In a statement to mark South Sudan’s 11th independence anniversary, the People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA) also said President Kiir staged a coup against his government in July 2013 with the sole purpose of establishing a dictatorship to inflict fears on the citizens.
The coalition, while dedicating the independence anniversary to detained activist Kuel Aguer Kuel and Rev. Abraham Chol Maketh, said there is need for the people of South Sudan to understand why President Kiir is afraid of outspoken citizens.
“At this juncture, it is important for the people of South Sudan to understand why the President is so afraid of outspoken citizens,” the PCCA statement reads in part.
“President Kiir plotted and staged a coup against the people of South Sudan in July 2013 when he toppled a duly elected government, that he led, and replaced it with a dictatorship,” the statement added.
The statement went on to suggest that Kiir exploited historically existing hostilities communities created by the country’s enemies such as then Khartoum regimes to divide and rule South Sudanese, to launch an ‘unprovoked war’ which it said is against the will of the citizens.
“He [President Salva Kiir Mayardit] then exploited existing historical ethnic animosities, which were created and executed by our enemies to divide and rule us, as a springboard to launch unprovoked war,” the statement said.
“The war was not against his purported enemies, the war was against the popular will of the people of South Sudan aimed at inflicting fear and subjugating our people to accept the dictatorship,” the statement added.
It suggest that “The idea was that when people are subjected to extreme fear, they submit to authority and are easy to control and manipulate. This is the reason everybody has come to call Kiir’s war, ‘a senseless war,’ aimed at achieving longevity of illegitimate and weak authoritarian regime.”
CALL FOR OPPOSITION MEETING ABROAD
The PCCA statement follows a call by prominent opposition leader Dr. Lam Akol Ajawin for an opposition meeting outside the country to decide the war forward as he says the revitalized peace agreement signed in September 2018 to end the suffering of the people of South Sudanese was not delivering.
Akol who is the leader of the opposition National Democratic Movement (NDM), a signatory of the 2018 peace deal under the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), said there is nothing to celebrate as an achievement since independence and proposed an opposition meeting abroad to find a way forward.
“Eleven years on we can hardly put our finger on an achievement on these important pillars of national obligation, except for one or two infrastructural projects designed, financed and executed by foreign countries,” Akol said.
“The NDM position is for the political forces in the country including the hold-out groups to join their brothers in the civil society organizations in a round table conference outside the country to discuss and agree on the way forward for our country to alleviate the suffering our people have been reeling under before and after independence,” he added.