Obituary: Chaat Paul – One of the Legendary Freedom Fighters of SPLM/SPLA
3 min read
By Halle Jørn Hanssen, Former NPA’s Secretary General
CHAAT PAUL, an unknown name to more than most Norwegians and other Europeans, unknown also to most Africans, but well known to most people in South Sudan. Chaat Paul died from cancer at a Nairobi hospital yesterday.
He was one of the legendary freedom fighters of SPLM/A, and later a brilliant and absolutely trustful Security Officer for South Sudan in the South-Sudan Office of Norwegian Peoples Aid in Nairobi. He worked together with another South Sudanese Security Officer Peter Dut and Charles Aloo, a brilliant Kenyan, in charge of security in Kenya.
Chaat Paul was a confidant of John Garang the great legendary chairman of SPLM and Commander in Chief of SPLA. When we (I was the Secretary General of NPA at the time) asked John Garang to provide NPA with a good security person, he said: I cannot give you a better man than Chaat Paul”.
Chaat lived up to the expectations. He was the best we could have. Not once did he fail in his security and intelligence work. It was tight.
During the peace negotiations from 2002 to 2005 Chaat was close to Garang day and night.
If Garang had lived on, Chaat Paul would have had a top position with Garang. But Garang died on 30th July 2005 in what was said to have been a helicopter accident caused by human failure.
But many South Sudanese and others like myself are convinced that the accident was a sophisticated murder plot directed by the Chief of Security and Intellegence of the Bashir Dictatorship in Khartoum in cooperation with partners in South Sudan and Uganda.
Chaat Paul was however called by Salva Kiir in 2006 to be the director of communications in the Office of the President.
Some years passed. Suddenly we had the news that Chaat Paul was accused by some prosecutor for large scale corruption. A ridiculous court case passed. Chaat refused all and everything and stated his innocence, but was found guilty and sentenced to prison for life. He spent the first six months in a container, terribly overheated at day times terribly cold at nights, and he had little water and food. His health detoriated while people of good will tried to get him free. In a moment of grace, Dictator Kiir decided to set him free. Chaat and I met thereafter in Nairobi in 2017 and 2018 and had great encounters.
Then the widow of John Garang, Rebecca, who was now called back from refuge in Nairobi to be the fifth Vice President of the Government of South Sudan, used her liberty and power and appointed Chaat Paul as a leading staff member in her office. She kept her hand over him and provided some honnour for Chaat in his final years.
My condolences goes to his family. May the soul of a decent, honest and warm hearted man and a great freedom fighter rest in peace.
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