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SUDAN: Country on brink of violence after elections, says bishop
By John Pontifex
Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio, south Sudan
A bishop in south Sudan is warning of a potential genocide, saying that post-election tension has put the country on the brink of widespread violence.
Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio said in a statement this week that unresolved tension over political disputes looked set to boil over into serious conflict which he said had now become “a likely scenario”.
In a statement sent to Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Hiiboro said the people’s frustration was heightened by allegations of foul play in this month’s general elections – the first multi-party poll in Sudan in nearly 25 years.
The 11th-15th April elections resulted in triumph for President Omar al Bashir’s National Congress Party, the incumbent regime in Khartoum, as well as sitting Vice-President Salva Kiir and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which scored up to 90 percent in its southern heartlands.
The election took place amid reports of voter intimidation, vote-rigging, mix-ups over ballot papers and breaches of voter privacy in polling booths.
Now comes news of an arson attack on a truck transporting ballot papers in Bishop Hiiboro’s region of Western Equatoria State.
Stressing the tensions in the region, Bishop Hiiboro wrote: “The election results may spark serious violence [soon].
“The violence may be compared to nothing less than a genocide because there are many deep-seated animosities in the hearts of many people of different ethnic groups in the south [of the country].”
The bishop warned of festering resentment over unresolved issues including the border dispute between north and south Sudan, centring on the oil-rich Abyei region.
He wrote: “Until this self-inflicted crisis is managed in a constructive way, the possibility of the entire nation descending into the abyss is a likely scenario.”
Bishop Hiiboro also highlighted continuing wrangling over the possible secession of south Sudan – a question due to be voted on in a referendum in January – with associated questions of transport and commercial relations with the north, oil revenue sharing and citizenship rights.
These issues were due to be resolved in the wake of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which gave semi-autonomy to south Sudan following more than 20 years of civil war between the Islamist regime in the capital Khartoum and the south Sudan-based rebel SPLM, then a rebel army.
But blaming the SPLM for the lack of progress since 2005, Bishop Hiiboro stated: “The sole responsibility for this debacle lies in the hands of the southern Sudanese themselves both within the camp of the ruling party and other political parties.
“The senseless death of southern Sudanese citizens is going to be due to the inability of the political leaders to craft a better conflict resolution process.”
He added: “Pushing differences to the point of national meltdown and exasperating tribal and religious differences just to come to power or to retain power at all costs is out of the domain of healthy politics.
“No people and no nation deserve this kind of toxic politics.”
Bishop Hiiboro’s warning of violence comes as a setback amid reports that, despite a poll extension, the election had taken place peacefully.
As voting got underway last week, Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok Kur of Khartoum told Aid to the Church in Need that violence was unlikely especially in the immediate post-election period because the major political parties had too much at stake to allow the democratic process to stall.
But such optimism does not necessarily apply to Bishop Hiiboro’s Tombura-Yambio diocese, which has suffered atrocities at the hands of rebel fighters the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Late last summer, the LRA carried out crucifixion-style killings in Nzara, near Yambio, and at about the same time Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in neighbouring Ezo was desecrated and 17 people were abducted, mostly in their teens and twenties.
Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio, south Sudan, will be the key-note speaker at Aid to the Church in Need UK’s Westminster Event on Saturday, 16th October 2010. He will also be visiting Scotland with Aid to the Church in Need at about the same time.