A high-ranking SPLA officer from Lakes State has donated furniture for the new state assembly in his home area Yirol.

A presidential order last year divided Lakes State into three successor states, including Eastern Lakes with its capital at Yirol. No budgets have been created for the new states. This left the new Eastern Lakes Assembly without furniture.

According to Marial Amum, Head of Information in the Eastern Lake State Assembly, they have now received 21 chairs including one for the assembly speaker as gifts from their son in Juba, General Marial Chanuong Yol Mangok.

“All this time since we came to Eastern Lake we were not having chairs for the State Assembly, we used to rent chairs from the Women's Union, but thanks God on Monday we received donations of 21 chairs from one the senior military officers from the area,” he said.

Amum appreciated Major General Marial Chanong, who is the head of presidential bodyguards, Tiger Division, for his gifts to his state assembly.

“I appreciated General Marial for his offer, especially to the rest of our guys to see a such big gifts extended by General Marial to his State Assembly,” he said. 

He explained that they had requested General Marial, after he visited the state earlier this year, that he help them because they are always renting chairs for their sittings and it was too much for them given that each chair cost 5 SSP per day.

General Marial Chanuong Yol Mangok is under UN sanctions for his alleged role in perpetrating massacres at the outset of the South Sudanese civil war. 

The UN Security Council Sanctions Committee accuses him of ordering the killing unarmed Nuer civilians in Juba in December 2013. 

“In the initial operations in Juba, by numerous and credible accounts, Mangok’s Presidential Guard led the slaughter of Nuer civilians in and around Juba, many who were buried in mass graves,” the UN sanctions committee says on its website. 

Photo: SPLA Major General Marial Chanuong Yol, Juba, 21 December 2013 (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)