The former co-chair of the National Dialogue Steering Committee Angelo Beda (pictured) has called on the magistrate court to prosecute individuals accused of committing atrocities during the five months’ conflicts in Tombura County.

Beda said the process should be expedited before those accused disappear without delivering justice to the relatives of the victims.

“A magistrate court can go there [in Tombura] to start prosecuting those who have killed,” said Beda “If People think it is the [SPLA] IO forces [that cause problem], so [they] collect them from that place and [let them] go but what about the people who have been killed?”

Beda who was once tasked with addressing the root causes of South Sudan’s conflict added: “Their relatives have just kept quiet. What will the government do about it when nobody is being punished? Anybody can get up and kill anybody because people are not being arrested.”

He was speaking during the consultative meeting of Western Equatoria State’s members of Reconstituted Transitional National Legislative Assembly and Council of State on how to resolve the protracted Tombura conflict in Juba last Friday. 

The UN Human Rights has revealed that since June this year, more than 100 civilians have been killed by armed men during the ongoing conflict in Tombura County of Western Equatoria State.

The forces of Gen. James Nando, the pro-SPLA-IO, and those of the youth leader Angelo David have been blamed for causing insecurity in the area characterised by deaths and eviction of thousands of residents who sought refuge in neighbouring states and counties.

Grim statistics

At least more than 80, 000 have also been displaced by the conflict and are in a dire humanitarian situation. There is a food shortage, lack of safe and clean drinking water, medicines, and shelters in various locations within the state and part of western Bahr el Ghazal State. 

In July this year, Governor Alfred Futuyo refuted claims that SPLA-IO forces were behind the violence, but he rather blamed four prominent politicians, among them Speaker Jemma Nunu Kumbo, Patrick Raphael Zamoi, governor of defunct Tombura State for inciting the conflict among the local communities.

Others were two Members of Parliament, Pascal Bandindi and Salih Saeed Uku.

They all denied the claims describing them as false with an intention to tarnish their image and stifle their political careers.  

Although the relocation of the rival forces had begun, the Joint Defence Board (JDB) is still in the process of fully relocating the forces from the war-torn Tombura. This was agreed on by leaders to prevent further displacement and destruction of civilians’ sources of livelihood.