir should be blamed because the Buck stops at him. This allegation will only be proven wrong if president Kiir will be honest and formed a committee that will investigate late Isaiah death and also make this committee public so that the thirsty, stressed and hopeless South Sudanese citizens should know that the really process of hunting for Isaiah’s killers has begun. We should not rely on rumours that Ad-hoc committee has been formed comprising of national security and police officers when even the head of this committee is not even known. Why then hide the committee if indeed it has been formed?
The other concern and outcry is the political demagoguery of Mr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin that the suspects in connection to the death of late Isaiah Abraham have been arrested. This is not only a tautology and baseless, but was meant to divert a solidified anger and discontent from family, friends, the Greater Bor Community and South Sudanese Communities from the Government of South Sudan. Impeccable sources said that when Marial was asked where the suspects have been remanded, he directed people to ask the security units and when the security units including the CID department were asked, they said again that they did not know such report and directed people to ask Barnaba Marial Benjamin where he got such information from.
Look, what are all these lies of Barnaba Marial Benjamin? What will Marial gains in extending such lies that have caused psychological bleedings to South Sudanese? Barnaba Marial has been a towering figure, aka spokesman who has spent part of his transition life telling lies on issues that touch Government of South Sudan. He has of late been associated with phrase such as “This is not true”, “This is just allegation” parroting” and so on. Thus for Marial to call a press conference and lies about one of the most sensitive issue of 21st century such as murder of Isaiah Abraham cast doubts whether Marial is cleaned in this malicious act. We challenge Marial Benjamin to clear himself from late Isaiah’s murder publicly by telling the names, age group, region of the suspects and where the suspects he claimed have been arrested in connection with Isaiah Abraham have imprisoned. If he fails to do that, then he will remain as number one suspect of Isaiah Abraham’s killers. Period!
The question of who kills Isaiah Abraham and why was he assassinated search for plausible answers; its needs methodology such as process tracing advanced by John Gerring to substantively flushes out the evidence of this murder mastery. As the killers of Isaiah Abraham can be alleged to be from the corridors of power of the President backyard, not all Dinka Bahr El-Ghazal people can be given blanket accusations as having hands in killing of Isaiah Diing Abraham Chan Awuol but a few could be accused given our strong feelings that they staged this uncivilized execution. Of course Dinka Bahr El-Ghazal has some decent civilized men and women like in Dinka Bor and other communities alike but only that a few of them who spearheaded the murder of Isaiah Abraham smeared the entire community with hyena’s faeces. This few who orchestrated such political chicanery of murder of such a South Sudanese, well refined brilliant son have spoiled the leadership of Salva Kiir Mayardit by withdrawing confidence from Greater Bor Community, family and friends of Isaiah Abraham.
In African politics, leaders are identified with their regions and clans and there should be no panic when villains are associated with country’s President and indeed this should be the case given strong critic late Isaiah had rubbed hard on Salva Kiir incompetent leadership characterized by absolute corruption, classical marginalization, weak economy that is currently in Intensive Care Unit (ICU), gun language that breeds insecurity everywhere in South Sudan, rule of man instead of rule of law , robbery and violence, act of terror and intimation, bad name in international community, lack of confidence in institutions, confusion and the dysfunction of the system. All these issues plus others were the premised under which late Isaiah fought fiercely for Salva Kiir and his cronies to either conform to reform or rather give way to other competent leaders to lead South Sudan. However, his writings scared this anti-reform leadership leading to his death.
Why had these pathetic dirty mercenaries had to kill him? They would have kidnapped him and throw him along the roadside without touching his life like once civil society activist Deng Athuai. Why really shooting him at the head? What serious crime has he done that warrant such cantankerous take away of his life? Had late Isaiah Abraham rebelled and took arms against any government? Why does government give blanket amnesty to most hard core criminals who had lynched and undertook pogroms? Which one is better, expressing your opinions on ideas or rebel to kill most vulnerable South Sudanese? These are soul searching questions, but deep analysis carries that Isaiah Abraham was intentionally killed because he hailed from Dinka Bor Community which is perceived as peace loving society cultured with social and political socialization of “wait a minute” kong Koch in Dinka Bor.
This social and political culture has been viewed and concluded as act of cowardice of Bor People, but anyone who knows the history of struggle and conquering would agree that Greater Bor Community deploy its sweats, bloods, wits and physical strength to deter its enemies and later on triumph. So the killers of Isaiah Abraham should not be happy that Dinka Bor people will slowly forget this malicious murder and move on with life normally. Things will not be same again this time around, if there are atrocious and senseless crimes Bor people have pressed and decided to let life go on, this particular incident will never be FORGOTTEN and FORGIVEN. It has to be carried across generations until the government under President Kiir and village folks bring the assassins to book.
If President kiir and his power guardians refused to bring culprits then Greater Bor Community will look into many options at its hand including either distancing itself from wolves’ government, totally withdraw itself from Kiir’s government or initiate legal suits against President Salva Kiir, IGP-Acuil Tito Madut, Director of Internal Security Bureau (ISB)-Akol Koor Kuc and Chief of Protection of Office of President Lual Wek in the International Criminal Court (ICC) now or when out of the government, for crimes against humanity committed for murder of innocent man of Isaiah Abraham’s calibre. If these options will take a little longer than intended, then Bor Community and its friends will request Western Great Powers and UN to proffer sanctions for the above four individuals; these sanctions shall include freezing their foreign banks accounts and issuance of travel ban for them and their close siblings.
The only solution and remedy to this tense situation is to genuinely bring people who kill Isaiah Abraham before the law by forming an honest committee to initiate credible investigations and above all involve the expertise of Federal Bureau Investigations (FBI). Delaying, diverting and failure to do so will not be tolerated and will attract Greater Bor Community to implementing one of the three options mentioned above.
We shall never rest but focus on idea of possible justice for Late Isaiah Abraham. As argues by political philosopher Hugo “An Idea whose time has come can never be stopped not even a mighty army”. Time has come for either government to do justice or the Greater Bor Community to do what they think best now.
Jacob Abraham for Greater Bor Community in Juba.
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