SPLA-IO describes UN report accusing it of arms supply to civilians in Jonglei as ‘false’

KHARTOUM/JUBA – South Sudan’s main armed opposition group, SPLA-IO, has described as false a United Nations Panel of Experts report accusing it, among other actors including the government, of supplying arms and ammunition to civilians in the country’s restive Jonglei state between February and March this year.

In a report yesterday, the United Nations Panel of Experts on South  Sudan said in a report that it has evident to support that the SPLA-IO, as well as the external security chief in Juba, provided arms to Gawaar and Lou Nuer civilians in Jonglei ahead of an attack earlier this year on several Lou-Nuer and Gawaar villages by Murle armed civilians supplied with arms by the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF) and the country’s National Security Service.

“Lieutenant General Kuc, the presidential adviser on Murle affairs, Akot Lual Arech, and the head of South Sudan People’s Defence Forces Military Intelligence, Lieutenant General Rin Tueny Mabor Deng, known as “Janafil”, armed General David Yau Yau’s Cobra Faction of SSPDF and other Murle militias during fighting in February and March,” the UN report seen by Sudans Post reads in part.

“In Jonglei and Upper Nile, the Gawaar Nuer and Lou Nuer militias also received government-supplied arms. In March, the Director General of the General Intelligence Bureau of the National Security Service, Lieutenant General Thomas Duoth Guet, supplied Kalashnikov machine guns and AK-47 rifles and related ammunition to Gawaar Nuer and Lou Nuer militias. In addition, as part of a separate supply of weapons, SPLA-IO provided the same militias in Jonglei and Upper Nile with weaponry and military support,” it added.

Speaking to Sudans Post this evening, Brigadier-General William Gatjiath Deng, the SPLA-IO military spokesman and close aide to SPLA-IO General Chief of General Staff General Simon Gatwech Dual, said the report on the part accusing the main armed opposition group of arms supply to civilians is false, but agreed that the SSPDF and the National Security Service had in fact supplied arms to Murle to attack Nuer civilians in the states.

“That report is false,” he said. “As you are aware, the SPLM/SPLA (IO) is the only signatory to the revitalized peace agreement that is working single-handedly to preserve the ceasefire and that is fighting for implementation of the revitalized peace agreement, how can a person working to maintain peace work to derail that same peace?”

The senior opposition commander further said the SPLA-IO does not have weapons that he said can enforce the reported arms supply to a second party saying it is the government of President Salva Kiir Mayardit that is working to derail the peace agreement and by supplying arms to militias that are working to detail the implementation of the revitalized peace agreement because he has arms stockpiles in Juba.

“First of all the SPLM/SPLA (IO) does not have a source of arms supply. Kiir and his militias does and the fact is that the arms embargo that was imposed by the international community isn’t working because you can see the government attacking us and supplying militias that it gathered to derail the peace process because they known the peace agreement is in the best interest of the people of South Sudan,” he said.