South Sudan President asserts Abyei belongs to Dinka Ngok
* Article
* Comments (28)
email Email
print Print
pdfSave
separation
increase
decrease
separation
separation
*
*
*
*
July 23, 2011 (JUBA) - South Sudan’s Salva Kiir Mayardit on Saturday
said that the oil contested region of Abyei belongs to the nine Dinka
Ngok chiefdom’s and argued that the North-aligned Misseriya tribe do
not have any territorial right in the area except access to water and
pasture for their cattle.
JPEG - 11.1 kb
Salva Kiir (Reuters/file)
After South Sudan seceded from the North on July 9, Abyei has remained
in North Sudan. A referendum was scheduled solve the dispute in
January but the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) refused to
allow the Misseriya to vote, claiming that as nomads who enter the
region for part of the year are not residents of the area.
Kiir said that historically, the borders between North and South Sudan
are known.
"The people of Abyei, the people of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, the
people of Unity State, the People of Western Bahr el Ghazal, the
People of Upper Nile and the people of Warrap State know their
borders. They know them tree by tree and distance by distance," said
Salva Kiir
The SPLM leader was speaking at a meeting with community leaders from
Abyei who paid him a visit to congratulate him on the independence of
South Sudan and for becoming the first president of the new country.
“The people of South Sudan will not leave you alone. Abyei belongs to
you. This is what the CPA says. It is your historical and ancestral
homeland," said Kiir explaining Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) is
very clear on whose land is Abyei.
Juac Agok, the Deputy chairperson of the SPLM for the area also in a
separate interview with Sudan Tribune on Saturday said The
Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the ruling by the Permanent Court of
Arbitration, which are the legal and binding documents, give clear
definition of Abyei that it can never be claimed by anyone a part from
the Nine Dinka Ngok chiefdom.
“The CPA is very clear document. It defines Abyei as land which
belongs to the nine Dinka Ngok chiefdom transferred to Kordofan region
in 1905. It does not say that Abyei was a shared area transferred to
Kordofan [in North Sudan]. It talks only about Dinka Ngok chiefdom.
This is not what we say. It is what the agreement which we signed with
the National Congress Party says, so why are the people refusing to
implement”, said Agok in reference to the government in Khartoum.
Ngor Ayuel, the Abyei community vice chairperson in an interview with
the press at South Sudan’s presidential palace said they came to give
a congratulatory message and assurance of support to the president and
to share with him situation facing internally displaced persons in
areas to which they fled.
Ethiopia forces have started arriving the area, as part of a deal
agreed after North Sudan’s army occupied the area in May. Ayuel said
that although the Ethiopian army had begun to arrive in the area the
Sudan Armed Forces have not yet started moving out.
The official also accused government in Khartoum of advising the army
to remove uniforms and put on civilian clothes in order to be
considered by the international community to have withdrawn its forces
away from the area.
The contested oil-producing region of Abyei is one of the remaining
issues between the CPA signatories that need to be negotiated between
the parties after the South Sudan independent earlier this month
signaling the end of a six year interim period of power and wealth
sharing.
In 1905, the area predominantly home to the Ngok Dinka, was
transferred by the British colonial authorities from South Sudan to
North Sudan for administrative purposes. Over a half century the Ngok
developed a strong sentiment to return to the South where they
perceive their physical and cultural heritage to be rooted.
These aspirations, along with other grievances of other Southerners,
such as marginalisation and the introduction of Islamic Shari’a Law
became the basis for the first phase of civil war in Sudan, starting
just before independence from Britain on January 1, 1956.
In the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement ending that conflict and the Ngok
Dinka were promised a referendum on whether Abyei should be in North
or South Sudan. However, officials from the area say Khartoum never
allowed that referendum to take place.
“This is not the first time the government in Khartoum tried to renege
any agreement on Abyei. They have done it many times in the past. The
1972 peace agreement allowed the people of Abyei to hold a referendum
to decide their fate but it was not held because authorities in the
North did not want the people of Abyei to become part of the south”,
said chairperson of The Abyei Referendum Forum, Ambassador Chol Deng
Alaak.
Because of this, according to ambassador Alaak, the leaders from the
Ngok area joined the SPLM when it was formed in 1983, triggering the
22 year war that the CPA ended.
The two warring parties, Khartoum’s NCP and the SPLM, ultimately
agreed in 2004 to the Abyei Protocol, which was drafted by the United
States; it was the last major piece of the CPA to be signed.
However, the protocol has not been implemented and the referendum has
not go ahead.
As a result of the protocol not being implemented, Alaak said, there
has been "virtually no functional governance or services for the
abandoned population in Abyei for years. Our people have always been
subjected to killing and displacement.”
Alaak described the Misseriya tribe as a neighboring pastoralist
population whose large traditional home area lies to the north of
Abyei with Muglad as its principal town.
He accused president Bashir of supporting the so-called Murahaleen,
who were active in raiding and in some cases enslaving Dinka
communities in order to destabilise the area during the conflict,
which ended in 2005.
President Bashir has frequently mobilised Misseriya elements for
military purposes in Popular Defense Forces (PDF) a government aligned
militia and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF).
Sudan’s president has been indicted for war crimes, genocide and
crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court for
alleged atrocities in the western Darfur region.
Alaak said that, Bashir has often mobilised Misseriya for his legions
by publicly promising them that he would get all of Abyei for them,
virtually a commitment to a policy of ethnic cleansing. These promises
have fueled high levels of tension between Misseriya and Ngok Dinka,
he said, explaining that this had strong implications for the
Misseriya way of life.
For several dry months of each year, by long-standing agreements with
the Ngok, the Misseriya need to bring their animals into Abyei and
even further into South Sudan for water and pasture, a necessity that
Bashir’s inflammatory actions could threaten, Alaak said.
In May, 2008 the 31st brigade of the SAF and other Misseriya elements
of the Sudan government’s military attacked Abyei and burned most of
it to the ground, displacing the entire Ngok population.
As in SAF’s recent occupation of Abyei, the UN protective force
hunkered down in their base and did not venture out to protect
civilians or provide a visible deterrent.
The SPLM and the Khartoum government went to the Permanent Court of
Arbitration in The Hague in 2009. The court defined the territory of
Abyei, which was in dispute; both the SPLM and the Khartoum government
promised to implement the PCA decision, though Khartoum ultimately
failed to do so.
Alaak accused Khartoum of undermining Protocol on Abyei with
intentions to deny conducting referendum in which the voters would be
members of the Ngok Dinka community and other Sudanese who are
residents to decide the future of the area. After the Southern
Referendum vote on January 9, 2011, Khartoum escalated the pressure on
Abyei by moving SAF into the area, displacing tens of thousands.
Some observers suggest that Khartoum ‘took’ Abyei to use as a
bargaining chip to maximise its leverage in negotiating a final
North-South agreement on oil revenues and other issues such as debt
and citizenship.
(ST)
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JFD
info" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/jfdinfo?hl=en.
