The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mundri Bismarck Monday Abukaya has Monday called on the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan Daniel Deng Bul to plead with President Salva Kiir to call off attacks in Mundri.
Abukaya cites ongoing fighting in several places since 11 February after Kiir’s forces launched offensive operations and allegedly burnt food and houses in the area, where international monitors have said that people are starving.
“I am now an IDP in Juba. The concern that I am getting is that from February 11th to date the messages I am getting from home are not encouraging because as I understood the government forces in Mundri Town had gone to Bari which is about ten miles south of Mundri Town and Bari is my home parish. The understanding I got from Mundri is that people in Bari, people in Kediba up to our churches in Medeewu they have had a series of experiences of fighting going around,” he said.
The bishop added, “Homes were burnt and the general civil population in those areas had gone even further in to the bushes for safety for their own lives but they ended up in the bushes without food, without clean water, without any system for shelter and medicine. Some of the food stuffs they have managed to harvest, my understanding was that they were all burnt and they are just at the mercies of those forces.”
The bishop said having heard of the plight of his followers back home he resorted to personal fasting and prayer, asking Christians in Juba to also pray for the people of Mundri. He appealed to the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church to plead with the president to call of the war in Mundri.
He asked Kiir to “call off this fighting which is going on because I do not see any reason subjecting the innocent population who had voted for our government to be subjected to this kind of suffering even at the event when they are telling us they have signed peace with the opposition in this country.”
He called on the warring parties to “put down your guns, sit down and dialogue over your issues. There is no point of subjecting the rest of the population to suffering.”
Mundri and other parts of Western Equatoria are home to opposition forces that government officials have called “robbers” and “criminals”, implying that they are not protected by the provisions of the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement between SPLA and the main opposition group SPLA-IO.
Abukaya’s remarks come after a senior military officer in Juba confirmed to Sudan Tribune on Sunday that government forces have been on the offensive in Western Equatoria. He however defended the operations, saying they were meant to dislodge the opposition forces from “illegally” established cantonment areas.
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