A senior member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the governing party of South Sudan, has decided to terminate his membership and join the National Salvation Front, a new rebel group formed by General Thomas Cirilo Swaka.
Joseph Agolory accused the current government of failing to protect its citizens. “I, Dr. Joseph Agolory, the Acting Chairman of the SPLM-USA Secretariat hereby announce the most difficult decision in my entire life thus far. Following a period of intense soul searching, I have resolved to resign from the SPLM, the party I have served for decades; and with immediate effect, I will join the National Salvation Front (NAS) under the charismatic and visionary leadership of Gen. Thomas Cirillo Swaka,” Agolory wrote in a letter dated 5 July.
“Personally, I am an Anyuak from Akobo. In my region, citizenship is determined based on the location of someone’s home village. If the village is located on the west bank of the Akobo River, your citizenship will be South Sudanese, if it is on the east bank, you are Ethiopian. This unfair drawing of borders was imposed on my community by the British colonial rules,” he explained.
He said President Kiir through a decree created a county for Lou Nuer tribe in his ancestral land Burmath, renaming it “Nyandit County” within a new Akobo state and under Lou Nuer administration.
Akobo District, he said, based on 1956 borders was never a Nuer district. The area, according to the letter, was created by the British administration in 1911 for the Anyuak.
“In my case, my land, which gives me my South Sudanese identity, was given to Lou Nuer to please SPLM IO. This regime has gone too far to the point of trading other people’s land and denying identity just to remain in power,” he said.