SPLA-IO says radio journalist who was detained in Bentiu is its service member

JUBA, OCTOBER 22, 2023 (SUDANS POST) – South Sudan’s main armed opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) has said that radio journalist Kuol Makuar who was detained for one day last week in Bentiu is its service member.

Last week, Makuar who previously served with Kondial FM, a local radio station located inside the Bentiu POC, was detained for eighteen hours by the opposition group’s military police before being released the following day.

Speaking to Sudans Post yesterday, SPLA-IO Sector Two Spokesman Maj. Kerbino Yai Pazale said the journalist is a soldier belonging to the main armed opposition group. He said that Makuar had deserted his unit a few years ago.

He said the reason behind his brief detention was that there were claims on social media that SPLA-IO’s sector two commander General Simon Maguek Gai who defected earlier this month had switched allegiance to President Salva Kiir along with other opposition officers.

He said the group recalled all its soldiers who were given permission to leave their units in order to showcase that the claims of large defection to Kiir from the SPLA-IO in Unity State was not true and that no recruitment was taking place.

“Early this month, one of the former sector two commanders defected together with a small team of officers and for this reason, the SPLA-IO sector two acting commander and division 4^th (A) commander organized a mission to force those who took permission from their units to return,” he told Sudans Post.

“The journalist [identified] as Kuol Makuar Duar, former Kondial FM Radio journalist, is our soldier and when he met with soldiers on the road going home, he was recognized by his colleagues, and he was forced to go with them,” he added.

He blamed the journalist’s “colleague” for rushing to report to “Sudans Post and [Radio] Miraya” that the SPLA-IO has detained a journalist, something he dismissed as “a lie” and “not true”.

“The SPLA-IO cooperates with every organization and with every citizen in Unity State. The reason why we called back our soldiers and officers to our base is because there is some propaganda that has spread and floating on social media that there are some officers who defected from sector two and followed the former sector commander Maguek Gai,” he added.