Mabanese militia admits being armed by Juba
The commander of a militia in Maban County of Upper Nile has admitted to a team of human rights investigators that his forces were armed by the SPLA faction headed by Salva Kiir, which is based in the country’s capital Juba.
The militia has been accused of killing six aid workers on the basis of ethnic targeting. All six workers killed were Nuer by ethnicity.
Philippe Bolopian, a former French journalist and now a human rights investigator for Human Rights Watch, says that he met with the Maban Defense Force (MDF) leader during a visit to Maban County.
He was traveling with a Human Rights Watch team during a two-week investigation mission in South Sudan and neighboring Blue Nile State of Sudan.
“The MDF leader openly told us that he received weapons from the SPLA government in Juba to protect against Nuer rebels,” stated Bolopian.
He said that they met the MDF leader at a militia camp located on the premises of an abandoned UN vocational center in Maban County. He said that they saw “new recruits training, armed men in khaki uniforms all around.”
Bolopian pointed out that the UN and humanitarian organizations are no longer using Nuer staff in Maban because it is too dangerous for them to be in the area.
Prior to the killings in August, the county had not experienced massive conflict as had other parts of the state, nor has it experienced major violence since the targeted killings in August, which came shortly after some clashes with defectors in the area.
According to Bolopian, Maban County is still tense and MDF militia are still roaming the refugee and displaced camps located there.
He pointed out, however, that the situation is ‘complicated’ as one SPLA-Juba faction commander is protecting some loyalist Nuer soldiers and civilians at a military base.
This is the first time that the MDF has openly admitted to being supplied by the SPLM/A-Juba faction, though some observers had previously suggested such a link.
David Unyo, a politician belonging to the same faction, last September described the militia as ‘legal’, arguing that the defense unit at the community level was necessary because the national army could not protect their people.
Last September Radio Tamazuj reported on the direct role of SPLA-Juba leader Salva Kiir in overseeing the provision of support to such groups.
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