At least 139 people have been killed in the latest outburst of tribal violence that is threatening the stability of southern Sudan.
Armed Nuer men attacked Dinka herders on Saturday in Tonj, one of the most remote parts of the autonomous south, stealing 5,000 cattle.
“They killed 139 people and wounded 54. Nobody knows how many attackers were killed. But it may be many as a lot of people came to fight,” Sabino Makana, the deputy governor of Warrap state, told Reuters.
Different ethnic groups in the region have long clashed in cattle raids and disputes over land. Since 2008, the tribal violence has proved especially deadly, with 2,500 people killed and 350,000 forced from their homes.
News of the violence came after aid groups warned yesterday that without urgent international diplomacy to support a fragile peace deal in Sudan, the south of the country would suffer a humanitarian disaster.
The appeal from Oxfam and other NGOs for urgent diplomacy comes as Africa’s largest country marks the fifth anniversary of the January 2005 comprehensive peace agreement (CPA), signed by Sudan’s central government and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
The deal, brokered by outside powers, ended one of Africa’s longest conflicts — a civil war between north and south that began in 1983 and has claimed an estimated 2 million lives, driven 4 million people from their homes and destabilized much of east Africa.
Aid groups fear that tensions ahead of planned elections in April and a referendum in southern Sudan next year — tensions that will almost certainly result in secession — could kill off the CPA and unleash renewed strife.
Earlier this week Ghazi Salaheddin, a senior adviser to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, raised the specter of all-out hostilities when he warned that the referendum next year would lead to a new war unless key questions about the north-south border, nationality, the sharing of oil wealth and foreign debts of US$30 billion were settled.
Most of Sudan’s oil fields straddle the north-south border, which has yet to be demarcated, while hundreds of thousands of southerners in the north, and northerners living in the south, would be left in limbo if their nationalities were left undefined.
Salaheddin also highlighted the problem of whether a separate south would respect international agreements, citing the example of a deal with Egypt over Nile waters.
In a joint briefing paper, the aid groups said: “With landmark elections and a referendum on the horizon, the peace deal is fragile and the violence likely to escalate even further unless there is urgent international engagement.”
Last year’s death toll of 2,500 was higher than that in Darfur, in the west, where the humanitarian situation is already dire.
“Many of the victims have been women and children,” Oxfam said. “In one attack, in a village in Jonglei state in August 2009, some 161 people were killed, most of them women and children.”
The CPA, which established the semi-autonomous government of southern Sudan in the regional capital, Juba, and in the 10 southern states, included an interim period of six years (2005 to 2011), during which the parties committed to meet several benchmarks and to address contentious issues left unresolved during the negotiations, such as the demarcation of the oil-rich north-south border.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS