Top South Sudan general resigns, attacks Kiir

Lt Gen Thomas Cirillo Swaka

KAMPALA.

A senior South Sudan official has issued a stinging attack on President Salvar Kiir and the country’s governing “inner circle”, accusing them of, among other things, being behind the “violence which erupted in Juba in December, 2013”. Thousands have since died and millions displaced from Africa’s youngest country.

In a February 11 letter giving 14 reasons for his resignation, Lt Gen Thomas Cirillo Swaka, the deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), accuses president Salva Kiir of “disgracing the office of the republic” and “failing the people of South Sudan”. Gen Cirillo’s whereabouts are unknown.

Reports of Gen Cirillo’s impending arrest had been making the rounds in different media outlets after he criticised a land grab by “illegal” Dinka settlers in his own village of Gwuduge, Rejaf East, Juba early in 2016.

The Dinka, also called Jieng— are the largest single national grouping in South Sudan and Gen Cirillo accuses president Kiir and SPLA Chief of Staff Paul Malong of systematically entrenching Dinka domination of other ethnic groups in the country.
Attempts to get a comment from officials in Juba or the South Sudan embassy in Kampala were futile by press time.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has strongly condemned continued fighting across South Sudan and called on all parties to cease hostilities immediately. The latest figure by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR puts the number of refugees who have fled South Sudan at more than 1.5 million, with more than half a million in Uganda.

His reasons

• The violence which erupted in Juba in December, 2013, was planned and orchestrated by design and tribally engineered.
• The President and SPLA officers have systematically frustrated the implementation of the peace agreement and pursued the agenda of ethnic cleansing, forceful displacement of people from the their ancestral lands and ethnic domination.
• President Kiir and his Dinka leadership clique have tactically and systematically transformed the SPLA into a partisan and tribal army.
• The president, with his tribal clique has concentrated on entrenching Dinka ethnic domination.
• The president and the clique around him have systematically recruited and deployed Dinkas in all security sectors and units.
• Mathiang Anyor and Dut ko-beny tribal militias have taken over the SPLA and become an occupation force in some parts of the country.
• Continuous insecurity happening in South Sudan is caused by the SPLA militia and other ethnically organised forces and security organs.
• The SPLA militias and other security organs are looting government assets and hijacking government and private vehicles and taking those stolen properties to their states of origin to use or sell.
• Innocent civilians, especially non-Dinkas, are being arbitrarily arrested, detained and killed by the security organs all over the country.
• Total collapse of the chain of command. President Kiir and the Gen Malong mostly meet in their own residencies with close and trusted officers who are their tribesmen.
• Discrimination and crimes against humanity are committed not only on non-Dinkas alone but also visited on the Dinkas who are opposed to the policy of discrimination on ethnic basis