South Sudanese refugees harassed by armed gangs

By Halima Athumani

KAMPALA, Uganda

Refugees fleeing renewed tension in South Sudan have reported armed groups carrying out killing and looting and forcefully recruiting young men, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday.

Charlie Yaxley, the UNHCR spokesman in Uganda, said gangs were stopping refugees across the country as tens of thousands attempt to flee amid fresh antagonism between the government and rebel groups.

“The refugees bring disturbing reports that armed groups operating on roads to Uganda are preventing people from fleeing,” Yaxley told Anadolu Agency.

He said groups were “looting villages, murdering civilians and forcibly recruiting young men and boys into their ranks.”

UNHCR pointed out that new arrivals from Yei, a town southwest of capital Juba that lies close to the Congolese and Ugandan borders, had received letters warning them to leave the town ahead of clashes between rebels and government forces.

Refugee flows from South Sudan to Uganda have doubled in the last 10 days, Yaxley said. More than 52,000 have arrived in Uganda since violence between government troops and rebels loyal to former First Vice President Riek Machar escalated three weeks ago.

The UNHCR reported 1,000 refugee arrivals in Kenya over the same period and 7,000 in Sudan. “In total, 60,000 people have fled the country since violence broke out in Juba last month,” Yaxley said.

The figure brings the number of South Sudanese to have fled to neighboring countries to nearly 900,000 since December 2013.

Last month, fresh violence between Machar’s rebels and President Salva Kiir’s troops saw at least 300 killed in fighting that threatens to revive the two-year civil war.

More than 85 percent of the refugees arriving in Uganda are women and children under-18, the UNHCR said.

The UN is struggling to deal with the fresh influx. “Both Kenya and Uganda are reporting rising cases of severe malnutrition, particularly among very young children,” Yaxley said.

- IGAD withdrawal

With over 2.6 million of its citizens forcibly displaced, the world’s youngest nation currently ranks among the countries with the highest levels of population displacement. Half of South Sudanese rely on humanitarian aid.

Meanwhile, Kiir dismissed three opposition ministers in the transitional government Tuesday in a blow to the peace deal of August last year to bring Kiir and Machar together in a unity government that now appears to have collapsed.

In a presidential decree read on state television, Petroleum Minister Dak Duop Bichock, Water Resources Minister Mabior Garang De Mabior and Higher Education Minister Adwak Nyaba were dismissed.

All three are strong allies of Machar and have publicly criticized Kiir’s leadership.

In a further development, the government earlier threatened to pull out of Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Information Minister Michael Makuei told reporters in Juba that the eight-nation security and economic bloc was displaying signs of “neocolonialism” and a “lack of neutrality”.

The IGAD helped secure the peace deal between Kiir and Machar's factions.

“Membership of IGAD is voluntarily thing and if the IGAD member states know that, they must be very careful with their conduct and outlook [towards] other member states like South Sudan,” Makuei said.

He added: “South Sudan voluntarily applied for membership and it is free to move out anytime if it so decides.”

IGAD and the African Union have led calls for a reinforced peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, something that has been welcomed by Machar but fiercely resisted by the government.

“If IGAD can talk of military intervention in South Sudan, then what are they after?” Makuei said. “Is not neocolonialism?”

IGAD members have played different roles in South Sudan since civil war broke out in December 2013. Uganda directly supported Kiir with thousands of troops while Sudan was accused by his government of supporting Machar’s rebels. Ethiopia and Kenya have also been swayed by their own interests.

* Parach Mach contributed to this article from Juba.