JUBA – South Sudan’s main armed opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) has said that its leader and First Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny has nothing to apologize for after President Salva Kiir asked him to do so for taking the people of South Sudan to civil war in December 2013
Following disagreements over who should lead the SPLM into elections due for 2015, Kiir and Machar led the country into a deadly ethnic violence that has killed at least half a million people and displaced millions into IDP and refugee camps.
The war was largely fought along ethnic line with Dinka members of the country’s army, then SPLA, supported Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, while Nuer elements of the SPLA supported Machar, an ethnic Nuer.
The two men signed a peace agreement in late 2015, but then returned to war following a deadly fighting at the presidential palace in the country’s capital Juba.
A revitalized version of that agreement was signed in September 2018 providing for the current transitional government of national unity which has been internationally criticized for lacking will to advance the peace deal.
Speaking during the Christmas Day at St. Teresa Cathedral in Juba, Kiir said he has forgiven Machar who he said has been fighting him since 1991, and asked the SPLM-IO leader to apologize to the people of South Sudan.
“I want to tell you today that I have forgiven Dr. Riek Machar who has been fighting me since 1991. It will be up to him to apologize to the nation or he doesn’t, but I have forgiven him,” he said.
‘NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR’
Reacting to the statements of the president, SPLM-IO member of National Liberation Council (NLC) and Chairperson of Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) for Northern Bahr el Ghazal State Dut Majokdit said Machar has done nothing wrong to apologize to anyone, saying it is president Kiir who was the chair of the SPLM who should apologize because the SPLM he led had taken the country to war.
“There is nothing he can apologize for and there is nothing personal in that conflict. When the war broke out in December 2013, it was a failure of the SPLM as a party to democratize itself and Dr. Riek and Pagan Amum Okiech were doing their best to reform the party. But he (Kiir) refused to make the reform and that is what led us to the civil war,” told Sudans Post in Cairo.
“So, if there is anyone to apologize, it would be President Salva Kiir himself and not Dr. Riek Machar because he was the chairman of the SPLM party which led the country to war. What he said that he forgiven Dr. Riek is not bad because there is need for reconciliation, but it is him who should apologize to the people of this country,” he added.
