The UN has described the apparently ethnically motivated murder of six South Sudanese humanitarian workers as an “outrage” that has further jeopardised efforts to get food, medicine and water to more than 100,000 refugees in the north-east of the country.
On Monday, Gabriel Yien Gach, a South Sudanese man who worked for Norwegian People’s Aid, was dragged from one of the NGO’s vehicles in Maban county, Upper Nile state, and shot after identifying himself as a member of the Nuer ethnic group.
The murder was followed a day later by the killing of five more South Sudanese aid workers – among them a nurse – in the same region. The victims, who have not been named, are believed to have worked for other international humanitarian organisations.
According to the UN Mission in South Sudan, the murders were carried out by a militia group called the Maban Self-Defence Force. The group is understood to be targeting civilians of Nuer origin after it clashed with Nuer soldiers defecting from the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army a week ago.
Toby Lanzer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, described the murders as the “most serious incident to affect the aid community at any time since South Sudan’s independence” just over three years ago.
He said little was known about the militia and its motivations, adding that it was not possible to say whether it was in any way aligned with either of the parties in South Sudan’s eight-month civil war.
“I don’t know the genesis of [last week’s] clash; I don’t know if it was an economic issue or a political issue or a local spat,” he said. “But following that clash, what seems to have happened is that the Maban Self-Defence Force are annoyed at the Nuer and has been looking for Nuer and meting out their understanding of justice.”
Lanzer said the continuing threat to humanitarian staff in Maban county had forced NGOs and other agencies to halt their operations while vulnerable staff were evacuated from the area.
“It’s a real outrage and we simply can’t continue to provide healthcare or food aid or water to 127,000 refugees in Maban county if the security situation is unclear to us,” he said. “Until it’s clear to us that our people and our colleagues will be safe – and we’ve got about 500 aid workers up there; it’s a huge programme – and that they’re not going to be targeted for any reason, and certainly not for their ethnicity. We’re on standby mode at the very least.”
Lanzer said he was struggling to understand what would drive people to kill those who were simply trying to help others.
“One of the people who was executed was a nurse,” he said. “I cannot imagine how anybody could do that. Somebody who has gone to provide medical care and attention to your children, and you have executed that person. It defies the imagination.”
Unfortunately, he added, the murders offered further evidence of the violence that has swept the world’s youngest country since last December when President Salva Kiir accused his vice-president, Riek Machar, of plotting a coup.
The tension sparked bloodshed between Kiir’s Dinkas and Machar’s Nuers, dividing the country along ethnic lines. Since then, tens of thousands of South Sudanese people have been killed; 1.5 million people – more than half of them children – have been displaced, and almost 5 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. With crops untended and so many people driven from their homes, warnings of a famine in some areas look increasingly likely to be fulfilled.
“What has happened is symptomatic of what has happened in South Sudan over the past eight months,” said Lanzer. “Increasing tensions between different ethnic groups and people taking justice into their own hands or meting out violence based on no other reason than ethnicity ... this is the terrible downward spiral into which South Sudan has fallen.”
Although a third ceasefire has largely held since May, peace talks between the two parties in Addis Ababa are stalling.
On Monday, Machar’s representatives failed to attend the latest round of talks, prompting the bloc of north-eastern African nations mediating the discussions to urge them “to immediately return to and fully participate in the multi-stakeholder negotiations”.
According to an official close to the talks, the rebels were “unhappy about having other parties at the table despite previously agreeing as much”.
On Tuesday, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, warned that the lack of progress in the peace negotiations made it increasingly likely that the warring parties would have to face an ultimatum from the international community.
Kerry said there was “unanimous agreement” that the conflict had to end now, adding that worldwide pressure to reach an agreement would only grow.
He told AFP: “They are prepared to issue a final ultimatum to the parties to come to the table, and in addition to that, the United Nations security council will be visiting – the entire security council – next week to make it clear there is no other alternative except to proceed with the plan of these leaders that they have put on the table.”
Lanzer said that while he hoped a lasting end to hostilities could be brokered, he was far from optimistic. “Certainly from what I see on the ground, it doesn’t appear as though we are getting closer to full peace in South Sudan – perhaps quite the opposite and it’s very, very worrying,” he said. “Famine looms on this country and if there’s one thing that South Sudan doesn’t need, it’s violence. On top of that, it doesn’t need a famine. If that were to occur – it hasn’t yet – but if it were to occur, you’d see crisis quickly converted into catastrophe.”
