SPLM-IO officials blocked from travelling to Panyigor County

JUBA – South Sudan’s main armed opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) said on Monday that twelve of its members were blocked from traveling to Panyigor, Twic East County, in Jonglei State on Saturday.

The group alleges that local youth and community leaders, incited by members of the rival SPLM party under President Salva Kiir Mayardit, prevented their plane from landing at a local airport in Panyigor on Monday morning.

Michael Bol Gatdor, Secretary-General of the Jonglei State SPLM-IO Secretariat, claimed that heavily armed forces were deployed at the Panyigor airstrip, forcing their plane to return to Juba.

“From their arrival before they could land, they saw a very heavily populated army around the airstrip and in the middle airstrip. The communication was done; the pilot was signaled by the army not to land,” Bol told Sudans Post on Monday.

“The pilot was scared and decided to come back to Juba and the members complained about why the plane didn’t land. The pilot said according to the communication he got from the ground they were not allowed to land,” Bol said.

He claimed that the Twic East County Commissioner informed them that the community youth were mobilized by the SPLM party to prevent the opposition party plane to land in an attempt to prevent the group from establishing a presence in the area.

“When they came back to Juba and communicated with the commissioner of Twic East County, he told them that youth and some elements from the community were mobilized to stop the SPLM-IO members from coming to county headquarters,” he said.

He further condemned the actions and clarified that the SPLM-IO officials’ mission was to establish a party office in Panyigor, not to attend a community meeting.

“We condemned what had happened because those youth and community leaders are not just youth and community leaders; some elements from SPLM incited them to stop the mission of the SPLM-IO in the country,” he added.

“They were not going for community meeting; they were going for a party mission to establish the party’s office in the county headquarters,” he added.

The SPLM-IO is a key signatory to the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), which ended the country’s five-year-old civil war in 2018.

Tensions between the SPLM-IO and the ruling SPLM party persist, often hindering the implementation of the peace agreement.

Jonglei State has experienced ongoing intercommunal violence and political instability, further complicating efforts for peacebuilding and political cooperation.