Intelligence chief warned detention of journalists would revive discussion on Kiir’s viral video

JUBA, JANUARY 26^th 2023 (SUDANS POST) – The director-general of South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) General Akol Koor had warned that detention of journalists wound revive circulation of President Salva Kiir’s video in which he could be seen wetting on himself in public, sources close to the investigation of the detained media personnel say.

Speaking to Sudans Post, one security source who do not want to be named said General Akol had been resisting calls for arrest of journalists from the president’s family because he believed that the detention would attract international media attention to the video which did not happen when it first circulated online in December.

“He believes that the story had died following the video’s circulation and that arrest and detention of journalists would revive talk around it and then internal media which was not well-informed on the video would pick it up and circulate it once more, but the president’s family insisted that they must be arrested because they had brought shame against their son,” the source said.

“They didn’t listen to him and now this is the result. All the international media houses starting with the BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, all these houses which did not report the incident from the beginning got the opportunity after we arrested the journalist. This is because we didn’t thing well in the first place,” the source added.

Another source said that the circulation of the video does not amount to crime as “it was something taking place in front of live cameras and if there was anyone to blame, it would be the president’s team of protocol who allowed every journalist to come and cover and this shouldn’t be blamed on journalists as it happen in the world. It is not our president alone and journalists were not arrested.”

In December, President Kiir was inaugurating the first phase of the Juba Bahr el Ghazal highway at Terekeka County of Central Equatoria state when cameras captured moments in which he appeared to be wetting on himself as the country’s national anthem was being sung.

The video circulated on social media sparking controversy between those who used the video to call on the president to retire from the leadership of the country and those who see the video circulation as an insult against the country as Kiir represented the nation as president.

Days later, a source at the state-own South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) told Sudans Post that security agents from the office of the president and the ministry of information were searching their phone in an attempt to trace down those working at the state television who might have themselves sent the video out.

On January 5, South Sudan National Security Service detained at least six journalists working for the state television. The journalists are accused of standing behind the circulation of the video and they have since been detained at the Blue House, the National Security Service’s headquarters at Jebel neighborhood in Juba.

Last week, another journalist, Garang John, was arrested for allegedly having been accused by one of the detained journalists of having knowledge as to how the video was sent to a Nigerian journalists in Lagos who then started circulating it on social media and South Sudanese users picking it from that guy.