E. Equatoria youth protesters ask aid workers to leave in 3 days or risk attack

TORIT – Youth protesters in South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria state’s capital are asking foreign aid workers to leave the state within 72 hours (three days), a day after a visit by the vice-president for youth and gender cluster Rebecca Garang.

Vice-president visited the state capital Torit on Wednesday and met several stakeholders in the state to discuss the situation in which attacks against aid workers providing food or medicines to the needy have escalated.

Speaking to Sudans Post on Wednesday morning, one of the protesters said they are demanding that all the non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies to leave because they are brining employees from outside the state.

“They bring people to [work in] our state and they don’t accept us when we apply for work. So, this is what we don’t like and that’s why we are asking them to leave within 72 hours or else we will act,” one youth protester told Sudans Post on condition of anonymity on Wednesday.

On Monday, Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng urged the youth to exercise calmness and explain to her the problem that has led to violence against humanitarian workers saying she traveled to Eastern Equatoria to listen to them.

“Don’t pull your state in the mud. Your state is very great, you are good people, and you are people of principles. People of Eastern Equatoria State in totality do not speak anyhow that is why I am here to come and hear the Monyiemiji issue and what caused the problem,” VP Nyandeng said, according to Radio Tamazuj.

“I want to hear it, which is why I am here. We in the national government had not taken it as a national problem; we left it to you or the governor. That it is a state problem, but it is not a state problem, it is a national problem and that is why the president quickly said that Madam Rebecca you go to Eastern Equatoria. That is why I am here because this is a national issue, not an NGO issue.”