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Ethnically targeted killing is heightening in South Sudan. The constellation of killings out
of tribal detestation, ordinarily executed following effective identification
to establish the correct ethnic origin of the person(s) to be killed, has, to
this juncture reached its zenith.
A few days ago, presumably April 13, 2016, Simon Dhieu and his co-worker of the Danish
Demining Group (DDG), based in Yei, were gunned down by a group of unidentified Dinka
haters on the outskirt of town. They were on their usual routine – which
involves locating and destroying mines and other unexploded ordnances –
exploring suspected areas to be demined. Their killers, who stopped the
commercial vehicle they were traveling by to the demining site, made no secret
of what they were looking for. After forcing them out of the vehicle, they
asked about their ethnic origins. The specific identification process employed
by these determined killers included asking if there were MTNs or Dinkas among the
occupants of the vehicle, numbering about eight people per the narratives of
those who witnessed the scene.
Sensing
the gravity of the situation, the demining workers grew numb, unable to speak
for fear of being caught lying, which might have led to further catastrophic
consequences; or as a ploy to hide the identities of their colleagues that the
assailants demanded to know. Either of the two, the ploy did not work. The
assailants asked for identity documents at gunpoint and were subsequently produced under intense nervousness.
Satisfied with their search and identification that Simon Dhieu and his friend
were Dinka people (the other who said his mother was a Kakwa from the area was
spared), they separated them from the group, undressed them, tied their hands
behind their backs, faced them away from the rest, took aims and in an
unembellished bestial ferocity, shot them all in the back. The two young men,
intelligent and dedicated nation builders who, on daily occasions, risked their
lives demining their new country from mines and other unexploded ordnance left
behind by two decades of civil war - especially Yei River County – contorted
and collapsed in front of their colleagues. The mother earth, unpreparedly, received
their lifeless bodies pushed down on it by the curvature of space. On the
ground, they lay never to get up again. Their colleagues looked on completely
petrified, outraged but powerless.
Dinka The MTNs
The killers were out looking for the MTNs, a euphemism for the Dinka people. MTN
is a South African-based Mobile Telephone Network operating in many countries
around the world, including South Sudan. But to understand its contextual use
in this ethnic-based targeted killing, one has to understand the Hutu
paramilitary génocidaires of 1994 - The Interahamwe Militias - that likened Tutsi ethnic group members to
cockroaches and set about to exterminate them; Omar el Bashir, the Sudanese president’s
likening of South Sudanese to insects
(hasharat) that should just be
sprayed dead. More broadly, think of any other time someone likens another
person to a monkey, a dog, or a pig – wishing to do unto them the treatment such
animals would receive. The perpetrators always used these euphemisms to deny
themselves any feelings of sympathy or remorse. It is a human way of turning off humanity and revealing the devil within in its full disgracefulness. But in this case, a simple analogy is that MTN coverage seems to be everywhere, just as Dinka majority in
South Sudan could be found anywhere in the country, hence, the MTNs.
The killing of Simon Dhieu and his Dinka co-worker is one count among many: between
Juba and Yei, people have been pulled out of vehicles and killed; between Juba
and Mundri West and East, vehicles heading North of the country have been
ransacked and travelers killed mercilessly; out of Rumbek to any direction,
extrajudicial killings have been meted out on tribal identities. Even in Juba
itself, people say it would be stupid to walk in the streets at night without
checking your back. Suburbs have become lethal tribal areas with people from particular regions of South Sudan settling exclusive from others.
Lethal Tribal Identity
At
the moment of their death, and in the realms of the spirits – if there exists a
metaphysical ability enabling the dead to extend earthly tragedies into conclusive
discussions in the worlds beyond the physical – Simon and his colleague would
still, be questioning their abrupt and tragic human-engendered demise. No doubt, even those alive and who have heard or
witnessed the killing are probing for answers as well.
There is a need to fill-in
the gap left by the deaths of these two young nation builders with answers. They
had no time to ask their killers. Their killers were filled with rage. Simon and
his friend were, in turn, filled with fear and questions. They died before
working out anything for resolution or understanding. The only message that
brutally departed with them was the question and confirmation of their Dinka
originality. In South Sudan, a nation that must assert itself among the nations
of the world, telling the truth should be part of nation-building. But, in
telling the truth about who they were, Simon Dhieu and his Dinka colleague stumbled
on a mystery: having been born Dinka was a deadly natural reality that kills
at once upon pronunciation or realization. That
was why they were killed. They might want to know why it was lethal to be found
or born a Dinka? Would they have survived had their killers known that in the
Dinka blood runs a shared DNA strains linking them with Kakwa, Acholi, Shilluk,
Anyuak, Nuer, Taposta, Luo, Atuot, Aliap, Didinga, etc? Would they have been spared if they had a
chance to remind their killers that, despite being the Dinka they so much hated,
they both shared the history of marginalization and, now, independent South
Sudan?
To
suggest that South Sudan is a nation built on the glaring reality of ethnic
patriotism, one cannot be accused of overstating the network of the South
Sudanese society’s identity crisis. We have seen this in government where
communities rally behind politicians hailing from their areas; we see it in the
South Sudanese army, paramilitaries, and militias where people we have blood
relations are the ones we support and stand by irrespective of inabilities and
misleading, often destructive dreams; we know this when we speak and argue with
pervasive national character and suggesting revolutionary changes while
discreetly, wishing that these changes be done by somebody closer to home; we
see it in the employment sector, where entire tribes dominate key structures of subsistence;
in the airport and immigration where rules only apply to tribes other than
mind; in service delivery queues where if the officials delivering services are of
my blood relation, tribe, region, or any other category that fits, we must be
esteemed queue-jumpers. If ethnic groups favor themselves over everything,
then the end of everything will always be an ethnic clash - clashing over resources,
government positions, national projects, administrative areas, and all that the
country throws at her citizens. South Sudanese must rise and meet the
challenges of true nationalism. It is not right to speak with national
rhetoric while practicing ethnic patriotism. Nations of the world that are now
considered prosperous, peaceful, and strong did one thing: they shunned ethnic allegiances
and accepted to be one and the subjects of a nation.
It
is in shunning ethnic loyalties that the deaths, like that of Simon Dhieu and
his colleagues would be brought to an end. If it starts effectively at the
national level, other gruesome deaths related to ethnic loyalties would surely
be curtailed.
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