SPLM-IO nominee to peace parliament in Abyei wounded in attack

ABYEI – A senior South Sudan opposition official nominated by the SPLM-IO to Abyei Administrative Area’s upcoming transitional parliament has told Sudans Post in an exclusive interview this afternoon that he has been wounded in an attack on Monday while returning from a trip he took to Warrap state.

Monykuch Mawien said the incident occurred just outside Abyei town center at 07:17 PM saying the attackers are South Sudanese whom he said they couldn’t however identify as it was turning dark. The senior opposition official further condemned the attack and said they won’t be intimidated to give up their fight for a ‘country of laws’.

“This incident happened yesterday night at 7:18 PM. I was coming from Mayen Abuth and just four kilometers away from the centre of the town we came under an ambush of these people. We saw the attackers but it was dark and they are not Arabs, they are our people. This is what happened and five people including myself are badly wounded and one person has light injuries,” Mawien told said on phone from Abyei.

Mawien who is so far recovering further said there seem to be a political hand in the incident because members of the South Sudan Police Service in the area didn’t show up to investigate or gather information on how the incident occurred, despite the short distance they were located from the hospital where they were receiving treatment.

“The government or the police didn’t come to investigate and take information about the incident despite the fact that we were not far from them because after the incident we were taken to a hospital near the police station,” he said, adding that “we won’t be intimidated so that we are diverted away from our cause.”

For her part, Nyenagwek Kuol, the chairwoman of the SPLM-IO in Abyei and member of the SPLM-IO National Liberation Council confirmed that Monykuch Mawien was shot and wounded in what she describes as part of an ongoing coordinated intimidation in Abyei against members of the group there.

Nyenagwek said she condemns the attack describing it as an assassination attempt and a tactic to intimidate the main armed opposition group’s members in the disputed area accusing Abyei Chief Administrator Kuol Diem Kuol of anti-peace rhetoric saying he has been against power-sharing in the area between opposition groups and the government.

“I condemns any attack or threat on our SPLM- IO members in Abyei.,” she said. “this act is unacceptable at all.”