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GARANG?S
HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS ARE THE WORST IN THE WORLD
The
SPLM/SPLA has been beset with organizational problems from day one of its
inception in May 1983. People within the movement have always been baffled as to
why and how it took that long from these crises to surface. Of course, the
employment by Dr John Garang de Mabior the leader of the SPLA/SPLM of rude,
cruel and ruthless methods to suppress decent saved many a day, but it was also
a foregone conclusion that those methods would one day outlive their
effectiveness. That
day came in August 1991. Doctor/Commander (Dr/Dr) Riak Machar Teny-Dhurgon,
Dr/Cdr. Lam AkolAjawiny and Cdr. Gordon Koang declared a coup against SPLA/SPLM
and Dr Garang leadership in particular. This action resulted from frustration
because Garang had been rejecting their call for convening of a meeting of the
Politico-Military High Command (PMHC). The three coup-makers had wanted such a
meeting to the workings of the Movement with the object of not only reorganizing
it, as it had become apparent to many people that the movement was being
manipulated by one man - Dr Garang - but was as well meant to readdress the
definition of the people?s struggle given the wave of events in Eastern
Europe. They had wanted the meeting to place in a neutral country but not in
Ethiopia. But Garang insisted that the meeting should take place in Ethiopia. Dr
Garang continued to insist that if the members of the PMHC were not willing to
meet in Ethiopia then an SPLA Base inside the South Sudan would be appropriate.
After wrangling for almost a year, the coup makers took their decision to quit
the Movement and formed a rival one which became known as the ?Nasir
Faction?. Nasir Faction derived it?s name from its headquarters while Dr
Garang?s faction ? Torit Faction ? derived its name from its headquarters
? Torit, the capital of Eastern Equatoria province.
Despite
the fact that ?Nasir Faction? had published the reasons that led them to
break away from SPLA, Dr Garang had not made any changes
to his one-man organization. The split of Cdr. William Nyuon Bany from
the SPLA come in September 1992. Nyuon had led the Torit faction delegation to
the Abuja peace talks, where he took the initiative to reconcile the two
factions ? the Nasir and Torit factions ? enabling them to present a united
delegation to the talks. Dr Garang was angered by this and accused Nyuon of
exceeding his mandate and terms of reference. He then circulated a message to
all SPLA units saying that, ? Nyuon had been ?bought? by the Sudan
government to assassinate him when he returns home after the peace talks in
Abuja, Nigeria.? Dr Garang then made arrangements to arrest Nyuon on his
return. His plans failed because the battalion that was to arrest Nyuon failed
to carry out the orders. But Dr Garang continued to conspire to have Nyuon
arrested. Nyuon realizing that Dr Garang?s next plan might succeed, decided to
lease Pageri quietly and peaceful and planned to return to to his home region,
Upper Nile Province. On
the 27th of September 1992, Nyuon left Pageri in a convoy of four
trucks. When Dr Garang got the information that Nyuon was leaving for Upper Nile
region he ordered an ambush to be laid along the route Nyuon was likely to pass
through. The convoy fell into the first ambush and two trucks were destroyed.
Eighty passenger, including women and children on board and passing by OLS staff
plus a Norwegian journalist were killed. Nyuon broke through the remaining two
ambushes. He lost two of his bodyguards in the last ambush.
Other
causes to the present inter-spla conflict lie deep in the history of the
creation of the Movement and manner in which spla is being administered and
managed by Dr Garang and some of his henchmen. The
SPLM was founded as a political mass Movement with the spla as its military
wing. In September 1983, about five months after its inception, the first split
occurred when the Political founding fathers of the Movement disagreed with Dr
Garang?s insistence that the Movement should be militarist in character and
should be run as a military organization and headed by a military man. Having
failed to convince Dr Garang who was backed b the Ethiopian government, two of
the three politicians in the Movement broke away and revived the anyanya-two
Movement. Dr Garang, who had become the de facto leader of the spla/splm, wasted
no much ado and declared a war on anyanya-two.
(Anyannya-two)
were able to fight back and win battles against the SPLA. Dr Garang did not
accept reconciliation with Anyannya-Two until when he realized that all the
political leaders of Anyannya-two were killed in 1987.
Dr
Garang had actually taken over the entire Movement and, to formalize this
take-over, he carried out an internal coup in May 1985 by dissolving the
National Executive Committee (NEC), a body partly run by the illusionary PMHC,
along with other organs of the movement such as the General Intelligence Service
(GIS). He resisted all attempts by the members of PMHC to convene a National
Congress whose objective was to write the constitution of the Movement, organize
it accordingly and carry out the election of the Movement?s leadership. He
brushed anyone aside and took control of the Movement and, since then, Dr Garang
as a private business enterprise or empire has run the Movement. In
the same year, he decreed the creation of a new organ of his shadow government
? the Politico-Military High Command. The functions of this PHMC were never
defined or made law in any form and nobody knew if it had any guidelines and
regulations to govern its activities. The membership was confined to the senior
military officers only. But the majority of the members were always Dinka ? Dr
Garang?s tribesmen. From its inception up to 1993 the PMHC met only once when
it discussed the crises of the breakaway faction ? the Nasir faction. There
was also an earlier attempt to meet in 1986 but it ended up in near shoot-out
and had to be abandoned. No one ever believed that Dr Garang created this body
in order that he and his colleges could run the affairs of the Movement
collectively. He rather created it as a tool that he would use to rubber-stamp
his decrees in the name of the PMHC.
The
most detested organ of Dr john Garang shadow government was his security
apparatus. It was called the combat intelligence or the CI, later he baptized it
as the general intelligence service or the GIS. It was created in 1993 to
provide intelligence reports on the enemy deployments, movements and strength
and pass the information to the fighting units in the field. Dr John Garang
converted his body into a state security organ of terror.
Before
they assumed their new duties , the entire staff of the GIS where rigorously
screened by Dr John Garang himself , those he did not trust or where for the non
Dinka tribes man were drop out .
The criterion for the recruitment into the (GIS was never base on the
suitability but on the tribal line, one had to be a Dinka men
were ever recruited . the officer corps
were hand picked by Dr. john Garang himself . the sad thing
about the entire staff of
the GIS was that they were not
given any training what so ever .
Moreover, only a handful of the were reasonably educated and the rest were
ignoramuses from the Dinka Bor cattle camps.
The
activities of the GIS according to their brief were focused on non-Dinka members
of the movement. The equatorial tribes were specifically targeted; the other
categories that were targeted were the politicians, the so called real and
potential enemies, the officers of the Sudanese army who defected to the SPLA
and the intelligence. Once
it started its operations, the GIS wrought havoc on the lives of
the rank and file of the members in the movement ,prisons a mushroom from
no where and so were the detainees and
prisoners .if a suspected was
arrested he was assumed a criminal and was treated as such , torture was the
order of the and death of
the torture becomes common place .fear entered the hearts of the people
and life became impossible . The
weapons used for torture are an assortment of crude objects consisting of wooden
clubs, crowbars, iron-chains, hammers scissors ,razor-blades,pinters,pliers
,nail pins and ropes of various sizes and so on. Their use by officers is
determined by the temperature of the officer concerned; the cruel officer will
use cruel type of weapon .and torture
method are also many and difficult to explain by words , but here are a few
examples of the simple types.one of the methods is to bound the victim hand and
foot , he would then be laid on the ground
under the blazing sun for hours and could be repeated for days if the
suspect is considered stubborn .another method is to tie the feet together and
also tie the hands behind ; the suspect is then hung onto a branch of a tree
with his legs up and head downwards and then swung around and again .if done for
a long time the victim might die.another is the one which a suspect?s hands
and legs are bound and is deep into the water for a day until the skin of victim
rots and peels off.The worst type is what is called the ?robatkhamsa ? in
Arabic meaning tie five times here
the suspect is made
to lie on his stomach ; his right
leg and left hand are then tied with the hand tied above the elbow , and his
left leg and right hand ; then all
four limbs are tied together like the Arabic numeral five which is ovalish in
the shape. To exert maximum pain the suspect could the be lifted up by holding
the tied limbs .if this is done for more then five minutes the victim would
surely die .the reason
for arrest are many but here are a few of the most
common ones .These are ?. (a)
Planning and
/ or attempting the assassination of Garang; (b)
Planning and
/or attempting to make a coup; (c)
Spying for
the enemy (d)
Criticizing
Garang or the movement (e)
Talking to
any foreigner being an inspector or journalist (this has been applied by both
sides the SPLA and the Khartoum regime). (f)
Making
unauthorized contacts with diplomats. (g)
Defection and
/or attempting to join the enemy. There
are also offences catalogued in the book entitle ?punitative laws for the
prosecution of the war of liberation.? By 1984 and 1985 the GIS intensified
their deadly activities and the whole scenario became ugly and sordid. It was
during this period that Garang wanted to show that even the intellectuals were
not above his law. Cases were fabricated against intellectuals; Benjamin Bol
Akok (former minister of agriculture and natural resource, southern Sudan
regional government 1980 - 1982) was accused falsely of stealing 11800, from the
movement. He was the representative of the movement in London. He was called to
Addis Ababa were he was arrested and tortured to death. Dr
Juac and Lokurnyang were publicly executed firing by squads in bongo; no reason,
for their executions was given. Meanwhile executions were going all over the
southern Sudan; some for crimes they never committed. Trials were carried out by
inexperience or sometimes uneducated officers in hastily appointed military
court martials or (GCMs). Almost
all court Martials passed the death sentence on their victims. They would then
send by radio their verdicts to Garang who normally confirms them by radio and
the sentences were carried out by firing squads. It
should be noted that Garangerred to as the shadow torturer and killer
Another
area where Garang and his tribesmen earn the hatred of the general population in
the liberated districts is bad administration. When a district falls to the SPLA
forces, Garang at once orders the arrest of the entire district administrative
staff and locks them up as Prisoners of War (POW). He then appoints SPLA
officers from his tribesmen to run the administration in the liberated
districts. These officers are usually young, inexperienced and untrained for
their new responsibilities. Despite the fact that in the SPLA there are officers
from all tribes who were administrators before joining the SPLA. Garang would
never had over the administration to them even if they were Dinka. Handing over
the administration to these young untrained Dinka in non-Dinka district adds
another dimension to the inevitable problem they will encounter in their work.
Problems they did indeed create out of sheers ignorance of laws, customs and
traditions of non-Dinka people (let alone knowledge of administration which of
course they lacked) did not take long before trouble faired up. These new
administrators simply applied Dinka customs and traditions in their attempt to
administer to non-Dinka people such as the Toposa, Murle, Anyuak and Latuko. Not
only were Dinka traditions and customary laws alien to these tribes but in may
cases offensive. The immediate reaction of these people was to withdraw into
their shells and adopted an attitude of non-cooperation. The new administration
misunderstood the people and got offended. So they resorted to the use of brutal
force to exact respect and acceptability. This policy, invited resistance from
the people and the resistance turned to open hostilities. These tribes are some
of the most warlike tribes in the southern Sudan and are armed. They openly
rebelled and the Dinka administrators declared war on them. Wherever the SPLA
declares war on non-Dinka tribes, only Dinka elements from the SPLA forces are
selected to go and put down the rebellion. The SPLA war with the Murle of Pibor
district was fought in January 1990. It was a fierce war, of course the SPLA
force always have an advantage over the local people in that they had always
better training and weaponry such as light and heavy machine guns which the
village warriors do not have. The SPLA force have greater advantage because they
had trucks and jeeps mounted wit machine guns and could move much more faster
and were able to root out the Murle within five months. This was the war of
villages. The SPLA would normally surround the village in the early morning and
open fire on the village destroying everything. Some of the villages were
literally wiped out. The greatest sufferers are always women and children. There
was an incident in which Dinka soldiers always like to relate to anyone. It was
said that ?one day an SPLA force was going to surround a certain Murle
village, when they got to the village, the found that the whole people had run
away and took refuge in a nearby forest. It was in the evening and the SPLA
surrounded the forest and slept. In the morning the lobbied a few mortar shells
into the forest, the women and children came out, there were no men. The SPLA
separated the old women and children from the girls; they netted about 40 of
them. The officer ordered the girls to strip naked. They did of course out of
fear. Then the officer ordered the soldiers to rape them.
After sleeping with the girls, the officer ordered the soldiers to open
fire on the girls they raped. All forty girls were killed. In
other incidents, soldiers related stories in which they smashed babies? heads
against trees. [ UP ]
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