Sheila Ponnie
Africa-Press – South-Sudan. Lawmakers in the Transitional National Legislative Assembly proposed a countrywide disarmament to ensure the government seizes all illegal arms.
Gai Mayen Luk, a member of parliament representing Yirol East County, Lakes State, said disarming the civil population would also enhance security in the states.
“If civilians have arms, then that means the government does not have the monopoly of force anymore,” he said.
“So, the solution of all this is to ensure that we implement security arrangement and deploy the unified forces and we disarm the civilians,” Luk added.
Luk proposed on Thursday when the lawmakers debated a motion over the murder of two women in Gogrial East County and the assassination of eight traders in Tonj County, Warrap State.
There was also a motion raised about the rising child abduction, brutal killing of passengers along the highways and continued cattle raiding in Jonglei State.
Micheal Tot Ruot Wei, representing Nyirol County, Jonglei State, said, the residents of Nyirol, Urot, Duk, and Twic East, have registered several incidents of attacks since August 2023.
He asserted that on August 3, a group of Pibor armed youth attacked road travellers between Pigi County and Pulturuk Payam who were on their way to Nyirol County.
“Moreover, those armed criminals made another attack in Ulenglioma Bhm from Uror County’s Headquarter (Yuai) on August 2023 and killed four people, two women, one elderly person and one boy.”
“In addition, [they] wounded four people and thereafter they had driven away over 600 herds of cattle,” Wei told the August House.
He added that the same group of youth also carried out a coordinated attack at Duk County on August 7, 2023, killing seven people and injuring four people.
Wei said four children were abducted four, adding that in the same month, they also ambushed road travellers between Wemyol Payam and Poktap in Twic East and abducted a woman and her seven children.
Several intercommunal fights and civil wars have resulted in the widespread proliferation of small arms throughout the country, which are frequently used to settle disputes as well as to endanger the safety of communities.
Peter Lomude Francis, a South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) representing Yei River County, expressed worries about the country’s security.
He said there have been continued child abduction in Jonglei and killings in Warrap State.
Lomude appealed for a thorough debate to find sustainable solutions to the presence of arms among the civil population.
South Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2018 to end the country’s violent conflict and bring peace to its citizens, but insecurity has persisted in the country due to the huge number of illegal guns among civilians.
According to Lomude, insecurity would not have persisted if the peace agreement had been implemented by now.
“If we (South Sudanese) are to be serious with the implementation of the agreement by now we should have unified forces that are deployed all over the country, we should have an initiative that is focused on disarming all the civilians so that these small arms in the possession of the civilians that are promoting killings will be controlled.”
“All these killings happening in the country are all because of the arms in the arms of civilians, “he emphasised
John Agany, the spokesperson for the Reconstituted Transitional National Legislative Assembly, said there must be a comprehensive, national disarmament, and the establishment of a temporary court in those communities.
“I suggest that a committee must be re-constituted to go to those areas and identify those people who are noticed to be doing these practices (abductions) should be questioned and verify if the children they have in their houses belong to them or they abducted them,” he said.
“We need to question them if we don’t do this, it might become our culture,” Agany said.
Source: The City Review South Sudan
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