An open letter to the Equatorian Community: Why are you turning your region into the Greater Upper Nile?
5 min readBy Bior Raad, Juba, South Sudan
October 4, 2016 (SSB) —- It is absolutely indisputable that Equatorians are delighted in or feeling pleasure from inhumane slaying of Dinka. It is unclear whether these sporadic killings came out of the meeting as a resolution to wipe Dinka out of South Sudan or could it be deliberately done to provoke Dinka to horrifically retaliate. Our silence all this long was to maintain a good relationship in order to live in a society where we are never strangers to our fellow brothers and to each other. We may have differences and quarrels, but these are brotherly quarrels that cannot divide us and destroy our togetherness.
What do you think if Dinka take part in flashing out sons and daughters of Equatoria working in their areas? Not only that, also organise the armed youth groups to be stationed on various roads, charged with duties to kill other non-Dinka tribesmen. By the way, Dinka has the capacity to turn this country into anarchy and cleanse elements that support terrorism. It is sad to receive hourly report that the dear ones have been murdered on their way to Uganda, Kenya and even within territories of Equatoria.
Dinka are always nervous when travelling on road simply because of those people who set up barricades on trunk roads instructed by their chiefs and politicians to search for ‘MTN’ as they referred to Dinka. No one in this ruthless time can risk to sleep in the car. Everyone is alert keeping a close watch at next seated Equatorian passenger. Most of them are the ones setting up cars to fall into ambush.
Seeing this happen evokes anguish and anger in someone like me who lost relatives and friends few days ago in Kajo-Keji road ambush that claimed the life of eleven innocent civilians.
Sudan by then has been in a long devastating civil war aimed at secession but such barbaric actions have never been reported. Khartoum, our great enemy by then did not devised such inhumane killing to war captives. I have never heard Equatoria elders and leaders coming out publicly to denounce these ethnics’ targeted killings as well as urging their communities to cease this behaviour. It means that they are in support of it.
It troubles my mind to understand what we have done to Equatorians and the rest of South Sudanese who hate Dinka for no reason. There is nowhere in Equatoria or elsewhere that you will never spot bones of Dinka’ son who sacrificed his life for the sake of this country. Where were those who today say they don’t want Dinka in their areas?
Matter of fact, We the youth of Jieng are tired of this act and as per now, we urged all Equatorians and other tribes who have declared war against us to leave our areas before designated dateline elapses because we will not fold our hands, seat back and watch our relatives being slaughtered every day.
This is just to inform everyone that Dinka has a culture of war where people confront themselves in the broad daylight. Come out and declare it as a war against Dinka.
We have refused to lend our ears to this matter for long and it has been used against us as our cowardice. Enough is enough. This time, we will not tolerate nonsense. If we can take vengeance among ourselves, how hard is it to let innocent Equatorians pay for the action of their brothers. The rest of the communities who are happy with this tribal killings will also test the bitterness of their actions. Whoever is found will be consume by the wrath of angry avengers the day it will start though still remain concealed.
This is the time for eye for an eye. If the state of social disorder is what you want, we have declared it and we shall see who will desert this country to who? Most of you who have never conducted funerals of gunshot deceased, will this time conduct multiples of them. It is absolutely a fool of ourselves to treat enemies of peace with white teeth exposed and subsequently, they turn out to be the pain in ass.
Why would you scapegoat your grievances that need government attention to the innocent travellers? Your complaint of Dinka cattle destroying your farms was exceptional and government acted immediately to drive back cattle to their original places. What happened again that you are killing Dinka travellers? Are they also trespassing your farms?
Jieng youth is totally disappointed with this inhumane behaviour. To be honest, we have come up with the resolution that we have to embark on such inhumane killings. We will also target enemies of peace in and beyond our areas. We know some tribes in Equatoria who have involved in these killings and we are not going to spare them, our action will be enormous.
Innocent civilians who fled their homes to refugees’ camps because of food insecurity narrates senseless and false stories that Dinka want to kill us. A story that implicate Dinka and the UNHCR get interested in these fabricated life stories. Isn’t this selling out? If we don’t learn to be honest to ourselves, this country will not accommodate us. Change your negative attitudes towards Dinka otherwise we will not wait to be kill in the same way.
The write is the Senior Member of Jieng Youth Union in Juba and can be reached on biorraad@gmail.com
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