Opinion: December Won’t Be the Same Again in South Sudan

December 9, 2019 Opinions

Opinion,

By Eng. Chuar Juet Jok

Eng. Chuar Juet Jock (Photo: unknown)

Dec 9th, 2019 (SSNN)-December will never be the same again for the rest of our lifetime and neither in the lifetime of our children, its celebratory mode has been stolen and poisoned forever by the one we assumed once as our national government and army. On Dec 15th, 2013, a day when our lives were turned upside down and the precious lives of our loved ones were abruptly cut short.

December used to be the only unique month that brings the whole together, the families, the nation and the Christian world at large. It is the month Jesus Christ was born, a month of special happiness and a gateway that usher for a whole lot New Year with rejuvenated hopes and wishes.

In the then beautiful Malakal town of South Sudan and like the rest of this beautiful country and nation in those days of 70s, 80s, 90s even when the Sudan civil war was ravaging and aflame, anyone of my peers and childhood friends would never miss to remember how we all wait for the month of December of each year not just only to celebrate and get together in joy and happiness but also to renew oneself physically and spiritually as well.

The celebrations preparatory mode of Christmas in South Sudan in those days is something uniquely magnificent and a whole lot joyful as it turns everything around beautiful and new. The decoration fever in every household and the whole town was something notable, houses are painted colorfully and beautifully new, sweet candies, cookies, cakes and refreshing drinks are made in their different beautiful shapes and colorful taste and in short everything in the house must be turned around, clean and neat for Charismas celebrations. The preparations for the Christmas actually starts earlier from October and on and as children and youth in those days it is never that we celebrate with the same clothes of last year, if affordable, we must have a new of everything, from clothes to shoes to watches and everything that come between and hence you have to make sure that the tailors have your clothes tailored and ready before December or at least before the Christmas Eve.

After our hard-won independence, it was our great expectations that the month of December will just add more beauty and joy to itself, simply because we would celebrates in peace and far from war this time and around and more to that, we would celebrate as free and dignified people in our own land and among our families, relatives, and friends something we have never fully enjoyed for the last 23 years. This has been a unique trend and tradition for us in Diaspora and those who have been scattered around the whole world and separated from families for decades. December was always a month you waited for as you work hard for it to save money all around the year to be able to pay a reunion visit with the family, the people and the land we dearly love. Unfortunately, things are never as we have wished and as we have lived before and December now has become a month of mourning and a month of sad memoirs. Each year on 15th of December we will still look for answers on why and what those thousands of innocent souls murdered mercilessly have ever done to the ones they thought as their leaders and their guarding army. On the 15th of each December, while we mourn and commemorates those lost precious souls, we will also be looking for clues on how the guns that were meant to protect the citizens of this country were turned into the ones that terrorize and kills them without a crime of their own.

December 15, 2013 was a culmination of the evil acts of people who have been planning willfully to rob this country and its nation from their new gained powers and freedoms, it will always be the peak of envy, evil and pry from the shadowy devils and from people who have recruited their armies and friends of evil to just steal the lives and the resources of this nation in a bright daylight, unashamed and mercilessly. However, the December dilemma has started earlier as we may think, it is in a fact an evil trend that the government of this country under the leadership of Kiir Mayardit has sought as a necessary mean and philosophy to survive on.

On December 5th, 2012, one of best mind and intellectual whose writings we joyfully anticipate every morning and whose writings were like a guiding compass to the many ills of the newborn state and to the struggling leadership of this country. Isaiah Abraham or Isaiah Ding Abraham Chan Awuol, a leading critic voice and brave pen in the war against corruption and our failed leadership was dragged and murdered brutally in front of his house by agents belonging to the county government of the day. On December 9th, 2012, around 100 of innocent and peaceful protestors were mass murdered and injured in Wau town. They were simply exercising their democratic right and protesting the relocation of their county headquarters to another location.

Those are just a few among many atrocities committed against the people of South Sudan by their own government. Things are never the same again not only on the month of December alone but in any time and space as long as Juba regime still believes in terror, intimidations and murders of its own citizens as a means to install itself and sustain its dictatorship rule.

The sad part yet is that justice to those innocents and many more are never served and their killers are still walking among us proudly and thirsty for more blood of the like innocents. There is no independent arm of justice and accountability in this country since the government who is supposed to be the justice arm is now the criminal itself.

The whole justice system in the body of the judiciary branch of government is dysfunctional and has been overridden by the executive branch and since then most of the state institutions are but mere accomplice in the crimes against citizens, there is none that is working independently and that for sure includes the legislature. It is, unfortunately, a horrible done deal. All in all and as we commemorate the victims of December 15th, 2013 and as the civil war enters its second year without justice or peace in sight let us renew our commitment to overhaul the way things are done in our country, it is our collective responsibility to put things right and reposition our country on the right track and if you think in your comfort zone that the crimes of the regime haven’t reached you yet, it is obviously a matter of time not a matter of you being indifferent. May the Almighty grants peace to the souls of all the innocents and upon South Sudan, the nation, and the country, we shall prevail.

The author is a South Sudanese scholar and writer, who resides in the United States. He can be reached at chuar.juet@gmail.com.

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