The information minister of Western Equatoria has ridiculed Riek Machar’s SPLM-IO rebel movement for claiming to have attacked and taken over Mundri following a shooting incident on Friday.
Sources said on Friday said that SPLA forces on their way to Lakes State were attacked during the night of Thursday-Friday and reportedly two were killed and others injured. Mundri West County Executive Director John Keliopa then decided to visit the scene to investigate the shooting and to see how to take the bodies of the dead soldiers to Mundri.
Keliopa was reportedly also shot during this visit.
The shooting of the senior county official resulted in clashes between security forces and local armed civilians. Riek Machar’s spokesman James Gatdet Dak was quick to take credit for the violence, announcing that SPLM-IO forces captured Mundri town and congratulating “our freedom fighters” for a victory over government forces.
However, Western Equatoria Minister of Information Charles Kisanga laughed at this claim saying that the SPLM-IO rebels had no forces even near the area. Speaking to Radio Tamazuj today, he stressed that reports that rebels took over the area were not true. Instead, the problem started “from within.”
“There is not a big problem… there were problems but now the government and the army are controlling the situation,” he said.
Kisanga explained, “The problem was that the Executive Director was killed and that was a kind of assassination from within – there was somebody from the army or security who shot that guy. And the youth of the area, because that was the Executive Director, they became angry. All of these problems are related to the problem of the cattle and nomads in the area.”
He was referring to high tensions between Mundri citizens and pastoralists from neighboring Lake State, which had also increased tensions between the citizens and the army.
The minister explained that armed local youths called ‘arrow boys’ were one party to the conflict who “took the law into their hands.” After the killing of John Keliopa on Friday morning, the youths briefly expelled government troops and took control of Mundri on Friday. The army and police forces returned and took over the town on Saturday and they are now controlling the area.
‘These are local youths – they don’t belong to rebels’
Kisanga said, “I don’t see how rebels could have come and taken over the area. This is something internal, people are having a problem internally. Those rebels came from where then?”
Asked whether the arrow boys had any loyalty to rebel leader Riek Machar he dismissed this saying their grievances were local and related to the issue of pastoralists staying on Western Equatoria lands.
“They don’t belong to the rebels. Those are local youths that are making protection of their areas. And they even can help the government… since when have they belonged to the rebels? There is nothing like that that happneed in Western Equatoria. These are the forces that protected areas from the Lord’s Resistance Army.”
Kisanga said that the state authorities would investigate who killed the Mundri Executive Director. He insisted that the perpetrators were “not rebels.”
Meanwhile, the Western Equatoria State Council of Ministers during an emergency meeting condemned the killing of both the Mundri official and the SPLA soldiers.
Although the minister confirms that government troops are now in control of Mundri, other reports suggest that many civilians may have fled the area.